Marlene Dietrich

actress and singer

1901 – 1992 · 91 years · Berlin · Europe

Rose to fame as the cabaret singer Lola Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) and left for Hollywood. Refusing to return to Nazi Germany, she became a US citizen and during the war performed for Allied troops at the front.

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 20 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 27 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 12 years older
Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 34 years older
Jean-Paul Sartre — French philosopher and writer, 4 years younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 5 years older
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 23 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 33 years younger
Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 31 years older
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 5 years younger
Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 7 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 20 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 3 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 17 years younger
Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 6 years older
Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 8 years older
Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 40 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 17 years younger
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 9 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 24 years younger
Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 57 years older
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 5 years younger
Jean-Bédel Bokassa — President of the CAR, then Emperor of Central Africa, 20 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 8 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 32 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, born the same year
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 9 years younger
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, born the same year
Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 11 years older

Americas

Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 12 years older
Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 29 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 45 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 28 years younger
Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 54 years older
Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 2 years older

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 30 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 18 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 3 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 35 years younger
Don Bradman — cricketer, 7 years younger
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 1 year older

The world in their lifetime

1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 4, Europe
1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 7, Middle East
1914–1918 World War I — aged 13, Whole world
1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 13, Americas
1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 13, Europe
1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 14, Middle East
1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 15, Middle East
1917 October Revolution — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 17, Whole world
1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 18, Europe
1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 27, Europe
1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 28, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 32, Europe
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 35, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 38, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 40, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 44, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 46, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 47, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 48, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 52, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 52, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 65, Asia
1969 Moon landing — aged 68, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 69, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 74, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 79, Whole world
1981 AIDS first described — aged 80, Whole world
1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 82, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 84, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 88, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 88, Europe