Mary, Queen of Scots
1542 – 1587 · 45 years · Edinburgh · Europe
Queen of Scots from six days old. Fled to England after a rebellion, was held captive for 19 years and executed on Elizabeth I's orders.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 16th century
Portrait: Unidentified painter · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Elizabeth I — Queen of England, 9 years older
- Miguel de Cervantes — Spanish novelist, 5 years younger
- William Shakespeare — English playwright and poet, 22 years younger
- Galileo Galilei — Italian physicist and astronomer, 22 years younger
- Michelangelo — sculptor, painter and architect, 67 years older
- Philip II of Spain — King of Spain, 15 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Ivan the Terrible — first Tsar of Russia, 12 years older
- Yermak Timofeyevich — Cossack conqueror of Siberia, 10 years older
- Boris Godunov — Tsar of Russia, 10 years younger
- Vasily Shuisky — boyar tsar of the Time of Troubles who died in Polish captivity, 10 years younger
- Feodor I — last Rurikid tsar, under whom the Moscow Patriarchate was founded, 15 years younger
Middle East
- Selim II — sultan who took Cyprus and lost at Lepanto, 18 years older
- Suleiman the Magnificent — Ottoman sultan, 48 years older
- Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana) — wife of Sultan Suleiman I, 37 years older
- Abbas the Great — Safavid Shah of Iran, 29 years younger
- Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf — Ottoman astronomer and engineer, 16 years older
- Murad III — sultan who won the Caucasus from the Safavids, 4 years younger
Africa
- Ahmad al-Mansur — Sultan of Morocco, 7 years younger
- Ahmed Baba — Timbuktu scholar, 14 years younger
Asia
- Akbar the Great — Mughal emperor, born the same year
- Tokugawa Ieyasu — first Tokugawa shogun, 1 year younger
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi — unifier of Japan, 5 years older
- Ashikaga Yoshiaki — last Ashikaga shogun, expelled by Nobunaga, 5 years older
- Yi Sun-sin — Korean admiral, 3 years younger
- Oda Nobunaga — Japanese warlord, 8 years older
Americas
- Bartolomé de las Casas — friar and defender of Native Americans, 58 years older
- Inca Garcilaso de la Vega — chronicler, son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, 3 years older
- Samuel de Champlain — French explorer, 25 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1542 Orellana sails down the Amazon — aged 0, Americas
- 1543 Copernicus publishes heliocentrism — aged 1, Europe
- 1545–1548 Cocoliztli epidemic — aged 3, Americas
- 1547 Ivan IV crowned Tsar — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1555–1561 Saint Basil's Cathedral — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1556 Shaanxi earthquake — aged 14, Asia
- 1556 Akbar and the Second Battle of Panipat — aged 14, Asia
- 1569 Union of Lublin — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1571 Battle of Lepanto — aged 29, Europe
- 1572 St Bartholomew's Day Massacre — aged 30, Europe
- 1582 Gregorian calendar — aged 40, Europe
- 1582 Yermak's conquest of Sibir — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia