Mehmed V Reşad
1844 – 1918 · 74 years · Istanbul · Middle East
Reign: 1909 – 1918 (Ottoman Empire)
A constitutional monarch with no real power, as the Young Turks ran the country. In 1914 the empire entered World War I on Germany's side in his name and a jihad was proclaimed against the Entente.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Bain News Service, publisher · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 25 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 23 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 30 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 26 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 35 years younger
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 35 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 16 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 10 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 4 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 26 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 34 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 23 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 37 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 2 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 17 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 54 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 21 years older
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 14 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, born the same year
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 31 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 48 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 4 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 7 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 16 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 25 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 49 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 7 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 8 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 17 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 22 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 3 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 12 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 45 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 35 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 3 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 9 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 27 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 54 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 6 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 3 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 17 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 29 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 1, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 2, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 2, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 3, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 4, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 4, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 7, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 9, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 15, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 17, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 17, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 19, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 20, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 23, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 24, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 25, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 25, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 26, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 27, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 27, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 32, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 35, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 39, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 41, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 42, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 45, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 49, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 61, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 64, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 70, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 70, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 71, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 72, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 73, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 73, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 74, Whole world