Mikhail Bulgakov
1891 – 1940 · 49 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Author of The Master and Margarita, Heart of a Dog and the play The Days of the Turbins.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Moisej Nappelbaum · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 17 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 12 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 10 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 2 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 24 years older
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 72 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 13 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 21 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 63 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 57 years older
- Anna Akhmatova — poet, 2 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 3 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 10 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 7 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 30 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 49 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 27 years younger
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 7 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 27 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 1 year younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 47 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 34 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 16 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 15 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 22 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 2 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 30 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 2 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 1 year older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 10 years younger
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 35 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 2 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 44 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 38 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 39 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 28 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 20 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 7 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 28 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 9 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 44 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 30 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 0, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 2, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 2, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 3, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 3, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 4, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 5, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 6, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 10, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 12, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 13, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 14, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 14, Middle East
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 15, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 17, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 17, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 19, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 20, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 20, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 21, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 21, Oceania
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 22, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 23, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 23, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 24, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 25, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 27, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 28, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 37, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 38, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 42, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 45, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 45, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 48, Whole world