Nellie Melba
1861 – 1931 · 70 years · Melbourne · Oceania
The first Australian to win world operatic fame; peach Melba and Melba toast were named after her.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Numa Blanc Fils (photographic studio) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 6 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 13 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 18 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 20 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 28 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 42 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 9 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 17 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 33 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 27 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 21 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 40 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 20 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, born the same year
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 19 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 37 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 57 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 17 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 57 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 17 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 31 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 48 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 21 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 10 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 8 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 32 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, born the same year
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 5 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 24 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 9 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 14 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 5 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 28 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 2 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 5 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 14 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 10 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 37 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 58 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 14 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 23 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 21 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 0, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 0, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 2, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 3, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 6, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 7, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 8, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 8, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 9, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 10, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 10, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 13, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 15, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 15, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 15, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 17, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 18, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 18, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 22, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 24, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 25, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 28, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 32, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 44, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 47, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 53, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 53, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 54, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 55, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 57, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 58, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 67, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 68, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia