Nelson Mandela
1918 – 2013 · 95 years · Johannesburg · Africa
Anti-apartheid leader imprisoned for 27 years; President of South Africa in 1994–1999 and Nobel Peace laureate (1993).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 37 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 44 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 39 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 29 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 51 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 8 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 40 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 16 years younger
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 13 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 13 years younger
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 12 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 12 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 37 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 20 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, born the same year
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 7 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 20 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 16 years older
Africa
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 26 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 7 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 12 years older
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 12 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 4 years younger
- Miriam Makeba — singer, 14 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 25 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 49 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 8 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 17 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 1 year older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 17 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 12 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 29 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 11 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 62 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 71 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 6 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 47 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 1 year younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 18 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 20 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 10 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 18 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 0, Whole world
- 1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes — aged 0, Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 1, Europe
- 1920 League of Nations founded — aged 2, Whole world
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 4, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 4, Africa
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 5, Asia
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 10, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 11, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 15, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 18, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 21, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 23, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 27, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 29, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 30, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 31, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 35, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 35, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 43, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 51, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 52, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 57, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 62, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 65, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 67, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 71, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 71, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 71, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 73, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 2001 September 11 attacks — aged 83, Americas
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 86, Asia
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — aged 93, Asia