Nicholas II
1868 – 1918 · 50 years · Saint Petersburg · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1894 – 1917 (Rus and Russia)
His reign saw the 1905 Revolution, the creation of the State Duma and Russia's entry into the First World War. He abdicated in 1917 and in 1918 was shot with his family by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Boissonnas & Eggler · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 1 year older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 6 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 11 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 13 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 49 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 21 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 2 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 40 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 10 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 34 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 28 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 47 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 13 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 26 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 7 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 30 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 24 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 30 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 24 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 24 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 28 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 17 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 7 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 40 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 1 year younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 25 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 7 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 2 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 31 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 16 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 21 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 12 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 21 years younger
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 21 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 12 years older
- Theodore Roosevelt — 26th US president, the Panama Canal and trust-busting, 10 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 3 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 30 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 21 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 7 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 30 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 14 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 0, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 1, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 1, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 2, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 3, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 3, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 6, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 8, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 8, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 8, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 10, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 11, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 11, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 15, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 16, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 17, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 17, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 17, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 18, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 18, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 20, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 21, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 21, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 23, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 25, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 25, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 26, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 26, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 27, Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 37, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 40, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 46, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 46, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 47, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 48, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 50, Whole world