Nikola Tesla
1856 – 1943 · 87 years · New York · Americas
Serbian-American inventor of the induction motor and alternating-current systems, and a pioneer of radio.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Napoleon Sarony · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 18 years younger
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 11 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 23 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 25 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 33 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 37 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 22 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 28 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 14 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 22 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 16 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 35 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 25 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 5 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 14 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 42 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 62 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 12 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 62 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 12 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 36 years younger
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 69 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 43 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 19 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 13 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 37 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 5 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 10 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 19 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 4 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 9 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 33 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 73 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 74 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 7 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, born the same year
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 15 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 42 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 63 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 9 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 5 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 18 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 3, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 5, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 5, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 7, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 8, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 11, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 12, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 13, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 13, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 14, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 20, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 23, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 27, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 29, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 30, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 33, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 37, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 49, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 52, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 58, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 58, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 59, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 60, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 61, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 61, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 62, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 63, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 72, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 73, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 73, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 77, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 80, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 80, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 83, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 85, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 85, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 86, Eastern Europe & Russia