Otto von Bismarck
1815 – 1898 · 83 years · Berlin · Europe
Prussian minister-president who unified Germany in 1871 and became the German Empire's first chancellor.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: André Bockmann · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 4 years younger
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 6 years older
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 3 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 38 years younger
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 52 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 59 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 13 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 19 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 6 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 25 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 55 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 16 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 66 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 27 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 8 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 46 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 30 years older
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 29 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 2 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 29 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 46 years older
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 28 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 13 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 25 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 54 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 22 years younger
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 37 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 46 years younger
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 55 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 51 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 32 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 6 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 41 years younger
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 32 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 7 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 20 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 56 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', born the same year
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 3 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 23 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 32 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 46 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 0, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 0, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 1, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 2, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 2, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 4, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 7, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 13, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 16, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 18, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 20, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 20, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 23, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 24, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 24, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 24, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 24, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 30, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 31, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 31, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 32, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 33, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 33, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 36, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 38, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 44, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 46, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 46, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 46, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 48, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 49, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 61, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 64, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 68, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 70, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 71, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 74, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 78, Oceania