Pablo Escobar
1949 – 1993 · 44 years · Rionegro · Americas
He founded the Medellín Cartel, which all but monopolised cocaine shipments to the US in the 1980s; his fortune was put at $30 billion. He waged terror on the Colombian state, escaped from a prison built to his own design and was killed by police in Medellín.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 68 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 75 years older
- Henry Kissinger — US Secretary of State, 26 years older
- Margaret Thatcher — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 24 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 23 years older
- Diana, Princess of Wales — first wife of Prince Charles, the future King Charles III, 12 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 53 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 15 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 18 years older
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 18 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 43 years older
- Vladimir Vysotsky — singer-songwriter, poet and actor, 11 years older
Middle East
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 51 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 31 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 38 years older
- Anastas Mikoyan — Soviet statesman, 54 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 51 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 47 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 31 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 57 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 24 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 43 years older
- Jean-Bédel Bokassa — President of the CAR, then Emperor of Central Africa, 28 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 27 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 56 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 39 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 48 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 32 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 48 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 59 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 19 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 60 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 20 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 38 years older
- Richard Nixon — 37th US president, the opening to China and Watergate, 36 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 25 years older
Oceania
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 30 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 13 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 51 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 41 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 49 years older
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 47 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 0, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — aged 0, Asia
- 1949 First Soviet atomic bomb test — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1950–1953 Korean War — aged 1, Asia
- 1952 Great Smog of London — aged 3, Europe
- 1952 Egyptian revolution of 1952 — aged 3, Africa
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 4, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 4, Asia
- 1953 Death of Stalin — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — aged 4, Middle East
- 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — aged 5, Asia
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — aged 5, Oceania
- 1954–1960 Virgin Lands campaign — aged 5, Asia
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — aged 6, Asia
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — aged 6, Americas
- 1955 Bandung Conference — aged 6, Asia
- 1956 Secret Speech and the Khrushchev thaw — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1956 Hungarian Revolution of 1956 — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — aged 7, Africa
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — aged 8, Europe
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — aged 9, Africa
- 1958–1962 Great Leap Forward — aged 9, Asia
- 1958 14 July Revolution in Iraq — aged 9, Middle East
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — aged 10, Americas
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — aged 10, Oceania
- 1959 Tibetan uprising and the Dalai Lama's flight — aged 10, Asia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 17, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 20, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 21, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 26, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 31, Whole world
- 1981 AIDS first described — aged 32, Whole world
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 34, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 40, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 40, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 42, Eastern Europe & Russia