Pablo Neruda
1904 – 1973 · 69 years · Santiago · Americas
Chilean poet of Twenty Love Poems and the Canto General; Nobel Prize 1971. He died 12 days after Pinochet's coup.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 23 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 30 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 25 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 15 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 37 years older
- George VI — Second World War king who overcame a stammer, 9 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 26 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 30 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 34 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 10 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 2 years younger
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 2 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 23 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 6 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 14 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 43 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 62 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 6 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 14 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 12 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 21 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 2 years younger
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 5 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 29 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 11 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 35 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 3 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 3 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 14 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 6 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 15 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 26 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 48 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 25 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 57 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 5 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 33 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 6 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 15 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 32 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 4 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 4 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 0, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 1, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 1, Middle East
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 2, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 4, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 4, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 6, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 7, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 7, Oceania
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 10, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 10, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 11, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 12, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 14, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 15, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 24, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 25, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 29, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 32, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 35, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 37, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 37, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 41, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 43, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 44, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 45, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 49, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 49, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 53, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 57, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 65, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 66, Americas