Patrice Lumumba
1925 – 1961 · 36 years · Léopoldville (Kinshasa) · Africa
Leader of the Belgian Congo's independence; overthrown and killed within months, his death became a symbol of the Cold War in Africa.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Harry Pot for Anefo ) · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 51 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 44 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 46 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 36 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 1 year younger
- Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 13 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 47 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 9 years younger
- Anna Akhmatova — poet, 36 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 31 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 19 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 19 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 44 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 27 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 7 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 27 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 23 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 14 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 7 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 33 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 50 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 19 years older
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 16 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 3 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 32 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 56 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 36 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 35 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 24 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 24 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 36 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 4 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 5 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 69 years older
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 41 years older
- Dwight D. Eisenhower — 34th US president, commander of the Normandy landings, 35 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 54 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 27 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 6 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 11 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 25 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 17 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 3, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 4, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 5, Americas
- 1931 China floods — aged 6, Asia
- 1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 7, Middle East
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 8, Europe
- 1934–1935 Long March — aged 9, Asia
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 10, Africa
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 11, Europe
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 11, Oceania
- 1936 Turing's universal machine — aged 11, Europe
- 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — aged 13, Europe
- 1938 Munich Agreement — aged 13, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 14, Whole world
- 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 16, Europe
- 1941 German invasion of the USSR — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — aged 16, Oceania
- 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — aged 17, Oceania
- 1943 Battle of Kursk — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1944 D-Day: Normandy landings — aged 19, Europe
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 20, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — aged 20, Whole world
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — aged 20, Americas
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — aged 20, Asia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 22, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 23, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 24, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 28, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 28, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia