Roman von Ungern-Sternberg
1886 – 1921 · 35 years · Graz · Europe
A Baltic German baron who dreamed of restoring monarchy and Genghis Khan's empire. In 1921 his Asiatic Cavalry Division drove the Chinese out of Urga and restored the Bogd Khan; after a raid into Siberia he was captured by the Reds and shot.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 19 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 12 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 7 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 5 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 3 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 67 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 16 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 8 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 10 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 58 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 52 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 37 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 5 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 25 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 44 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 37 years older
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 7 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 9 years younger
Africa
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 6 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 42 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 46 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 11 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 35 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 20 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 17 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 7 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 25 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 20 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 7 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 3 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 39 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 30 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 3 years younger
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 47 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 39 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 30 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 15 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 12 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 39 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 25 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 4 years older
- Katherine Mansfield — short-story writer, 2 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 0, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 0, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 2, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 3, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 3, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 5, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 7, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 7, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 8, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 8, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 8, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 9, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 10, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 11, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 12, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 13, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 15, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 17, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 18, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 19, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 19, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 19, Asia
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 20, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 22, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 22, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 24, Americas
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — aged 24, Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 25, Asia
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 28, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 28, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 28, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 29, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 30, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 32, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 33, Europe