Sergei Witte
1849 – 1915 · 66 years · Tiflis (Tbilisi) · Middle East
Finance minister under whom the Trans-Siberian Railway was built and the rouble went on the gold standard in 1897. He negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth with Japan, earning the nickname 'Count Half-Sakhalin', and drafted the October Manifesto of 1905.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 30 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 18 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 25 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 4 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 30 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 31 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 21 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 15 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 21 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 9 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 29 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 28 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 32 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 7 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 12 years younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 44 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 46 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 49 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 5 years older
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 36 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 43 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 9 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 2 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 21 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 20 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 44 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 12 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 3 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 12 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 17 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 2 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 7 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 40 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 40 years older
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 10 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 2 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 22 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 49 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 11 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 2 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 12 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 34 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 1, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 2, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 4, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1856–1860 Second Opium War — aged 7, Asia
- 1858 Treaty of Aigun — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 10, Europe
- 1859 Imam Shamil surrenders at Gunib — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 12, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 12, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 14, Americas
- 1863 Battle of Gettysburg — aged 14, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 15, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 16, Americas
- 1866 Austro-Prussian War — aged 17, Europe
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 18, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 19, Asia
- 1868 Russia conquers Samarkand from Bukhara — aged 19, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 20, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 20, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 21, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 22, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 22, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 27, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 30, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 34, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 36, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 37, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 40, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 44, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 56, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 59, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 65, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 65, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 65, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 66, Middle East