Sun Yat-sen
1866 – 1925 · 59 years · Nanjing · Asia
Founder of the Kuomintang and leading figure of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that ended imperial rule in China.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: 上海波尔照相馆 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 1 year younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 8 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 13 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 15 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 23 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 47 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 4 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 12 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 38 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 32 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 26 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 45 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 15 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 5 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 24 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 32 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 22 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 32 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 22 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 26 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 26 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 15 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 9 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 38 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 3 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 27 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 5 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 29 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 14 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 13 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 19 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 10 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 23 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 3 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 10 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 19 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 5 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 32 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 19 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 5 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 28 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 16 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 1, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 2, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 3, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 3, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 4, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 5, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 5, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 8, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 10, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 10, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 10, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 12, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 13, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 13, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 17, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 18, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 19, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 19, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 19, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 20, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 20, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 22, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 23, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 23, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 25, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 27, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 27, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 39, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 42, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 48, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 48, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 49, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 50, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 52, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 53, Europe