Taytu Betul
c. 1851 – 1918 · 67 years · Addis Ababa · Africa
Wife of Menelik II who founded Addis Ababa and commanded troops at Adwa, where Ethiopia routed the Italians.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Le Petit Journal - H. Meyer · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 16 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 32 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 23 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 28 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 2 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 30 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 23 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 17 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 19 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 11 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 27 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 30 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 30 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 9 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 10 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 47 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 28 years older
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 7 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 7 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 41 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 38 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 11 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 23 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 24 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 18 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 42 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 14 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 1 year younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 15 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 4 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 5 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 38 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 42 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 4 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 5 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 20 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 47 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 4 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 13 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 10 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 36 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 0, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 2, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 8, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 10, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 10, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 12, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 13, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 16, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 17, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 18, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 18, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 19, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 20, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 20, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 23, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 25, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 25, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 25, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 27, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 28, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 28, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 32, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 34, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 35, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 38, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 42, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 54, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 57, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 63, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 63, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 64, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 65, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 67, Whole world