Vasily Chapayev
1887 – 1919 · 32 years · Budaika (now part of Cheboksary) · Eastern Europe & Russia
A peasant's son decorated with St George Crosses in World War I, he led the 25th Division against Kolchak and the Ural Cossacks in the Civil War. He died in a Cossack raid on Lbishchensk; Furmanov's novel, a 1934 film and countless jokes made him a folk hero.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 20 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 13 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 8 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 6 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 2 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 68 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 17 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 9 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 59 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 9 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 53 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 38 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 6 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 26 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 45 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 38 years older
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 6 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 8 years younger
Africa
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 5 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 43 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 47 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 12 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 36 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 59 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 18 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 6 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 26 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 21 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 8 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 2 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 40 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 31 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 2 years younger
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 48 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 40 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 31 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 16 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 11 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 40 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 26 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 5 years older
- Katherine Mansfield — short-story writer, 1 year younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 1, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 2, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 2, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 4, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 6, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 6, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 7, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 7, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 7, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 8, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 9, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 10, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 11, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 12, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 14, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 16, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 17, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 18, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 18, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 18, Asia
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 19, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 21, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 21, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 23, Americas
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — aged 23, Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 24, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 24, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 25, Europe
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 27, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 27, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 27, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 28, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 29, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 31, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 32, Europe