Vladimir Gilyarovsky
1855 – 1935 · 80 years · Vologda Governorate · Eastern Europe & Russia
The reporter 'Uncle Gilyai', who ran away from home as a youth and hauled barges on the Volga. He described old Moscow's taverns, markets and Khitrovka slums in the book Moscow and Muscovites.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 12 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 19 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 24 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 26 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 36 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 34 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 23 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 27 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 15 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 21 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 41 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 15 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 26 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 6 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 13 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 6 years older
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 40 years younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 38 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 63 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 11 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 37 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 42 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 70 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 15 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 14 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 38 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 6 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 11 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 18 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 3 years older
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 1 year younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 8 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 34 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 46 years older
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 16 years older
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 8 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 16 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 43 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 64 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 8 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 6 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 17 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1856–1860 Second Opium War — aged 1, Asia
- 1858 Treaty of Aigun — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 4, Europe
- 1859 Imam Shamil surrenders at Gunib — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 6, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 6, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 8, Americas
- 1863 Battle of Gettysburg — aged 8, Americas
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 9, Americas
- 1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln — aged 10, Americas
- 1866 Austro-Prussian War — aged 11, Europe
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 12, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 13, Asia
- 1868 Russia conquers Samarkand from Bukhara — aged 13, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 14, Africa
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 21, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 24, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 28, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 30, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 31, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 34, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 38, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 50, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 53, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 59, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 59, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 59, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 60, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 61, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 62, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 62, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 63, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 64, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 73, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 74, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 74, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 78, Europe