Vladimir Lenin
1870 – 1924 · 54 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1917 – 1924 (Rus and Russia)
Leader of the Bolsheviks who led the October Revolution of 1917 and headed the Soviet government until his death.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Pavel Zhukov · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 3 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 4 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 9 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 11 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 19 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 51 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 8 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 42 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 36 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 30 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 49 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 21 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 11 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 9 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 28 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 28 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 26 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 28 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 26 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 22 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 30 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 5 years younger
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 19 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 42 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 1 year older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 23 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 9 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 4 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 9 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 33 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 23 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 14 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 19 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 14 years older
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 7 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 23 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 1 year younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 28 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 23 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 9 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 32 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 12 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 0, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 1, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 1, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 4, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 6, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 6, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 6, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 8, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 9, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 9, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 13, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 14, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 15, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 15, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 15, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 16, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 16, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 18, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 19, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 19, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 21, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 23, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 23, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 24, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 24, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 25, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 26, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 27, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 35, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 38, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 44, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 44, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 45, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 46, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 48, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 49, Europe