Vladimir Mayakovsky
1893 – 1930 · 37 years · Baghdati (Kutais Governorate) · Middle East
The leading poet of Russian Futurism, author of A Cloud in Trousers and of verse laid out as a 'staircase'; in the Civil War he drew the ROSTA Windows propaganda posters. He shot himself in Moscow at 36.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 26 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 19 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 14 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 12 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 4 years older
- Sigmund Freud — neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis, 37 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 15 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 3 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 23 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 65 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 59 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 44 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 12 years older
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 2 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 32 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 5 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 51 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 44 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 25 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 1 year older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 49 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 18 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 53 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 42 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 24 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, born the same year
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 32 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 4 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 3 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 14 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 46 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 37 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 4 years older
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 54 years older
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 30 years older
- Franklin D. Roosevelt — 32nd President of the United States, 11 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 22 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 5 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 26 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 46 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 32 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 11 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 0, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 0, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 1, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 1, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 1, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 2, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 3, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 4, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 5, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 6, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 8, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 10, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 11, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 12, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 12, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 12, Asia
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 13, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 15, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 15, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 17, Americas
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — aged 17, Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 18, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 18, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 19, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 19, Oceania
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 21, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 21, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 21, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 22, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 23, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 25, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 26, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 35, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 36, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia