William Howard Taft
1857 – 1930 · 73 years · Washington, D.C. · Americas
Reign: 1909 – 1913 (US presidents)
Theodore Roosevelt's successor, who pursued "dollar diplomacy" in Latin America and China. He is the only person to have been both president and Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Pach Brothers, restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 17 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 24 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 38 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 32 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 13 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 29 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 21 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 23 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 17 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 36 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 24 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 4 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 15 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 41 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 61 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 13 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 61 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 13 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 44 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 17 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 6 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 12 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 36 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 4 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 9 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 20 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 5 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 10 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 1 year older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 32 years younger
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 1 year older
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 6 years younger
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 10 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 14 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 41 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 62 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 10 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 4 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 19 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 2, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 4, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 4, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 6, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 7, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 10, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 11, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 12, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 12, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 13, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 14, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 14, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 17, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 19, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 19, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 19, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 21, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 22, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 26, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 28, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 29, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 32, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 36, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 48, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 51, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 57, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 57, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 58, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 59, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 61, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 62, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 71, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 72, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia