Yaa Asantewaa
c. 1840 – 1921 · 81 years · Ejisu, Ghana · Africa
Led the Ashanti uprising of 1900 after the British governor demanded the sacred Golden Stool.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Noahalorwu · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 21 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 27 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 34 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 22 years older
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 31 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 39 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 12 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 6 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, born the same year
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 30 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 38 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 19 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 41 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 2 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 21 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 58 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 17 years older
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 4 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 4 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 27 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 52 years younger
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 11 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 12 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 35 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 29 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 53 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 3 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 12 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 21 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 26 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 7 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 16 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 49 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 31 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 7 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 5 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 31 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 58 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 2 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 7 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 21 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 25 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 5, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 6, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 6, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 7, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 8, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 8, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 11, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 13, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 19, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 21, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 21, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 23, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 24, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 27, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 28, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 29, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 29, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 29, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 30, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 31, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 36, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 39, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 43, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 45, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 46, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 49, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 53, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 65, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 68, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 74, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 74, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 75, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 76, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 77, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 77, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 78, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 79, Europe