Yuri Andropov
1914 – 1984 · 70 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1982 – 1984 (Rus and Russia)
He headed the KGB for fifteen years before becoming General Secretary. He launched a campaign for labour discipline and against corruption, but died fifteen months after taking office.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: TASS · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 33 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 40 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 35 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 25 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 47 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 12 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 36 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 20 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 44 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 8 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 8 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 20 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 33 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 16 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 4 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 53 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 3 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 16 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 4 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 22 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 11 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 8 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 8 years younger
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 5 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 21 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 45 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 13 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 4 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 3 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 13 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 25 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 16 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 15 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 58 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 67 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 15 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 43 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 5 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 16 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 22 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 6 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 14 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 0, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 0, Americas
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — aged 0, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 1, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 2, Middle East
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — aged 2, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 February Revolution — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 4, Whole world
- 1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes — aged 4, Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 5, Europe
- 1920 League of Nations founded — aged 6, Whole world
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 8, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 8, Africa
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 14, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 15, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 19, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 22, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 25, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 27, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 31, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 33, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 34, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 35, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 39, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 39, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 43, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 55, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 56, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 61, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 66, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 69, Americas