Who Was Alive

Billie Holiday

American jazz singer

Born 7 April 1915 · died 17 July 1959, aged 44

Who was alive at the same time as Billie Holiday?

  1. Thomas Edison
  2. Sigmund Freud
  3. Marie Curie
  4. Mahatma Gandhi
  5. Vladimir Lenin
  6. Winston Churchill
  7. Joseph Stalin
  8. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  9. Albert Einstein
  10. Pablo Picasso
  11. Charlie Chaplin
  12. Adolf Hitler
  13. Salvador Dalí
  14. Ronald Reagan
  15. Billie Holiday
  16. John F. Kennedy
  17. Nelson Mandela
  18. Elizabeth II
  19. Martin Luther King Jr.
  20. Joe Biden
  21. Donald Trump
  22. George W. Bush
  23. Vladimir Putin
  24. Michael Jackson
Drag across the timeline to see who was alive in any year and the age each person reached that year. Faded ends mark uncertain dates.

When Billie Holiday was born, Adolf Hitler was 25, Albert Einstein was 36, Ronald Reagan was 4, Vladimir Lenin was 44 and Mahatma Gandhi was 45.

When Billie Holiday died, Donald Trump was 13, Michael Jackson was under a year old, Vladimir Putin was 6, Ronald Reagan was 48 and Nelson Mandela was 40.

Born during Billie Holiday’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Elizabeth II and John F. Kennedy.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born 2 years after Billie Holiday died, Leo Tolstoy died 5 years before Billie Holiday was born, Friedrich Nietzsche died 15 years before Billie Holiday was born and Mark Twain died 5 years before Billie Holiday was born.

Compare

All 980 contemporaries we track

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009
  4. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  5. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  6. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  7. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  8. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  9. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  10. George W. Bush born 1946
  11. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  12. Joe Biden born 1942
  13. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  14. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  15. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  16. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  17. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  18. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  19. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  20. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  21. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  22. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  23. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  24. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  25. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  26. Bill Gates born 1955
  27. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  28. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  29. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  30. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  31. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  32. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  33. Bill Clinton born 1946
  34. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  35. Angela Merkel born 1954
  36. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  37. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  38. François Hollande born 1954
  39. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  40. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  41. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  42. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  43. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  44. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  45. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  46. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  47. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  48. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  49. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  50. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  51. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  52. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  53. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  54. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  55. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  56. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  57. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  58. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  59. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  60. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  61. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  62. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  63. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  64. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  65. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  66. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  67. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  68. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  69. Madonna born 1958
  70. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  71. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  72. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  73. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  74. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  75. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  76. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  77. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  78. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  79. Xi Jinping born 1953
  80. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  81. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  82. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  83. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  84. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  85. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  86. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  87. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  88. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  89. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  90. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  91. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  92. Bob Dylan born 1941
  93. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  94. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  95. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  96. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  97. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  98. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  99. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  100. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  101. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  102. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  103. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  104. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  105. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  106. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  107. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  108. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  109. Charles III born 1948
  110. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  111. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  112. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  113. Leo XIV born 1955
  114. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  115. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  116. Narendra Modi born 1950
  117. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  118. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  119. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  120. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  121. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  122. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  123. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  124. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  125. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  126. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  127. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  128. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  129. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  130. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  131. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  132. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  133. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  134. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  135. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  136. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  137. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  138. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  139. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  140. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  141. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  142. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  143. Isaac Asimov 1919–1920 – 1992
  144. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  145. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  146. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  147. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  148. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  149. Alexander Graham Bell 1847 – 1922
  150. Octave Mirbeau 1848 – 1917

The 150 best known are listed.