Who Was Alive

Edward VIII

King of the United Kingdom in 1936

Born 23 June 1894 · died 28 May 1972, aged 77

Who was alive at the same time as Edward VIII?

  1. Leo Tolstoy
  2. Mark Twain
  3. Friedrich Nietzsche
  4. Thomas Edison
  5. Sigmund Freud
  6. Mahatma Gandhi
  7. Vladimir Lenin
  8. Winston Churchill
  9. Joseph Stalin
  10. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  11. Albert Einstein
  12. Pablo Picasso
  13. Charlie Chaplin
  14. Adolf Hitler
  15. Edward VIII
  16. Ronald Reagan
  17. Nelson Mandela
  18. Elizabeth II
  19. Joe Biden
  20. Donald Trump
  21. George W. Bush
  22. Vladimir Putin
  23. Michael Jackson
  24. Barack Obama
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 Edward VIII was born, Adolf Hitler was 5, Albert Einstein was 15, Vladimir Lenin was 24, Mahatma Gandhi was 24 and Leo Tolstoy was 65.

When Edward VIII died, Barack Obama was 10, Donald Trump was 25, Michael Jackson was 13, Vladimir Putin was 19 and Ronald Reagan was 61.

Born during Edward VIII’s lifetime: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush and Joe Biden.

Not quite contemporaries: Karl Marx died 11 years before Edward VIII was born, Charles Darwin died 12 years before Edward VIII was born, Victor Hugo died 9 years before Edward VIII was born and Vincent van Gogh died 4 years before Edward VIII was born.

Compare

All 1,214 contemporaries we track

  1. Barack Obama born 1961
  2. Donald Trump born 1946
  3. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  4. Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009
  5. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  6. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  7. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  8. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  9. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  10. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  11. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  12. George W. Bush born 1946
  13. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  14. Joe Biden born 1942
  15. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  16. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  17. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  18. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  19. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  20. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  21. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  22. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  23. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  24. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  25. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  26. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  27. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  28. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  29. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  30. Bill Gates born 1955
  31. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  32. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  33. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  34. Jimmy Wales born 1966
  35. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  36. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  37. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  38. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  39. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  40. Bill Clinton born 1946
  41. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  42. Angela Merkel born 1954
  43. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  44. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  45. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  46. François Hollande born 1954
  47. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  48. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  49. Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895
  50. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  51. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  52. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  53. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  54. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  55. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  56. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  57. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  58. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  59. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  60. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  61. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  62. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  63. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  64. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  65. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  66. Elon Musk born 1971
  67. Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895
  68. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  69. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  70. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  71. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  72. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  73. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  74. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  75. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  76. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  77. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  78. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  79. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  80. Madonna born 1958
  81. Kamala Harris born 1964
  82. Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896
  83. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  84. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  85. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  86. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  87. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  88. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  89. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  90. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  91. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  92. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  93. Xi Jinping born 1953
  94. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  95. Naruhito born 1960
  96. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  97. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  98. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  99. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  100. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  101. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  102. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  103. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  104. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  105. Sung Jae-gi 1967 – 2013
  106. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  107. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  108. Bob Dylan born 1941
  109. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  110. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  111. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  112. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  113. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  114. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  115. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  116. J. K. Rowling born 1965
  117. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  118. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  119. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  120. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  121. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  122. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  123. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  124. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  125. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  126. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  127. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  128. Charles III born 1948
  129. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  130. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  131. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  132. Diego Maradona 1960 – 2020
  133. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  134. Leo XIV born 1955
  135. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  136. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  137. Narendra Modi born 1950
  138. Rafael Correa born 1963
  139. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  140. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  141. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  142. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  143. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  144. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  145. Michael Schumacher born 1969
  146. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  147. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  148. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  149. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  150. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006

The 150 best known are listed.