Who Was Alive
Buddy Holly
Buddy_Holly_Brunswick_Records.jpg : Brunswick Records derivative work: GD uwen Tell me!, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Buddy Holly

American singer

Born 7 September 1936 · died 3 February 1959, aged 22
Also known as Charles Hardin Holley, Charles Holley

Who was alive at the same time as Buddy Holly?

  1. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  2. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941
  3. Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 – 1948
  4. Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965
  5. Joseph Stalin, 1878 – 1953
  6. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, c. 1880 – 1938
  7. Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955
  8. Pablo Picasso, 1881 – 1973
  9. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 – 1945
  10. Charlie Chaplin, 1889 – 1977
  11. Adolf Hitler, 1889 – 1945
  12. Salvador Dalí, 1904 – 1989
  13. Ronald Reagan, 1911 – 2004
  14. John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963
  15. Nelson Mandela, 1918 – 2013
  16. Elizabeth II, 1926 – 2022
  17. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929 – 1968
  18. Buddy Holly, 1936 – 1959
  19. Joe Biden, born 1942
  20. Donald Trump, born 1946
  21. George W. Bush, born 1946
  22. Vladimir Putin, born 1952
  23. Bill Gates, born 1955
  24. Michael Jackson, 1958 – 2009

Drag across the timeline, or use the arrow keys, to see who was alive in any year and the age each person reached that year. Dashed lines mark world events. Faded ends mark uncertain dates.

When Buddy Holly was born, Adolf Hitler was 47, Albert Einstein was 57, Ronald Reagan was 25, Nelson Mandela was 18 and Mahatma Gandhi was 66.

When Buddy Holly died, Donald Trump was 12, Michael Jackson was under a year old, Vladimir Putin was 6, Ronald Reagan was 47 and Nelson Mandela was 40.

Born during Buddy Holly’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Pope Francis and Steve Jobs.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born about 2 years after Buddy Holly died, Vladimir Lenin died about 12 years before Buddy Holly was born, Thomas Edison died about 5 years before Buddy Holly was born and Marie Curie died about 2 years before Buddy Holly was born.

What happened in Buddy Holly’s lifetime

Where Buddy Holly’s contemporaries were born

Buddy Holly is labelled; the others are the best-known people we track who lived at the same time. Each dot is a birthplace from Wikidata (79 of 81 placed); tap one to open that person.
Birthplaces as a list

Compare Buddy Holly

The 150 best-known contemporaries

2,751 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Buddy Holly. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1948.

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009
  5. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  6. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  7. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  8. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  9. George W. Bush born 1946
  10. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  11. Joe Biden born 1942
  12. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  13. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  14. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  15. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  16. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  17. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk c. 1880 – 1938
  18. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  19. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  20. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  21. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  22. Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  23. Bill Gates born 1955
  24. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  25. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  26. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  27. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  28. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  29. Bill Clinton born 1946
  30. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  31. Angela Merkel born 1954
  32. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  33. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  34. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  35. François Hollande born 1954
  36. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  37. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  38. Pope John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  39. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  40. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  41. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  42. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  43. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  44. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  45. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  46. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  47. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  48. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  49. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  50. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  51. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  52. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  53. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  54. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  55. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  56. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  57. Pope Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  58. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  59. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  60. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  61. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  62. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  63. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  64. Madonna born 1958
  65. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  66. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  67. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  68. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  69. Xi Jinping born 1953
  70. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  71. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  72. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  73. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  74. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  75. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  76. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  77. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  78. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  79. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  80. Bob Dylan born 1941
  81. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  82. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  83. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  84. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  85. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  86. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  87. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  88. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  89. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  90. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  91. Charles III born 1948
  92. Osama bin Laden 1957 – 2011
  93. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  94. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  95. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  96. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  97. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  98. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  99. Pope Leo XIV born 1955
  100. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  101. Narendra Modi born 1950
  102. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  103. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  104. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  105. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  106. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  107. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  108. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  109. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  110. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  111. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  112. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  113. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  114. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  115. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  116. 14th Dalai Lama born 1935
  117. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  118. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  119. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  120. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  121. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  122. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  123. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  124. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  125. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  126. Shinzo Abe 1954 – 2022
  127. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  128. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  129. Isaac Asimov c. 1920 – 1992
  130. Tim Berners-Lee born 1955
  131. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  132. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  133. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  134. Jackie Chan born 1954
  135. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  136. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  137. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  138. Guillermo Lasso born 1955
  139. Kim Il Sung 1912 – 1994
  140. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  141. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  142. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  143. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972
  144. Stanley Kubrick 1928 – 1999
  145. Marlon Brando 1924 – 2004
  146. Alexander Lukashenko born 1954
  147. Hirohito 1901 – 1989
  148. Richard Feynman 1918 – 1988
  149. Woody Allen born 1935
  150. Tony Blair born 1953