Who Was Alive
Hank Williams
WSM radio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hank Williams

American singer-songwriter

Born 17 September 1923 · died 1 January 1953, aged 29
Also known as Luke the Drifter, Hank Senior

Who was alive at the same time as Hank Williams?

  1. Thomas Edison, 1847 – 1931
  2. Sigmund Freud, 1856 – 1939
  3. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 – 1941
  4. Marie Curie, 1867 – 1934
  5. Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 – 1948
  6. Vladimir Lenin, 1870 – 1924
  7. Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965
  8. Joseph Stalin, 1878 – 1953
  9. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, c. 1880 – 1938
  10. Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955
  11. Pablo Picasso, 1881 – 1973
  12. Charlie Chaplin, 1889 – 1977
  13. Adolf Hitler, 1889 – 1945
  14. Salvador Dalí, 1904 – 1989
  15. Ronald Reagan, 1911 – 2004
  16. John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963
  17. Nelson Mandela, 1918 – 2013
  18. Hank Williams, 1923 – 1953
  19. Elizabeth II, 1926 – 2022
  20. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929 – 1968
  21. Joe Biden, born 1942
  22. Donald Trump, born 1946
  23. George W. Bush, born 1946
  24. Vladimir Putin, born 1952

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 Hank Williams was born, Adolf Hitler was 34, Albert Einstein was 44, Ronald Reagan was 12, Vladimir Lenin was 53 and Nelson Mandela was 5.

When Hank Williams died, Donald Trump was 6, Albert Einstein was 73, Vladimir Putin was under a year old, Ronald Reagan was 41 and Nelson Mandela was 34.

Born during Hank Williams’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Elizabeth II, Martin Luther King Jr., Marilyn Monroe and Pope Francis.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born about 8 years after Hank Williams died, Michael Jackson was born about 5 years after Hank Williams died, Leo Tolstoy died about 13 years before Hank Williams was born and Mark Twain died about 13 years before Hank Williams was born.

What happened in Hank Williams’s lifetime

Where Hank Williams’s contemporaries were born

Hank Williams 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 Hank Williams

The 150 best-known contemporaries

2,635 of the people we track were surely alive at the same time as Hank Williams. The 150 best known are listed here. See also everyone alive in 1938.

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  5. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  6. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  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. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  17. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  18. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk c. 1880 – 1938
  19. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  20. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  21. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  22. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  23. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  24. Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  25. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  26. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  27. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  28. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  29. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  30. Bill Clinton born 1946
  31. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  32. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  33. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  34. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  35. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  36. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  37. Pope John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  38. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  39. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  40. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  41. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  42. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  43. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  44. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  45. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  46. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  47. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  48. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  49. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  50. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  51. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  52. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  53. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  54. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  55. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  56. Pope Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  57. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  58. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  59. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  60. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  61. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  62. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  63. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  64. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  65. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  66. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  67. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  68. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  69. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  70. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  71. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  72. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  73. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  74. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  75. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  76. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  77. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  78. Bob Dylan born 1941
  79. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  80. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  81. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  82. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  83. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  84. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  85. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  86. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  87. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  88. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  89. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  90. Charles III born 1948
  91. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  92. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  93. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  94. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  95. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  96. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  97. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  98. Narendra Modi born 1950
  99. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  100. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  101. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  102. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  103. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  104. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  105. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  106. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  107. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  108. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  109. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  110. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  111. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  112. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  113. 14th Dalai Lama born 1935
  114. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  115. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  116. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  117. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  118. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  119. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  120. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  121. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  122. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964
  123. Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962
  124. Isaac Asimov c. 1920 – 1992
  125. Ingmar Bergman 1918 – 2007
  126. Federico Fellini 1920 – 1993
  127. Mahathir Mohamad born 1925
  128. Anatole France 1844 – 1924
  129. Calvin Coolidge 1872 – 1933
  130. Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007
  131. Ali Khamenei 1939 – 2026
  132. Robin Williams 1951 – 2014
  133. Kim Il Sung 1912 – 1994
  134. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918 – 2008
  135. Jacques Chirac 1932 – 2019
  136. T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
  137. Kwame Nkrumah 1909 – 1972
  138. Stanley Kubrick 1928 – 1999
  139. Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931
  140. Marlon Brando 1924 – 2004
  141. Hirohito 1901 – 1989
  142. Richard Feynman 1918 – 1988
  143. Woody Allen born 1935
  144. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926
  145. Selma Lagerlöf 1858 – 1940
  146. Bertolt Brecht 1898 – 1956
  147. W. B. Yeats 1865 – 1939
  148. Yasser Arafat 1929 – 2004
  149. Carl Jung 1875 – 1961
  150. Ho Chi Minh 1890 – 1969