Who was alive at the same time as Saddam Hussein?

Iraqi politician and revolutionary, president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003

Saddam Hussein lived 1937–2006. Here are the famous people whose lives overlapped with theirs.

Lived: 1937–2006
Lifespan: about 69 years
Born in, as it was then: Al-Awja
On today’s map: Iraq

Explore Saddam Hussein’s world on the timeline →

Did you know?

When Saddam Hussein was born, Albert Einstein was already about 58 years old.
Saddam Hussein was about 5 when Jimi Hendrix was born.
Saddam Hussein and Pablo Picasso (Spanish painter and sculptor) shared about 36 years on Earth, one born in Iraq and the other in Spain.
Fidel Castro outlived Saddam Hussein by about 10 years.

Famous contemporaries of Saddam Hussein

Rulers and commanders

Adolf Hitler 1889–1945 · 8 yrs shared
Joseph Stalin 1878–1953 · 16 yrs shared
Benito Mussolini 1883–1945 · 8 yrs shared
Mao Zedong 1893–1976 · 39 yrs shared
Winston Churchill 1874–1965 · 28 yrs shared
Charles de Gaulle 1890–1970 · 33 yrs shared

Philosophers and scientists

Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · 18 yrs shared
Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 · 2 yrs shared
John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946 · 9 yrs shared
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951 · 14 yrs shared
Bertrand Russell 1872–1970 · 33 yrs shared
Henry Ford 1863–1947 · 10 yrs shared

Religion

Pope John Paul II 1920–2005 · 68 yrs shared

Writers and artists

Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 · 36 yrs shared
Elvis Presley 1935–1977 · 40 yrs shared
Salvador Dalí 1904–1989 · 52 yrs shared
Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962 · 25 yrs shared
Le Corbusier 1887–1965 · 28 yrs shared
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980 · 43 yrs shared

Explorers and others

Che Guevara 1928–1967 · 30 yrs shared
Mahatma Gandhi 1869–1948 · 11 yrs shared
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968 · 31 yrs shared
Walt Disney 1901–1966 · 29 yrs shared
Mother Teresa 1910–1997 · 60 yrs shared
Pelé 1940–2022 · 66 yrs shared

Born within five years of Saddam Hussein

Elvis Presley (1935) · Jimi Hendrix (1942) · Bruce Lee (1940) · Bob Dylan (1941) · John Lennon (1940) · Pelé (1940) · Johnny Cash (1932) · Al Pacino (1940)

About Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which initially espoused a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, quickly diverged into a right-wing ideology known as Saddamism.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

More people

Adolf Hitler · Albert Einstein · Che Guevara · Mahatma Gandhi · Joseph Stalin · Martin Luther King Jr. · Elvis Presley · Benito Mussolini