See remarkable lives, side by side.
What was Einstein doing the year Picasso painted Guernica? Explore verified life events and compare the people who shaped history — on one timeline.
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We place real people's lives on one shared timeline, so you can instantly see who was alive at the same moment in history and compare any lives side by side.
In the year 1600, the emperor Akbar ruled India, William Shakespeare was writing plays in England, and the poet Tulsidas was composing in Hindi — three remarkable lives, unfolding at the very same time. Line them up together and the overlap jumps out at once.
Pick anyone from history, see whole lives on a single timeline, and discover overlaps you never knew existed. You can even add your own timeline and compare yourself with the greats.
Start comparingDiscover EraOverlap
A quick introduction to how EraOverlap works. Explore remarkable people, see whole lives unfold side by side on one timeline, and add your own story alongside them.
Understand lives on a timeline
Search for remarkable people, explore their verified life events, and compare several lives side by side on one horizontal timeline.
Featured people
14th Dalai Lama
6 July 1935 – present
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and was the political leader of Tibet un...
A. Philip Randolph
15 April 1889 – 16 May 1979
A. Philip Randolph was an American labor leader and civil rights activist who organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car...
A. R. Rahman
6 January 1967 – present
A. R. Rahman is an Indian composer, singer and record producer known for film scores in Tamil and Hindi cinema and for i...
Aaron Ciechanover
1 October 1947 – present
Aaron Ciechanover is an Israeli biologist and physician known for his work on ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Wo...
Aaron Copland
14 November 1900 – 2 December 1990
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer and conductor, often referred to as the Dean of Amer...
Abbas Kiarostami
22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016
Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer, and poet regarded as one of the most influent...
Abbas the Great
27 January 1571 – 19 January 1629
Abbas I, known as Abbas the Great, was the fifth Safavid shah of Iran and is generally considered the strongest ruler of...
Abdel Halim Hafez
21 June 1929 – 30 March 1977
Abdel Halim Hafez was an Egyptian singer and film actor, one of the central figures of Arabic popular music in the mid-t...
Abdülhamid II
21 September 1842 – 10 February 1918
Abdülhamid II was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1876 to 1909. He oversaw the promulgation of the...
Abdullah Ibrahim
9 October 1934 – 15 June 2026
Abdullah Ibrahim is a South African pianist and composer, born in Cape Town and known early in his career as Dollar Bran...
Abdulrazak Gurnah
20 December 1948 – present
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic who left Zanzibar as a refugee in the late 1960s and...
Abdus Salam
29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996
Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to the...
Abebe Bikila
7 August 1932 – 25 October 1973
Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner and member of the Imperial Bodyguard who became the first athlete from sub...
Abel Tasman
1603 – 10 October 1659
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). On his 1642...
Abraham Darby
14 April 1678 – 8 March 1717
Abraham Darby I was an English ironmaster and Quaker who in 1709 became the first to smelt iron ore with coke instead of...
Abraham Lincoln
12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865
Sixteenth president of the United States, who preserved the Union through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proc...
Ada Lovelace
10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852
English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose co...
Ada Yonath
22 June 1939 – 31 August 2026
Ada Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer at the Weizmann Institute of Science known for determining the structure of th...
Adam Mickiewicz
24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855
Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) was a Polish Romantic poet, dramatist and political activist, regarded as Poland's national...
Adam Smith
June 1723 – 17 July 1790
Scottish economist and moral philosopher whose treatise The Wealth of Nations laid the foundations of classical economic...
Adele
5 May 1988 – present
Adele is an English singer and songwriter whose albums 19, 21, 25 and 30 have made her one of the best-selling music art...
Adi Dassler
3 November 1900 – 6 September 1978
Adi Dassler was a German cobbler and entrepreneur who founded the sportswear company Adidas. With his brother Rudolf he...
Adolf Hitler
20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945 as leader of the Nazi...
Adonis
1 January 1930 – present
Adonis is the pen name of Ali Ahmad Said Esber, a Syrian-born poet, critic and translator who has lived in Lebanon and F...
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