Who Was Alive?
Did you know?
This list only includes people who have died, so recent years leave out anyone still living.
Alive in 1776
Each bar is one life. The white line is your year, and the number is the age each person turned that year. Click any name to explore their lifetime below.
Explore a lifetime
Alive when they were born
Lived at nearly the same time
Still alive when they died
Born soon after they died
Showing the most recognizable person alive in your year. Click any name on the page, or type one above, to explore someone else.
Just missed it
Already gone
Not born yet
Were they ever alive at the same time?
Being alive at the same time does not mean two people met or knew about each other.
How to use this in class
Warm-ups
- Put up a year before the lesson starts and ask: who in this list surprised you?
- Ask students to guess the oldest famous person alive in 1776, then reveal it.
- Use the overlap check for "Could they have known about each other?" questions.
- Turn on "Born in the U.S. only" for an American history class. Try 1836 for the Texas Revolution.
Classroom moves
- Press "Hide ages", pin four or five people, and ask who was oldest. Show the ages to check.
- Press "Surprise me" as a bell-ringer. Ask students how the two lifelines prove the fact.
- Set up a year, pins and a comparison, press "Share this view", and post the link. It opens that exact screen.
About the ages
- The number shown is the age a person turned during that year. Before their birthday they were one year younger.
- "About" means the exact birth date is not known, and the faded start of the bar shows it. Ancient dates are often scholars' best estimates.
- There was no year 0. The year 1 BCE was followed by AD 1.
People and dates come from Pantheon, a dataset of famous biographies from the MIT Media Lab and Datawheel. The fame order is our own judgment for American history fans, starting from Pantheon's ranking, and adds more than 150 American and Texas figures Pantheon ranks low. The list only includes people who have died.