In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33, James Madison was 25, Alexander Hamilton was 21, John Adams was 40, and Thomas Paine was 39.
Rosa Luxemburg was 35 when she wrote The Mass Strike, Che Guevara was 28 at the Granma Landing, and Fidel was 30, Bill Gates was 19 when he created Microsoft and 31 when it went public. MLK Jr. was 26 when he led the Bus Boycott and 39 when assassinated, Malcolm X was 39 when assassinated, Martin Luther was 33 when he wrote the 95 theses in 1517.
When Robert Oppenheimer began his professorship at Berkeley, he was 25; when he spearheaded the Manhattan Project, he was 38. Napoleon became Emperor at 34. Chögyam Trungpa was 19 when he was bestowed the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism to take to the West, and led a group of over 300 refugees on a dangerous journey across the Himalayas to India from Chinese-occupied Tibet. Jiddu Krishnamurti was 29 when he rejected his role and disbanded the Order of the Star. Ramakrishna was 25 when he met Bhairavi Brahmani. Mikhail Kalashnikov was 30 when he designed the AK-47.
Toussaint Louverture was age 33 when he commanded rebel forces in Haiti; Bhagat Singh was executed at 23 as an anti-colonial martyr against British Raj; Simón Bolívar, 36, liberated South America from Spain; Huey Newton co-founded Black Panther Party at 24.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Joseph Stalin kicked the bucket at 74. Napoleon was 46 in 1815 when he was defeated at Waterloo and subsequently banished to Saint Helena for the second and final time. Hitler was 56 when he committed suicide in his bunker in April 1945 as Allied forces closed in on Berlin. FDR was 60 when he signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942 authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans. Rodrigo Duterte was 71 when he assumed the presidency of the Philippines in 2016 and initiated his controversial "War on Drugs." Bill Clinton was 52 when he was impeached in December 1998.
The televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was 52 in 1988 during his famous "I have sinned" televised apology following a scandal involving a sex worker. Harvey Weinstein was 67 when he was first convicted of sexual assault and rape in New York in February 2020, effectively ending his career in the film industry. Richard Nixon was 61 when he resigned due to Watergate in 1974. Pol Pot at age 50 became leader of Cambodia and began the purges in 1975. Saddam Hussein was 66 when he was captured by U.S. forces in a spider hole near Tikrit in 2003. Bernie Madoff was 70 when he was arrested for operating the biggest Ponzi scheme in history in 2008.
