The 20th century began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000.
The 20th century saw two world wars and a Cold War, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the coming of the telephone, sound recording, movies and television, airplanes, atomic weapons, genetics and DNA, computers and electronics in general. Science and industrialization spread; medicine became more scientific. World population growth was greater during this century than any previous one.
- Africa
- Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire
- Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia
- Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya
- Idi Amin, Uganda
- Nelson Mandela, South Africa
- Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
- Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt
- Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana
- Julius Nyerere, Tanzania
- Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya
- Cecil Rhodes, South Africa
- Haile Selassie I, Ethiopia
- Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal
- Americas
- William McKinley, USA
- Theodore Roosevelt, USA
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, USA
- Harry S. Truman, USA
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, USA
- John F. Kennedy, USA
- Richard Nixon, USA
- Ronald Reagan, USA
- George H. W. Bush, USA
- Bill Clinton, USA
- Wilfrid Laurier, Canada
- William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada
- Pierre Trudeau, Canada
- Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Argentina
- Fidel Castro, Cuba
- Raúl Castro, Cuba
- Juan Perón, Argentina
- Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina
- Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentina
- Salvador Allende, Chile
- Augusto Pinochet, Chile
- Emiliano Zapata, Mexico
- Pancho Villa, Mexico
- José María Velasco Ibarra, Ecuador
- León Febres Cordero, Ecuador
- Sixto Durán Ballén, Ecuador
- Asia
- Mao Zedong, People's Republic of China
- Deng Xiaoping, People's Republic of China
- Pol Pot, Cambodia
- Subhas Chandra Bose, India
- Mahatma Gandhi, India
- Indira Gandhi, India
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan
- Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh
- Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia
- Jawaharlal Nehru, India
- Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, India
- Hirohito, Japan
- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
- Sun Yat-sen, Republic of China
- Chiang Kai-shek, Republic of China
- Sukarno, Indonesia
- Europe
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey
- Neville Chamberlain, United Kingdom
- Winston Churchill, United Kingdom
- Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom
- Charles de Gaulle, France
- Éamon de Valera, Ireland
- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Austria-Hungary
- Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany
- Václav Havel, Czech Republic
- Adolf Hitler, Germany
- Helmut Schmidt, Germany
- Helmut Kohl, Germany
- Gerhard Schröder, Germany
- Benito Mussolini, Italy
- Francisco Franco, Spain
- Adolfo Suárez, Spain
- Józef Piłsudski, Poland
- Josip Broz 'Tito', Yugoslavia
- Milan Kučan, Slovenia
- Slobodan Milošević, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
- Olof Palme, Sweden
- Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania
- Lech Wałęsa, Poland
- John Paul II, World
- Middle East
- Russia and Soviet Union
Note: movie years before or after the twentieth century are in italics.