1850s
In the 1850s, about 53 million babies were born each year, nearly two every second. You become one of them and live that one life through the history that really followed. Most of the world was ruled by empires; few children went to school, and nearly half died before the age of five. Where you are born, and to whom, you don’t get to choose. Just as you didn’t.
Lives kept in the memorial
If you were a baby born in the 1850s
About these numbers
Who you are
Where you are born follows each country’s share of the world’s births in the 1850s (PRB 2022 and HYDE 3.3), using today’s borders. Places are named as they are today, and the life tells you who ruled them at the time and when that changed. Religion and, where history makes it matter, membership of a group are drawn from censuses of the time; they are used only to show what happened to people like you, from your side.
Life and death
Deaths in childhood and later follow each country’s life expectancy and child mortality in those years (Gapminder; for most countries before 1900 these are estimates). Wars, famines, epidemics and persecutions with names and dates are counted separately, each with its source.
Money and customs
Amounts are shown in the money of the time and place, with how many days an ordinary labourer had to work for them. Marriage ages, schooling, work and emigration follow historical statistics where they exist; where they don’t, the life says it is an assumption.
Shared lives
People share the lives they lived here and what they felt. No names, no contact details. Only the lives remain.
Hard things such as death, violence and suicide happen here at their real rates. No scene is shown, and where to find help comes with them.
Memorials
Lives that someone lived to the end and wanted to keep. Anyone can stop by, light a candle and leave a word.
Past lives
For your 10 most recent lives, press 'See again' to reopen the death record and the share card.
Your lives are kept in this browser only.
A deleted life cannot be brought back. A life placed in a memorial stays in the memorial.
Past lives here are simulated lives lived in this browser. They do not tell you about a real past life, fate or your future.
People in this simulation
Where they live now
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How it works
Born in the same second
In the same second you are born, other babies are born all over the world. Four of them live out their lives by the same statistics, shown alongside yours. No one chose where to be born.
A pause
At 5, 15, 30, 50 and 70, time stops and asks you one question. Think about this person’s life and your own together, and leave a line if you like. At the end, you can say a few words to this person.
What comes from real data
For 172 countries and territories: births, life expectancy by sex, infant and under-5 mortality, GDP per person (PPP), income inequality, years of schooling, university enrollment, employment in agriculture, fertility rate, maternal mortality, HIV, homicide rate, smoking rate, out-of-pocket health costs, child marriage rate and life satisfaction. The age at death comes from the life tables of each country and territory by sex, and causes of death follow the patterns of the WHO Global Health Estimates by region and age.
If making decisions feels like too much, start a life and turn on 'Auto mode' in the bar at the top (the ⋯ menu on phones) to simply watch. You pick a focus for each year and make choices when decisions come up about school, work, love, moving abroad or medical care. Choices change a life, but it is hard to fully escape the statistics of the place you were born. Today’s world is calculated with today’s statistics, a past world with that year’s, and the coming world with UN and other projections. Income comes from the country’s income distribution (based on the Gini index), and amounts are shown in purchasing-power (PPP) dollars and in US terms, as they would feel at US prices. Suicide also happens from the teenage years on, as often as the real statistics say, without showing how or why.
Death, illness, war, poverty, drinking and gambling, drug dependence, violence at home, sexual violence and suicide happen here as often as the real statistics say, never shown in detail and always with where to find help, and a past world tells of real history such as wars and mass killings. It is made for ages 15 and up.
A life simulation the operator makes with AI (Claude); the numbers are public statistics from the UN, the World Bank and others.
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Status0–100
What do these mean?
- Health Affects the risk of dying and whether you can keep working. Exercise, checkups and looking after yourself raise it; age lowers it.
- Happiness How satisfied you are with life. Income, family and friends, health and debt all affect it.
- Knowledge Affects entrance exams, job offers and your starting pay. Your family's means and the schools where you live matter more, and above about 70 more of it makes little difference.
- Relationships Your bonds with family and friends. They affect marriage and its crises, talks with your children, the chance of being bullied at school, and loneliness in old age.
Higher numbers raise the odds; they never decide the outcome. As in real life, luck and circumstances play their part too.