MILITARY PERSONNEL

Simo Häyhä

1905 - 2002

Photo of Simo Häyhä

Icon of person Simo Häyhä

Simo Häyhä (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈsimo ˈhæy̯hæ] ; 17 December 1905 – 1 April 2002), often referred to by his nickname The White Death (Finnish: Valkoinen kuolema; Russian: Белая смерть, romanized: Belaya smert’), was a Finnish military sniper during World War II in the 1939–1940 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. He used a Finnish-produced M/28-30 rifle (a variant of Mosin–Nagant) and a Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun. Häyhä is believed to have killed over 500 enemy soldiers during the conflict, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Simo Häyhä has received more than 10,149,084 page views. His biography is available in 54 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 48 in 2019). Simo Häyhä is the 36th most popular military personnel (down from 27th in 2019), the 3rd most popular biography from Finland and the most popular Finnish Military Personnel.

Simo Häyhä is most famous for his service in the Winter War, where he was credited with killing over 500 Soviet soldiers.

Memorability Metrics

  • 10M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 74.70

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 54

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.81

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.24

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among MILITARY PERSONNELS

Among military personnels, Simo Häyhä ranks 36 out of 2,058. Before him are Vercingetorix, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Eugène de Beauharnais, Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, Belisarius, and Alfred Dreyfus. After him are Pyrrhus of Epirus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, T. E. Lawrence, Douglas MacArthur, Lü Bu, and Ratko Mladić.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1905, Simo Häyhä ranks 4. Before him are Jean-Paul Sartre, Ayn Rand, and Howard Hughes. After him are Albert Speer, Elias Canetti, Viktor Frankl, Greta Garbo, Henry Fonda, Dag Hammarskjöld, Christian Dior, and Carl David Anderson. Among people deceased in 2002, Simo Häyhä ranks 5. Before him are Astrid Lindgren, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, and Pierre Bourdieu. After him are Hans-Georg Gadamer, Thor Heyerdahl, John Rawls, Billy Wilder, Richard Harris, Vavá, and Ruth Handler.

Others Born in 1905

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Others Deceased in 2002

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In Finland

Among people born in Finland, Simo Häyhä ranks 3 out of 751. Before him are Alvar Aalto (1898), and Jean Sibelius (1865). After him are Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867), Tove Jansson (1914), Sauli Niinistö (1948), Paavo Nurmi (1897), Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888), Mika Waltari (1908), Aki Kaurismäki (1957), Tarja Halonen (1943), and Urho Kekkonen (1900).

Others born in Finland

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Among MILITARY PERSONNELS In Finland

Among military personnels born in Finland, Simo Häyhä ranks 1. After him are Ernst Linder (1868), Ilmari Juutilainen (1914), Erik Heinrichs (1890), Carl Johan Adlercreutz (1759), Hugo Österman (1892), Paavo Talvela (1897), Adolf Ehrnrooth (1905), Woldemar Hägglund (1893), Kurt Martti Wallenius (1893), Ali Aaltonen (1884), and Ruben Lagus (1896).

Finnish born Military Personnels

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