You're never too young or too old reaching out for what you want. The secret to getting what you want from life is understanding that what you do right now drives your future success. You can postpone doing what is paramount to you or start working on it right now.

We've scoured various sources online and compiled a list of people who accomplished great things at different ages:

At 2, speed skater Bonnie Blair began skating. She would go on to win five Olympic gold medals.


At 3, Wolfgang Mozart taught himself to play the harpsichord.


At 4, Brazilian Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna da Silva began driving.


At 5, Yo-Yo Ma, a world-famous cellist, began playing "Suites for Unaccompanied Cello" before bed each evening.

At 6, Willie Hoppe, the greatest billiards player in history, began to play pool. He had to stand on a box to reach the table.


At 7, English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill had mastered Greek.


At 8, three-time Olympic gold medal runner Wilma Rudolph took her first step after suffering from polio as a child.


At 9, Daisy Ashford wrote her bestselling novel, "The Young Visiters." It sold over 200,000 copies.

At 10, Vinay Bhat became the youngest chess master in the world.

At 12, while hiding from the Nazis, Anne Frank kept a diary to record her fears, hopes, and experiences. 


At 13, Magnus Carlsen earned the title of grandmaster.


At 14, Nadia Comaneci became the first woman to score a perfect 10 in a gymnastics event at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada. She also received seven perfect scores and won three gold medals. 


At 15, the 14th Dalai LamaTenzin Gyatso, assumed complete temporal duties.

At 17, Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.


At 18, Mary Shelley started writing the classic novel "Frankenstein." The book was published two years later.


At 19, Elvis Presley was a superstar.


At 20, Phillis Wheatley became the first-ever African-American woman recognized as a published poet.

At 22, Jesse Owens won gold medals in the long jump, the 100- and 200-meter dashes, and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.


At 23, Beethoven was a piano virtuoso.


At 24, William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister of England. He's the youngest person ever to become Prime Minister of England.


At 25, medical student Roger Bannister cracked track and field's most notorious barrier: the four-minute mile with a time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.

At 27, Ida B. Wells became the co-owner and editor of "Free Speech and Headlight," a publication that focused on issues about racism and segregation.


At 28, Michelangelo Buonarroti created two universally revered sculptures, "David" and "Pieta."


At 29, Alexander the Great created one of the ancient world's largest empires, stretching from Greece to northwestern India.


At 30, J.K. Rowling finished the first Harry Potter manuscript.

At 32, Oprah Winfrey started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind.


At 33, Edmund Hillary became the first to reach Mount Everest.


At 34, Martin Luther King wrote the speech "I Have a Dream."


At 35, Amelia Earhart landed in Newark, New Jersey, to become the first woman to fly solo coast-to-coast across North America.

At 37, Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski published his first novel as "Joseph Conrad."


At 38, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.


At 39, Sharon Sites Adams became the first woman to sail across the Pacific Ocean alone.


At 40, Mark Twain wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

At 42, John Warnock founded Adobe. And at 50, Warnock came up with the ubiquitous Portable Document Format or PDF.


At 43, John F. Kennedy became President of the United States.


At 44, Sam Walton founded the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962.


At 45, Isaac Newton wrote "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).

At 47, Kent Couch, a gas station owner, took a 193 mile trip across Oregon by attaching 105 colorful helium balloons to his lawn chair.


At 48, Momofuku Ando came up with the world's first chicken-flavored, deep-fried noodles that could be quickly rehydrated in a bowl, naming the product Chikin Ramen.


At 49, Julia Child published her book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."


At 50, Bram Stoker wrote his most successful novel, "Dracula."

At 51, Betty White joined the cast of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and became one of the most award-winning comedic actresses in history.


At 52, Ray Kroc bought the McDonalds franchise. He then grew it into the world's largest fast-food franchise.


At 53, Ronald Reagan started his political career with his famous "A Time for Choosing" speech.


At 54, Dr. Seuss wrote "The Cat in the Hat."

At 56, J. R. R. Tolkien completed "The Lord of the Rings."


At 57, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived.


At 58, Miguel de Cervantes wrote his most famous novel Don Quixote, the second most translated novel right after the Bible.


At 59, Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige became the oldest player in Major League history.

At 61, Peter Mark Roget started work on the first English-language thesaurus and published it when he was 73 years old.


At 62, Harland 'Colonel' Sanders franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken. He sold his business 12 years later.


At 63, John Dryden undertook the enormous task of translating the entire works of Virgil into English verse.


At 64, Thomas Bowdler "bowdlerized" Shakespeare's works, making them "family-friendly."

At 66, Noah Webster completed his monumental "American English Language Dictionary."


At 67, Simeon Poisson discovered the laws of probability after studying the likelihood of death from mule kicks in the French army.


At 68, Sir William Crookes began investigating radioactivity and invented a device detecting alpha particles.


At 69, Canadian Ed Whitlock of Milton, Ontario, Canada, became the oldest to run a standard marathon in under three hours (2:52:47).

At 71, Katsusuke Yanagisawa, a retired Japanese schoolteacher, became the oldest person to climb Mt. Everest.

At 72, Margaret Ringenberg flew around the world.


At 73, Larry King celebrated his 50th year in broadcasting.


At 74, Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps began constructing the Suez Canal.

At 76, Nelson Mandela, the South African legend, became the first president of post-apartheid South Africa in 1994.


At 80, George Burns won an Academy Award for his "The Sunshine Boys" performance.


At 81, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe finished "Faust."


At 82, Leo Tolstoy wrote, "I Cannot Be Silent."

At 84, W. Somerset Maugham wrote "Points of View."


At 85, Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was the head of a fashion design firm.


At 86, Katherine Pelton swam the 200-meter butterfly in 3 minutes, 1.14 seconds, beating the men's world record for that age group by over 20 seconds.


At 87, Mary Baker Eddy founded the "Christian Science Monitor," a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic formats and a weekly print edition.

At 89, Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubinstein gave one of his most extraordinary recitals in New York's Carnegie Hall.


At 90, Marc Chagall became the first living artist to exhibit at the Louvre Museum.


At 91, Adolph Zukor held the position of chairman of the board and chairman emeritus of Paramount Pictures until his death at the age of 103.


At 92, Paul Spangler finished his 14th marathon after taking up running at 67.

At 94, comedian George Burns performed in Schenectady, NY, 63 years after his first performance there.


At 95, Eli Wallach acted in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and "The Ghost Writer."


At 96, Shigemi Hirata became the Guinness World Records' oldest person in the world to become a college graduate when he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Kyoto University of Art and Design.


At 97, Martin Miller was campaigning for more rights and better benefits for older people as a lobbyist.

At 99, Teiichi Igarashi climbed Mt. Fuji and eventually became the first centenarian to conquer Japan's tallest mountain.


At 100, Frank Schearer seems to be the oldest active water skier globally.


At 112, Charles Smith was forced to retire from a job on a citrus farm because he was officially considered too old to climb trees.

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