Tabla de contenidos para TIME Person of the Year 1927-Present en TIME Magazine

Ever Since Charles Lindbergh was proclaimed the Man of the Year for 1927 in the Jan. 2, 1928, issue, TIME magazine has annually designated one man, woman, couple, group, or concept that had the most influence on the world during the previous 12 months. But, according to a letter to readers that appeared in 1944’s edition (Man of the Year: Dwight Eisenhower), it all started by accident. Here’s what happened: New Year’s week of 1928 had been a string of slow news days. As the magazine’s publication date approached, the editors were at a loss over whom to put on the cover. “No one had done anything newsworthy enough to put his picture on TIME’s cover, so somebody suggested we stop looking for a Man of the Week and pick…

In 1928, TIME described the quick rise of Walter Chrysler: “…twelve months of extraordinary activity. From motor man with one product, he had become one of the chief U.S. industrialists. Undeniably, he had been the outstanding businessman of the year.” That year, as the founder and first president of the Chrysler Corporation, he brought the Plymouth to market, acquired the Dodge Motor Company, and introduced an entire new line of affordable commercial automobiles, cementing his company as an auto-producing giant. The same year, he announced his plans to build the Chrysler Building, a 1,046-foot Art Deco skyscraper that was the world’s tallest building for 11 months. Of this epic endeavor, he simply said, “I like to build things. I like to do things. I am having a lot of…

The Year 1931 was tough for many across the globe, but France enjoyed a year of prosperity. And Pierre Laval, France’s new prime minister, rode the wave. Laval, a lawyer, was a member of the Socialist Party early in his career and defended trade unions and leftists. As his political ambitions solidified, he abandoned his far-left politics in favor of pleasing the moderates in power. Because of his youth and relative obscurity, Laval’s contemporaries barely noticed his ascent until he became prime minister on January 27, 1931, at the age of 37. Laval quickly surrounded himself with powerful like-minded allies and got to work. Laval was known for acting over the heads of his ministers, often to their angst, but the people believed in him. According to TIME’s Person…

FDR’s Second Person of the Year distinction was in 1934. His New Deal was in full swing, and he was seen, worldwide, as a doer of great things. While the ultimate fate of his policies had yet to play out, most U.S. citizens saw some positive changes in their day-to-day lives. As he said in May 1934 in his address at Gettysburg, “We are all brothers now, brothers in a new understanding.” Consequently, in the 1934 November midterm, Democrats gained seats in both the House and the Senate, a rare example of an incumbent party win in the post-Civil War era. The people loved FDR; he was a master in the art of politics. Meanwhile in 1934… APRIL The Daily Mail publishes a photo of the Loch Ness Monster.…

When TIME named its first husband-and-wife couple of the year, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling, China was in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the largest Asian war in the 20th century. China fought the invading Japanese imperialists with aid from Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the years leading up to the war known as the Nanjing Decade, the couple worked to build China’s national consciousness, modernize its systems, reform its banking systems, improve its infrastructure, and eliminate corruption and Communism. These efforts caught the eyes of Western leaders. When Chiang was kidnapped in 1936, the couple’s efforts to unify fragmented China seemed to have worked: Chinese soldiers and officials from around the country rallied for Chiang’s release. In…

“December 31, 1940, was not only the end of a year; it was the end of a decade—the most terrifying of the 20th Century.” —TIME, January 6, 1941 When Winston Churchill became prime minister in May of 1940, just as the Nazis descended within U.K. borders, he was the larger-than-life figure the country needed. The Nazis had conquered five nations that year, and their goal was to take Britain by the end of the summer. Under Churchill’s leadership, it was not to be, but he had to rally to make it happen. In his first address to the House of Commons, he famously said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” and he asked the rest of the country to offer up the same. Churchill…

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, General George C. Marshall began his work organizing the largest military expansion in U.S. history. He increased the number of soldiers, established a training program, invested in and around air power, and procured modern equipment, all while staving off hastily planned and ill-advised military operations. He knew that if the U.S. entered WWII, it needed an army that was big in numbers and well prepared. When the U.S. finally entered the war, he took command of the European invasion, and the Allies started to break the Axis. According to TIME’s January 1944 Person of the Year article, Marshall’s level-headed service and commitment to morale earned him respect back home and around the world: “To the millions of citizen soldiers, confidence in their technical leadership…

The Cold War was born in the aftermath of WWII. The U.S. and Russia no longer needed each other to survive, and both parties had their eyes on influencing weakened Germany. As Secretary of State under President Truman, James F. Byrnes was tasked with maintaining diplomatic relations with Russia and gaining the trust of the Germans so they would not fall under communist influence. Although Byrnes didn’t see great success with the former, he did with the latter. The anti-communist messages in his “Speech of Hope” to the German people bought their allegiance and set the tone for conflict between the U.S. and Russia that continues to this day. Meanwhile in 1946… MAY 250,000 U.S. railroad workers go on strike. JULY The first bikinis go on sale in Paris.…

“All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.”—Winston Churchill, at the 1947 United Europe Meeting in London The first time Churchill was named TIME Person of the Year, it was in 1940 after he rallied the British to stave off a Nazi invasion. At that time, he had been involved in politics in one way or another for 40 years. Nine years later, he was named TIME’s Man of the Half Century after serving his country and the democratic world for nearly 50 years. He was a gifted orator and writer, a leader who helped bring the Allies victory in WWII, and the British prime minister through tough times. Churchill steadfastly defended democracy against the spread…

When 25-year-old Princess Elizabeth was vacationing in Kenya with her husband, Philip, in February 1952, she had no idea that a call would come that would change her life forever. Her father, King George VI, had died, and she was now the Queen of England. She rushed home to trade her life of relatively carefree luxury for one of steadfast duty. In 1952, the British (and most of the rest of the world) were weary and discouraged—they needed a breath of fresh air. Elizabeth’s significance was, as TIME reported in January 1953, “of a fresh young blossom on roots that had weathered many a season of wintry doubt.” After the loss of two male monarchs, the young queen brought to mind the “great past” the British had under Elizabeth…

The Year 1955 brought a wave of economic prosperity across the U.S. Perhaps the most significant symbol of America’s expanding economy was the automobile. In 1955, 8 million American automobiles were produced and sold, half of which were made and marketed by General Motors under the leadership of its president, Harlow Curtice. At the time, General Motors was the world’s biggest manufacturing corporation, the first to record $1 billion in net profits in a year. As TIME admits in its January 1956 issue, being a great business mogul doesn’t immediately qualify one to become Person of the Year, but the “phenomenal figures measure him off as first among scores of equals whose skill, daring and foresight are forever opening new frontiers for the expanding American economy by granting millions…

Charles de Gaulle had become a French national hero following his efforts to liberate France from Nazi Germany in World War II. In 1958, he was frustrated by civil unrest, political divisions, and the war in Algeria during France’s Fourth Republic, so he came out of retirement and was appointed prime minister of France in June of 1958. He and his cabinet passed a 6-month rule of decree shortly after. The following December, after the Fifth Republic was formed under his watch, he was elected president of France. France’s Fourth Republic didn’t allow for strong executives, and clashing party ideologies caused instability and a series of governments formed and fell, with no party or coalition able to hold on to parliamentary majority. Fourth Republic prime ministers were not able…

When John F. Kennedy was elected in November 1960, he had the confident spirit of a war hero—at 43, he was the youngest U.S. president ever to hold the job. His campaign promises for a “new frontier” and to “get America moving again” suggested all that was needed was vim and vigor. But after his first year as the leader of the free world, he soon found out that it was hard enough just to keep the old problems from getting out of hand. According to TIME, “He learned better; but learn he did. And in so doing he not only made 1961 the most endlessly interesting and exciting presidential year within recent memory; he also made the process of his growing up to be President a saving factor…

After President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson unexpectedly became the 36th president of the United States. In November 1964, the often impetuous but always hardworking self-made Texas businessman was elected in his own right, winning by the greatest popular vote to date. In May 1964, Johnson announced his ambitious “Great Society” program, which would commit federal money toward education, Head Start, medical care for children, Job Corps, food stamps, housing, community development, and other social welfare programs. In July, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, giving basic rights, employment opportunities, and voting and educational opportunities to all U.S. citizens. Some said he focused too much on domestic policy while foreign affairs,…

Political winds tend to shift, and the year 1967 was no exception for U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was named Person of the Year in 1964 for winning the presidential election and setting the groundwork for his “Great Society” program. By the end of the year, however, coverage of Johnson was not as rosy. He had once enjoyed approval ratings around 80%, but as 1967 drew to an end, his ratings were hovering under 50%. TIME notes, “It was sometimes hard to tell whether the rancor aroused by Johnson stemmed from his policies or his personality. An immensely complex, contradictory, and downright unpleasant man, he never managed to attract the insulating layer of loyalty that a Roosevelt or a Truman could fall back on. Consequently, when things began to…

Twenty-Five Years after the end of World War II, the results of the war remained unresolved. West Germany’s chancellor, Willy Brandt, set out to create a fresh relationship between West and East. He initiated Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) in an effort to improve rapport in the region. In 1970, Brandt established stronger ties with East Germany and signed treaties with Russia and Poland. While visiting the latter, he famously knelt and took a moment of silence at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, symbolically recognizing the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. The gesture is referred to as Kniefall von Warschau (Warsaw genuflection). As TIME reported in January 1971, “As the theme for a young decade, [Brandt’s diplomacy] offers immense promise for the peaceful future of Europe. For a German statesman, that…

The Worst Political scandal in U.S. history was underway in 1973 when Judge John Sirica forced Watergate into the investigative light of day. The White House insisted the Watergate break-in was “a third-rate burglary,” but Sirica was not buying it. As the investigation unfolded, Watergate conspirators were charged with an appalling litany of crimes, including perjury, burglary, illegal wiretapping, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, fraud, extortion, solicitation of illegal campaign contributions, violation of campaign funding laws, subornation of perjury, illegal distribution of campaign literature, and various forms of conspiracy to commit illegal acts. As President Nixon made blanket denials, resisted subpoenas, and claimed executive privilege, Sirica skillfully navigated uncharted waters to find the truth. In the wake of the scandal, millions of disenchanted Americans followed news of the…

Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election, which TIME referred to as “something of a political miracle.” Just a year prior, roughly 40% of Americans didn’t even know who the single-term Georgia governor was. Before running for president, the charismatic Southerner was an Annapolis graduate, a Navy officer, a nuclear engineer, a successful farmer, and a businessman, which made him seem empathetic to the variety of problems facing everyday Americans. In his acceptance speech, he addressed the common people, “Too many have had to suffer at the hands of a political economic elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account for mistakes or to suffer from injustice.” As TIME observed in early 1977, “One of the serious problems of…

Ayatollah Khomeini was an outspoken critic of the Shah of Iran’s Western-influenced policies and was exiled for 14 years. He returned in February 1979 after the Shah took ill, and by April, Khomeini had ousted the monarchy and installed himself as the 1st Supreme Ruler of Iran. His No. 1 enemy was the United States. In 1979, Khomeini towered malevolently over the globe. As the leader of Iran’s revolution, he gave the 20th century world a frightening lesson in the shattering power of irrationality and the ease with which terrorism can be adopted as government policy. As the new year neared, 52 of the American hostages seized with Khomeini’s support in early November were still inside the captured U.S. embassy in Tehran, facing the prospect of being tried as…

The Computer was time’s machine of the year in 1982. That year, TIME chronicled the computer revolution, both by devoting three covers to it and by introducing a new “Computers” section. Computers, up until 1982, were mysterious, distant abstractions, but the invention of the silicon chip made the idea of owning a personal computer a reality. According to the cover story, “The enduring American love affairs with the automobile and the television set are now being transformed into a giddy passion for the personal computer. This passion is partly fad, partly a sense of how life could be made better, partly a gigantic sales campaign. Above all, it is the end result of a technological revolution that has been in the making for four decades and is now, quite…

In 1985, China’s Deng Xiaoping was selected as TIME Person of the Year for the second time to acknowledge his continuing work to reform China. He started in 1977 with revamping the country’s agricultural system. Under the strict Maoist system, peasant farmers lived and worked in communes and were paid the same low wages whether what they planted produced or not. Deng introduced some capitalist principles to farming: The land was still owned by the government, but farmers had the opportunity to make extra money on side plots and businesses, buy their own equipment, and build their own homes. And finally, the people had enough to eat. Through 1985, Deng concentrated more on industry, primarily by opening the country’s economy to foreign investments. What Deng called an “open-door policy”…

The Earth Spoke, and what it had to say was not promising. In 1988, numerous natural and human-made disasters ravaged the planet. In response to growing environmental concerns, TIME designated our planet as the single most noteworthy news item of the previous 12 months. Among the stories that dominated headlines: A 3-month drought baked the soil from California to Georgia, reducing the country’s grain harvest by 31% and killing thousands of head of livestock. Raw garbage and medical waste, including syringes, washed up on beaches of the Atlantic Coast. One of the worst cyclones to strike Bangladesh killed over 6,000 people. A 6.8 magnitude earthquake killed as many as 50,000 and injured as many as 130,000 in Armenia. Scientists voiced increased concerns that ozone, the Earth’s natural sunscreen, was…

After Ted Turner’s father died by suicide in 1963, the then 24-year-old took over his billboard advertising business and turned it into a global enterprise. His list of accomplishments is long: He founded the first TV superstation, he bought the Atlanta Braves, and he won America’s Cup, just to name a few. He is known, even in entrepreneurial circles, as a fearless risk-taker. Perhaps Turner’s greatest gamble was founding CNN, the first 24-hour TV news network, in 1980. For most of the Gulf War, CNN was the prime source of news, information, and up-to-the-minute political intelligence. CNN put a spotlight on global affairs, forcing despotic governments to do their bloody deeds, if they dare, before a watching world. Its very existence compelled rivals, inside and outside the U.S., to pursue…

When Polish-born Karol Józef Wojtyla became pope in 1978, he was the first non-Italian be elected to the role in 455 years. In 1994, he was vocal in several different social debates—whether his messages were considered good or bad depended on who did the reporting. In June 1994, John Paul oversaw the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel, ending a tense standoff that had existed since 1948. In September, the Vatican intervened at the U.N.’s International Conference on Population and Development, insisting the committee insert an explicit statement that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning;” in return, the Vatican gave partial consent to the document. The Church’s doctrines against the ordination of women and condom use (even in…

In 1997, the microchip was the dynamo of a new economy marked by a strong stock market and low levels of unemployment and inflation in the U.S. The microchip had become—like the steam engine, electricity, and the assembly line—an advance that propelled a new economy. Its impact on growth and productivity numbers were still a matter of dispute in the late 1990s, but not its impact on the way people worked and lived. Andrew Grove, chairman and CEO of Intel, was the person most responsible for the amazing advancement in the power and innovative potential of microchips. In 1997, Intel made nearly 90% of the planet’s PC microprocessors, and the company was worth $115 billion (more than IBM). The decade’s digital revolution provoked debate over what tech’s role in…

All Presidential election years are dramatic, but the 2000 battle between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one for the record books, and not just because it introduced the term “hanging chad” to the American lexicon. The race was so tight it took five weeks for the Supreme Court to decide who won Florida. In the end, the Court sided with George W. Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush. TIME noted that the junior Bush entered the race with less experience in public life than any candidate in nearly a century, but he was able to raise more money in the first 4 months of his campaign than anyone else had in 2 years’ time. He portrayed himself as a compassionate conservative willing to reach…

There is no such thing as a typical platoon. Every one has a story to tell about the costs of war and the price of peace, and what you learn getting from one to the next. But in contrast to most armed forces in the rest of the world, American pilots, sailors, and soldiers are volunteers. In 2003, U.S. troops were serving in 146 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. In March 2003, U.S.-led forces initiated the first stage of the Iraq War in an attempt, they claimed, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people. The United Nations and NATO were divided as to whether it was just; so was the U.S. government—the State Department, the…

The internet brought together the small contributions of hundreds of millions of people and made those contributions matter. It opened up the world to community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It wrested power from the few and gave it to the masses. It caused an explosion of productivity and innovation where millions of minds who would otherwise have drowned in obscurity were able to participate in the global intellectual economy. None of it would exist without everyday people creating content. TIME observed, “Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling…

In 2009, the economy was the overriding news story, and it was a lousy one. Headlines sang of layoffs, bankruptcies, foreclosures, “new frugality,” and “new normal.” They scoffed at the bailouts and bonuses. But there were some hopeful spots too: The Dow was rebounding, signaling that the Great Recession may be ending, thanks to Ben Bernanke. To say that the Federal Reserve is complicated is an understatement—Bernanke’s actions were widely misunderstood and highly criticized. But he was the right man in the right role at just the right time. Before President George W. Bush placed him on the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bernanke was a professor of economics at Princeton University and a scholar of the Great Depression. He was, perhaps, the most qualified person in America to keep the…

In the 2012 U.S. presidential election, incumbent Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney by 5 million votes, securing his second term in the Oval Office. He was the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get the majority popular vote twice, largely because of a changing electorate. He got 71% of Latinos, 93% of blacks, 73% of Asians, and 60% of those under 30—groups who, before 2008, did not flock to the polls. The country was changing, and it wanted a leader whose policies reflected “the new America.” Shortly after the election, Obama told TIME, “I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly. We’ve gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and…

TIME’s cover story notes that “leaders are tested only when people don’t want to follow.” The year 2015 was a test for Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, who spent the first 25 years of her life living in East Germany. In the face of opposition, she offered tough love and mercy to those in need while enduring harsh criticism for doing it. First, Greece’s debts were threatening the euro. Merkel pulled from her experience watching East Germany’s economy crumble when the Berlin Wall fell. She offered a bailout to Greece in exchange for strict austerity measures. The Greeks resisted, but they were eventually forced to accept her terms or get expelled from the European Union. They called her “Little Angela Merkel.” She was likened to a dominatrix and a storm…

In a TIME when misinformation ran rampant and the U.S. president steadily attacked the press with claims of “fake news,” TIME put the spotlight on courageous journalists around the world who faced persecution, arrest, or murder for their reporting. TIME published four covers highlighting these truth-tellers: Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post columnist who was murdered for his criticism of the Saudi crown prince. Maria Ressa, editor of the Philippines news website Rappler, who was indicted for her critical coverage of Rodrigo Duterte’s controversially violent policies. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters journalists who were captured in Myanmar while investigating the Inn Din massacre. The staff of The Capital, a Maryland newspaper whose office was targeted by a gunman who killed five of its employees in a mass shooting. In addition to the…

In 2021, Elon Musk was the richest private citizen in the world with a net worth of $250 billion, like it or not. His influence over industry, governments, media, and Wall Street were second-to-none. He even hosted Saturday Night Live. Musk founded Tesla and created the electric vehicle market. Had the 800,000 Teslas sold in 2020 been gas-powered cars, they would have emitted more than 40 million metric tons of CO₂ over their lifetimes—equivalent to the annual emissions of Finland. Thanks to Musk’s vision, mainstream auto companies invested billions in producing electric vehicles, but he was not worried about the competition. He told TIME, “Our intent with Tesla was always that we would serve as an example to the car industry and hope that they also make electric cars,…

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In 1924, Owen D. Young served on the committee of international finance experts that penned the Dawes Plan, which outlined, among other things, a staggered payment arrangement for Germany’s reparations for actions in WWI. A few years later, however, it became clear that German leaders were not willing to stick to the terms of the Dawes Plan. The Allied Reparations Committee appointed a new crew to convene in Paris in early 1929, chaired by Young. Young was a reluctant participant, but as an appointee of President Herbert Hoover, he did his civic duty. On paper, he was undoubtedly qualified: At the time of his appointment, he was chairman of the board of General Electric and the Radio Corporation of America, and he served on the Rockefeller Foundation board of trustees.…

TIME named FDR the Person of the Year three times, more any other U.S. President. The first time was for 1932, the year the governor of New York defeated Herbert Hoover by a landslide and became the 32nd U.S. president. In 1932, America was still deep in the throes of the Great Depression, and poor, hungry voters desperately sought a beacon of strength and hope. Despite his physical limitations caused by a bout with polio, FDR promised both. His campaign focused on his vision of a New Deal that called for the vigorous creation of government programs to produce relief, recovery, and reform. America listened. FDR helped Americans start to rebuild faith in themselves, famously asserting, “the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself” during his March 1933…

Frail and Prone to bouts of illness, Haile Selassie was not an archetypal pillar of strength, but he fought European colonialism and fascism on behalf of Ethiopia with everything he had. When Italian forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935, his developing nation didn’t really stand a chance, but that didn’t mean the emperor had to take it lying down. Selassie acted more like a businessman than a military general: He secured some support and was willing to make concessions in exchange for peace and to preserve his country’s identity, which, TIME editors agreed, made him worthy of Person of the Year. Mighty Mussolini and the Italians were going to have their way, though; Selassie was ultimately deposed in 1936. He would return to power in 1941, but that’s another story.…

TIME’s choices for Person of the Year can be controversial, as they were in 1938 and 1939. Editors are tasked to choose the person or thing that had the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill, guidelines that leave them no choice but to select a newsworthy—not necessarily praiseworthy—cover subject. It is time for a reminder of what time’s founder, Henry Luce, intended when he named a Person of the Year. He didn’t intend for it to be an honor, but instead a distinction applied to the newsmaker who most influenced world events for better or worse. In light of this, Hitler was definitely 1938’s worst. Note the cover treatment of the subject: He is a tiny figure, facing backward, dwarfed by a massive organ. The caption…

At the close of 1940, FDR became the leader of the United States at war, which made him the leader of all democracies against Hitler. The future of democracy was at stake, and it was dependent on what the U.S. and FDR could give. The country had been reluctant to get involved in the war, but Japan’s December 7, 1941, bombing at Pearl Harbor was a wake-up call. The U.S. had not been in a foreign war on the defensive in diplomacy, on land and at sea, since the War of 1812. FDR used his influence to unify the country to contribute to the greater cause and become the deciding factor to end worldwide suffering. The third-term president and three-time Person of the Year courageously led the nation through…

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day. It was he who led the land, air, and sea forces onto the beaches of Normandy with the intent to squelch the Germans once and for all. The invasion was a huge risk, for sure, but Allied leaders had the greatest of confidence in Eisenhower. Many thought that the Allied victory would come by the summer’s end, so when the battles raged on through the close of 1944, some questioned whether the struggle was all for naught. Not Eisenhower, at least on the surface. In January 1945, TIME observed, “Even in times of crisis, he is relaxed, genial and confident on the surface—whatever goes on underneath.” Eisenhower refused to admit…

George C. Marshall became the 50th U.S. Secretary of State at a time when the world was rebuilding and the U.S. was in a unique position to solidify its influence across Europe. WWII left Europe broke. Without U.S. aid, Western democracy would collapse. In June 1947, Marshall spoke about the urgent need to assist in the European recovery, introducing what would later be known as the Marshall Plan. The plan proposed billions of U.S. dollars to aid in the economic recovery of Western nations and secure U.S. geopolitical influence. His skill at maintaining bipartisan foreign policy at home helped him lead the U.S. into its new world role. As expected, Russia was not happy. President Truman signed the Marshall Plan in April 1948, and it was in effect for…

For the first time, there was no clear candidate for TIME Person of the Year in 1950. So TIME made the Person of the Year a symbol: The American Fighting-Man. “Fighting-man” was not the role the U.S. serviceman involved in the Korean War had sought, either individually or as a nation. In the words of TIME in January 1951, “The U.S. fighting-man was not civilization’s crusader, but destiny’s draftee. … Most of the men in U.S. uniform around the world had enlisted voluntarily…few had thought they would fight, and fewer still had foreseen the incredibly dirty and desperate war that waited for them. They hated it, as soldiers in all lands and times have hated wars, but the American had some special reasons for hating it. He was the most…

West Germany was on the rebound less than a decade after WWII ended, and it was largely due to the efforts of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. His policies led to West German democracy, stability, and economic prosperity. He gained widespread support and was reelected in 1953; nearly all the communists and Nazis who lingered in the country’s leadership were ousted. On the foreign policy front, Adenauer knew if West Germany played Russia against the West, the ommunists might take over, but playing neutral could risk an eternal divide between West Germany and East Germany. Instead, he worked to gain the respect of Western powers—a tall order considering the destruction Germany had caused in the war. Meanwhile in 1953… JANUARY Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the 34th U.S. president. MARCH Joseph Stalin,…

On October 23, 1956, a group of about 20,000 protesters, led by a group of students and intellectuals, gathered beside a statue of the Hungarian national hero General Józef Bem to demand independence from Soviet occupation and freedom for the Hungarian people. It was a romantic idea, indeed—the Hungarians were up against Goliath-like Soviet power, but they fought. A 12-day uprising followed, where thousands were killed before the Soviets succeeded in squelching the attempt. The Hungarian uprising was not successful or well organized, but it was significant. It marked a point when the common people, long oppressed by the Russian police state, united and fought back. The brave street and rooftop fighters fought with valor, pride, and pageantry knowing the odds were against them. Even though the standoff only…

President Eisenhower was well into his second term when he was chosen as Person of the Year for the second time in 1959. The first was in 1944, when he was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. This time, the selection was for spreading hope, both at home and around the world. In 1959, Eisenhower arranged Nikita Khrushchev’s historic state visit to the United States. It was the first time a Soviet leader made the trip, and it went a long way to ease the tensions of the Cold War. The two leaders spent three days at Camp David, giving Eisenhower a close-up view of Khrushchev, whom he concluded would be open to more discussions about nuclear disarmament. During the last two years of his presidency, Eisenhower logged nearly 300,000…

Pope John XXIII was the first pope to be named Person of the Year. When he was elected in 1958, it came as a surprise to many, and what he did afterward was revolutionary. No one expected this practical man from humble beginnings to be more than a “caretaker” pope, but he was anything but. In 1962, he initiated a modernization of the Catholic Church known as Vatican II. Under his leadership, the Church became more tolerant concerning its positions on Church-state relations, offered more religious freedoms, and tempered its centuries-long strict hierarchical authority by giving lay people a bigger role. The sweeping changes he initiated are still in place today. He was also a master diplomat and peacemaker in October 1962, mediating a conflict that could have resulted…

At the end of 1965, on every level, the U.S. was locked in a complex, unpredictable—and brutal—struggle in Vietnam, but it was just getting started. At the time, the war was not considered a no-win situation. In May of that year, the first big wave of U.S. troops, 100,000 of them, were sent to the jungles to fight, and another 84,000 were sent by the end of the year. The leader of the forces at the time was the Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and former superintendent of West Point, William Westmoreland. “Vietnam is involved in two simultaneous and very difficult tasks,” he told TIME. “Nation-building and fighting a vicious and well-organized enemy. If it could do either alone, the task would be vastly simplified, but it’s got…

Three Men, Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell Jr., and Major William Anders, were named Person of the Year in 1968. In a historic 147-hour flight, the trio of astronauts became the first humans to orbit the moon. It was a national triumph when America needed it most, as 1968 was a tough year: The Vietnam War dragged on, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, students protested against the “Establishment,” and President Johnson’s popularity was at a low point. TIME also credited the 20,000 contractors and 300,000 engineers, technicians, and workers and who propelled the country’s space effort in the past decade, as well as earlier astronauts, such as Alan Shepherd and John Glenn, who bravely journeyed in primitive crafts in the earlier years of…

At the end of 1971, President Richard Nixon had been in the Oval Office for three years. During his tenure, he pursued a slow timetable withdrawing troops from the war in Vietnam, preserving the pledge that America takes care of its allies. In 1971, Nixon reopened the U.S. relationship with communist China, ending an old pattern of tense foreign affairs. And domestically, he amended the 1970 Economic Stabilization Act as a means to combat inflation, reduce unemployment, and curb domestic consumption of foreign goods. His economic policies made Nixon popular with voters, positioning him for reelection in 1972. However, history would reveal his actions were not as positive as they seemed. Meanwhile in 1971… MARCH The U.S. Congress passes the 26th Amendment, lowering the legal voting age to 18.…

Today, there’s no question that Fossil fuels are costly, both economically and environmentally. But before the 1970s, little thought was given to where oil came from or how much the average person consumed. Faisal, the king of Saudi Arabia, changed all that. Because oil was not usually found where it is most consumed and demand for it was so great, Faisal used his country’s supply as a highly volatile element in world politics. Knowing the immense power access to oil gave him, Faisal orchestrated a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and 1974. He withdrew his country’s oil supply from world markets in protest of America’s support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. According to TIME, the producing nations’ “take” from a barrel of oil, less than $1 at…

In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat changed the course of Middle Eastern events when he became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel to help bring peace to the Middle East, and the whole world watched. President Sadat’s extraordinary pilgrimage transformed the political realities of a region blackened and embittered by impermeable hatreds and chronic war. In one stroke, the old rules of the Arab-Israeli blood feud no longer applied. Many of the endless hurdles to negotiation seemed to dissolve. Not in three decades had the dream of a real peace seemed more plausible. He was named TIME’s 1977 Person of the Year for his willingness to seize upon a fresh approach, for his display of personal and political courage, and for his unshakable resolve to restore…

Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in 1980, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter. The former actor and governor of California rose smoothly and gracefully to the most powerful and visible position in the world. He revived the Republican Party and garnered high initial hopes, even from many who opposed him, because of his personal style and because the U.S. was famished for cheer. Reagan’s persona and the idea he embodied spawned optimism that voting him in was a genuine opportunity to change the direction and tone of the nation. TIME described Reagan’s mandate: “To control inflation, to reduce unnecessary governmental influence in private lives and in business, to reassert America’s prominence in the world.” After Carter, many were feeling insecure and small, so hearing…

On November 20, 1983, more than 100 million Americans settled in their living rooms to watch The Day After, a terrifying made-for-TV film about a small town in Kansas experiencing nuclear winter. What was just as alarming for viewers across the country was that the events in that fictional town could become a reality. In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.S.S.R. President Yuri Andropov, both armed to the hilt with nuclear weapons, were facing off. Apart from having their fingers on the nuclear button, they shared one other similarity: Reagan had never been inside the Communist world and Andropov had never been outside it. Otherwise, they differed in almost every way. Reagan, the Great Communicator, rejected suggestions that both countries were responsible for the sour relationship between the two…

In 1986, Corazon Aquino became the first female president of the Philippines. She was an unlikely candidate: Prior to her fateful run for office, the quiet, well-born devout Catholic was the wife of the outspoken Liberal Party member Benigno Aquino Jr. and the doting mother to five children. Many expected her husband to take power at the end of Ferdinand Marcos’ brutal dictatorship, but Marcos had other plans—his henchmen murdered Benigno in 1983. After her husband’s death, Corazon became the leader of the opposition and ran for president after Marcos announced a snap election would be held in February 1986 to legitimize his power. Corazon overcame the government’s intimidation and fraud to be proclaimed the winner after her supporters took to the streets and Marcos’ own associates defected, forcing…

In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on a course that reshaped the world. He attempted to transform a government that was not just bad or inept but inherently destructive. He worked to break up an old bloc to make way for a new Europe, altering the Soviet empire’s relationship with the rest of the world and changing the nature of the empire itself. He made the end of the Cold War possible and diminished the danger that a nuclear war would break out between the superpowers. Because he was the force behind the most momentous events of the 1980s, he was named TIME’s Person of the Decade. The day before he met with Pope John Paul II in November 1989, Gorbachev said, “We need a revolution of the mind.”…

In November 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton, the 46-year-old governor of Arkansas, beat incumbent George H.W. Bush in the U.S. presidential election. It ended a dozen years of Republican hold on the Oval Office, and it started a new era of American politics: He was the first Baby Boomer elected president. As to why voters put him in office, in an interview with TIME, Clinton said, “You’ve got to understand what most voters brought to this election, at least most people who voted for me. They brought a keen awareness that while most of them were worse off than they were 10 years ago, there had been a big divergence in income in America. Inequality had got worse, and all the tax breaks had gone to the people who were…

In the November 1994 United States midterm elections, Republicans voted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House and picked up eight seats in the Senate. This “Republican Revolution,” as it was called, was led by Newt Gingrich, who was voted in as Speaker of the House. Republican candidates rallied together behind messaging against Clinton’s policies, saying he was a tax-and-spend president, and America listened. Gingrich, a fiercely ambitious politician, transformed the House and the Speakership into unprecedented instruments of personal and political power. His amazing successes were seen as either impressive or terrifying, depending on one’s political leanings. All year, headlines documented the battle between the two parties. TIME reported, “Americans in 1995 kept a wary, ambivalent eye on both Clinton and Gingrich, the famous fraternal…

The First Time President Bill Clinton was named Person of the Year in 1992, it was for defeating George H.W. Bush and breathing fresh air into American politics. In 1998, Clinton was looking more human than savior, thanks to a report published by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who investigated Clinton and others’ behavior after it was revealed that the president had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. The Starr Report outlined the grounds for impeaching Clinton, which included perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and abuse of power. Clinton was impeached and acquitted, but damage was done. There was no doubt that Clinton’s behavior was vulgar, but Starr’s relentless pursuit of punishment was highly criticized. Americans began questioning whether anyone in government could be trusted, even…

Before 2001, It was impossible to know how our country would react to an unimaginable tragedy like 9/11. Just a few months after the attacks, TIME selected New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the symbol for how the American people banded together and stood strong against terror. While speaking at the funeral of a friend, Giuliani suggested that 9/11 gave survivors an opportunity to discover just how tough they really were: “Maybe the purpose of all this is to find out if America today is as strong as when we fought for our independence or when we fought for ourselves as a Union to end slavery or as strong as our fathers and grandfathers who fought to rid the world of Nazism and communism.” Osama bin Laden was…

Regarding the U.S. presidential election, most voters said they were looking for a change in direction in 2004, but incumbent George W. Bush bet that they wanted leadership more. Through it all, the one poll category in which Bush never fell behind opponent John Kerry was being perceived as a strong leader. In dangerous times, courage is a currency, so while Kerry ran on his combat record, Bush, who didn’t have one, suggested that the courage that matters most in a politician is the political kind. He told voters, “Whether you agree with me or not, you know where I stand, what I believe and where I’m going to lead. You cannot say that about my opponent.” By taking a hard line on divisive issues, he made character—not his…

Back in the early aughts, Vladimir Putin was no Boy Scout. He was not interested in democracy or free speech. Some of his critics died under mysterious circumstances. But he believed he could save his country. When he took over as president of Russia in 2000, it was on the verge of failing. Putin had a vision of what Russia could become, and he set out to create it with dauntless persistence. Putin believed in stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that had hardly seen it for a hundred years. He put Russia back on the map as a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West. In its cover story, TIME observed, “Whether he proves to be a reformer or an autocrat…

In 2010, facebook turned 6 years old and added its 550 millionth member. One out of every 12 people on the planet had an account. Its users spoke 75 languages and collectively spent more than 700 billion minutes scrolling on it every month. In November 2010, the site accounted for 25% of the web page views in America. Its membership was growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day. Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire six times over. He voiced himself on The Simpsons, he was depicted on Saturday Night Live, and a new biopic about him, The Social Network, was released. (The film would go on to win the Golden Globe for Best Picture.) Of the film, Zuckerberg told TIME, “I found it funny what details they…

When Pope Francis was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church, he became the first non-European pope in 1,200 years and the first to use the name of the humble saint. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, he had worked as a janitor, bouncer, chemical technician, and literature teacher before he was called to the priesthood at age 33. While his predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II, focused their attention on doctrine, Francis turned his ministry outward, focusing on healing and charity. In November 2013, he wrote in an apostolic exhortation, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” In…

When real estate mogul, casino owner, and reality TV star Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, few saw it coming. TIME observed, “Whatever you think of the man, this much is undeniable: He uncovered an opportunity others didn’t believe existed, the last, greatest deal for a 21st century salesman. The national press, the late-night comics, the elected leaders, the donors, the corporate chiefs…they all believed he was just taking the country for a ride.” Trump’s campaign focused on change. He sought out the “hidden electorate,” touching fearful hearts in the Rust Belt who felt unrepresented as they were losing their jobs and watching their Main Streets decay. He vowed to “make America great again.” The billionaire delivered powerful “us vs. the elite” messaging, at…

In 2019, Greta Thunberg, an ordinary 16-year-old from Sweden, got the world’s attention. Her focus: getting leaders across the globe to take the climate threat seriously and take action. What became a global movement started with breaking the rules. Starting in August 2018, Thunberg skipped school and spent her days in front of the Swedish Parliament building, holding a sign that read skolstrejk för klimatet: “school strike for climate.” Then, she addressed the U.N., met with Pope Francis, scrapped with President Trump, and called on young people across the world to “climate strike” on September 20, 2019. TIME reported that 4 million did—it was the largest climate demonstration in history. In 2019, Collins English Dictionary made Thunberg’s phrase “climate strike” their word of the year. Thunberg is slight (barely…

May 20, 1927. New York City. Charles Lindbergh took off in The Spirit of St. Louis to make the world’s first solo nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down 33½ hours later in Paris. This feat made the 25-year-old a worldwide sensation and the first Person of the Year. Lindbergh was showered with medals, honors, and parades, but he was often uncomfortable with the attention he received. He didn’t quite fit the hero aviator persona the public so craved. In his private life, he was prone to “modesty, taciturnity, diffidence (women make him blush), singleness of purpose, courage, occasional curtness,” as TIME reported in 1928. He married Anne Morrow in 1929 and they were thrust into the spotlight in 1932 when their son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.,…

Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent crusade against British colonialism landed him in South African and Indian prisons many times during his life, but his arrest on May 5, 1930, was the one that prompted TIME to name him Person of the Year. In March 1930, Gandhi launched a satyagraha (passive political resistance movement) against the British salt monopoly and subsequent taxes, and he wrote a letter to the viceroy of India condemning British rule. Then, along with 78 volunteers, he marched to the salt mines of Dandi to make salt himself, a violation of law. During the 240-mile, 25-day journey, Gandhi stopped to speak to large crowds that gathered along the route. When he arrived in Dandi, thousands gathered in support. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned without trial on May 5,…

In 1922, Hugh S. Johnson, a retired U.S. Army general, was hand-picked by FDR to lead the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The goal of the NRA was to end the Great Depression by bringing government, labor, and industry together and set fair-practice codes and prices. Johnson’s work on the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the War Industries Board in addition to his contributions to FDR’s Brain Trust made him seem like the right man for the job. His regulation work to eliminate “cutthroat competition” and offer fair wages and working hours was swift and sweeping, delighting America’s workers and unsettling business owners and industrialists. Henry Ford was not a fan of the regulations; he refused to agree to Johnson’s codes. As head of the NRA, Johnson held a position…

TIME named Wallis Simpson the first woman of the Year because, in 1936, she “was first in the news; first in the heart of Edward VIII (who during most of 1936 was first in British hearts); first in that historic British crisis—moral, emotional, political, religious—which aroused all civilization.” Her affair with King Edward VIII led to the only abdication in the entire history of Great Britain, so it’s no surprise that, as TIME reported in 1937, “she became the most-talked-about, written-about, headlined and interest-compelling person in the world.” Less than a year into his reign, Edward proclaimed that he could not carry out his duties without the help and support of Simpson. But Simpson was divorced once and in the process of her second—the Church of England (of which…

Joseph Stalin was a TIME Person of the Year twice. Make no mistake: In 1939, it was for changing the world for the worse. As TIME noted in 1940, “[1939] will be remembered, in Europe particularly, as a year in which men turned or were forced to turn their attention almost exclusively to politics.” It was the year Stalin lit the fire that started WWII. In 1939, Stalin was in talks with Britain and France to form an alliance, but they could not come to a consensus. So Stalin made a better deal with Germany. On the night of August 23, 1939, Stalin gave his blessing to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression agreement that allowed the two powers to partition Eastern Europe between them. The following week, Germany invaded…

Joseph Stalin’s second Person of the Year designation stands in stark contrast to his first. When he was named in 1939, it was for siding with Nazi Germany at the dawn of WWII. By 1942, the tables had turned. Germany was now his enemy, and Hitler had every intention to sweep through Stalingrad and take over the Soviet Union. Stalin’s country was weakened and war-torn, his people were freezing and starving, and his resources were drying up. At times, it seemed all that was left was the steel will of his downtrodden people and his own statesmanship. Stalin needed his people to believe in his cause at all costs. At the close of 1942, in his speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin proclaimed that the…

At the start of 1945, Missouri-Born Harry S. Truman was the “common man’s common man” U.S. vice president. Truman barely saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the first few months of their term; he was not even briefed about the U.S. development of atomic weapons. But when FDR died on April 12, 1945, the mounting problems of WWII were set solely in Truman’s hands. When he learned of FDR’s death, he told reporters, “I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” Although the war in Europe officially came to an end in early May, the Japanese refused to surrender.…

The Year 1948 marked the second time President Harry S. Truman was named TIME Person of the Year. Truman initially assumed office after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945, then a surprising chain of events in the 1948 presidential race resulted in his come-from-behind victory. That spring, Truman’s approval rating was a mere 36%, and his Democratic Party had separated into factions based mostly on civil and state rights. Things didn’t look good for Democrats, and pundits had no doubt that the 1948 election would put Republican Thomas Dewey in the top spot. But Truman took his campaign straight to the average American people on his whistle-stop tours. What the common folks saw was a simple, sincere man fighting the out-of-touch elite Dewey and the “Do Nothing Congress” against…

When Mohammad Mosaddegh rose to power from relative obscurity in 1951, he quickly became a threat—a threat to his country, a threat to his neighbors, and a threat to the West. All eyes were on Mosaddegh in the Near and Middle East. What caused it? Oil. He had long been a vocal proponent of Iranian nationalism, but his words fell on deaf British ears. At that time, the British managed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and took the lion’s share of its profits. On March 8, 1951, a day after Iran’s pro-Western premier Ali Razmara was assassinated, Mosaddegh submitted a proposal to Iran’s legislature to nationalize Iran’s oil, and he was swept into the premiership shortly after. Much to the delight of the Iranian people, Mosaddegh made promises for economic…

John Foster Dulles went about his job as a missionary-at-large. According to TIME, in 1954, he logged 101,521 miles on journeys all over the world to block communist gains in Southeast Asia. His efforts culminated in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which was comprised of eight countries. Of the eight SEATO members, only two were in Southeast Asia. The rest were powers that had vested interests in squashing communist uprisings in the region. Because SEATO failed to coordinate the military efforts of its members, it is not considered a historical success, but its cultural and education funding has provided long-term benefits to Southeast Asian countries. SEATO disbanded in 1977. Meanwhile in 1954… MAY The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregating public schools is unconstitutional. NOVEMBER Ellis Island is…

During the deadly give-and-take of the Cold War, the high score went to Russia in 1957. The beginning of the year did not look good for its leader, Nikita Khrushchev. His brutal suppression of the Hungarian Uprising was denounced by the rest of the world, and there was a restless dissent seething closer to home. The Communist Party veterans didn’t think the gruff peasant’s son was fit to rule, but Khrushchev survived the Stalinists’ attempt to dismiss him, and he gained popularity. Unlike his predecessor, Khrushchev believed that the Soviet Union could be the strongest nation of the world without brutally abusing its people and that Western and Eastern nations could coexist peacefully. He consolidated his leadership of the Communist Party, relaxed security controls, reorganized the country’s economy, and…

In January 1961, TIME named 15 U.S. Scientists as Person of the Year, because “the heart of scientific inquiry now beats strongest in this country. They are representative of all science—with its dependence on the past, its strivings and frustrations in the present, and its plans, hopes and, perhaps, fantasies for the future.” These are the scientists: George Beadle, pioneer of genetics Charles “Doc” Draper, inventor of spacecraft inertial navigation systems John Enders, pioneer of polio and measles vaccines Donald A. Glaser, inventor of the bubble chamber Joshua Lederberg, discoverer of bacterial conjugation Willard Libby, contributor to radiocarbon dating Linus Pauling, pioneer of quantum chemistry and molecular biology Edward Purcell, co-discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance Isidor Rabi, co-discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance Emilio Segrè, discoverer of astatine, technetium, and…

The Year 1963 marked the boiling point for racial tensions in America, and Martin Luther King Jr. was at the center of it all. Between January 16 and March 29, 1963, the civil rights leader went on a whirlwind speaking tour, making 28 speeches in 16 cities across the nation. In April, he led demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where countless protesters were beaten and over 3,600 were jailed. He intended to get the nation’s attention, and he did. In the months following, 800 Black-led demonstrations and sit-ins popped up all over the country. In August, he was one of the leaders of the March on Washington, where nearly a quarter of a million attendees of all races gathered around the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to demand civil rights…

The Person of the year in 1966 was not a single person. It was a generation of those under 25 years old, later to be widely known as Baby Boomers, who made up nearly half the population and were influential both in the counterculture of the 1960s and as drafted soldiers in the Vietnam War. According to TIME, “Never have the young been so assertive or so articulate, so well educated or so worldly. Predictably, they are a highly independent breed, and—to adult eyes—their independence has made them highly unpredictable. This is not just a new generation, but a new kind of generation.” TIME cites their unprecedented access to wealth, social services, education, and technology, and their longer life expectancies as main reasons for the distinct ideological shift between Baby…

In 1969, the quiet people of conservative, small-town America started to make themselves heard. In contrast to their vocal, demonstration-loving “hippie culture” counterparts, they eschewed drama and simply took to the polls to make their voices heard. They voted Richard M. Nixon in as president in 1968, and they influenced the mood of government and the course of legislation throughout 1969. As TIME observed in early 1970, “‘This,’ they will say with an air of embarrassment that such a truth need be stated at all, ‘is the greatest country in the world. Why are people trying to tear it down?’” Determining how many people qualified as Middle Americans in 1969 is tricky, but it was estimated by TIME to be about 100 million people, or roughly half the U.S.…

In February 1972, Nixon, with the diplomatic support of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, visited China. It was the first time a sitting U.S. president had ever visited the communist country. In May, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, limiting the number of ABMs either party could use and relaxing the pressure to keep building more defensive weapons. Meanwhile, Kissinger worked to negotiate peace in Vietnam, an elusive goal. Nixon was reelected in a landslide that November, but at the close of the year, Nixon was desperately trying to cover up his involvement in the July break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Meanwhile in 1972… JANUARY NASA’s Space Shuttle program is introduced. SEPTEMBER A group of Palestinian terrorists…

The Person of the Year for 1975 symbolized the ascending power and status of women in many realms, acknowledging the average woman’s pursuit of equality at home, at the office, and in society. “Enough U.S. women have so deliberately taken possession of their lives,” the cover story read, “that the event is spiritually equivalent to the discovery of a new continent.” The following 12 women were given the spotlight: Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will Kathleen Byerly, first female captain in the U.S. Navy Alison Cheek, first female Episcopalian minister Jill Conway, first female president of Smith College Ella Grasso, first female governor of Connecticut Betty Ford, politically active as First Lady of the U.S. Carla Hills, first female U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Barbara Jordan,…

Through the mid 1970s, China’s economy was weak, and the violent, disastrous Maoist Cultural Revolution left its people spiritless. In 1977, Deng Xiaoping launched a tremendous enterprise to propel China into the modern world. He was the principal architect of the Four Modernizations—an attempt to simultaneously improve China’s agriculture, industry, science and technology, and defense. Deng eschewed the once sacred Maoist principle of national self-reliance and opened China’s gates to foreign visitors and businesses. TIME reported that in 1977, 530,000 tourists visited the country, as did thousands of capitalists seeking new investments and markets. One would have been wise to do so: China was home to a quarter of the world’s population. Once isolated from the West, China gave Coca-Cola exclusive selling rights, permitted Pierre Cardin to do fashion shows,…

In August 1980, Lech Walesa took charge of an inter-factory strike committee and eventually became the bargaining representative for half a million Polish strikers for a trade union known as Solidarity. At the time, Poland was in rough shape: communist leadership had resulted in a faltering economy and angry workers—Polish citizens were hungry for food and freedom. Solidarity aimed to overhaul the country’s crumbling economic system and to share with the government in running it. Walesa, an unemployed electrician, became their unlikely hero: a common man who took his turn at changing history not by leading governments, winning great battles, or writing books, but by embodying the faith, courage, hopes, and foibles of the vast majority of his countrymen. In 1981, Solidarity had 10 million members. But by the…

Between May and July of 1984, the Olympic Torch Relay, the brainchild of businessman Peter Ueberroth, made its way from New York to Los Angeles. As red-white-and-blue clad onlookers lined the streets along the 9,000-mile route, their faces beamed with hope and joy. A successful Los Angeles Summer Olympics was just what Americans needed—a renewed sense of national self-confidence and pride. As chair of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Ueberroth worked tirelessly for 5 years to make sure they got it. Until 1984, the Olympic Games had typically lost money—the 1976 games in Montreal left Canada with $1 billion in debt. In 1984, for the first time, the games were privately funded and ended up with an unimaginable surplus of $250 million, which was used to support youth…

In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev became a symbol of hope for a new kind of Soviet Union: more open and more concerned with the welfare of its citizens and less with the spread of its ideology and system abroad. Virtually everything about his country and its place in world affairs seemed less ponderous and less opaque than it did before he became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985. Domestically, Gorbachev legalized some small-scale private enterprises and gave state industries new freedoms. In 1985, his true test remained to be seen—whether the Soviet Union would be able to produce better food, clothing, and shelter for its citizens. But the positive impact he had already made ignited hope that the dark regimes that preceded him were a thing of the…

In 1991, TIME editors named President George H.W. Bush “People of the Year” in a piece titled “A Tale of Two Bushes.” They recognized both his successful foreign policies and his poor record domestically: “George Bush seemed like two presidents last year: One displayed a commanding vision of the new world order; the other showed little vision for his own country.” On the foreign front, Bush tapped his extensive career in public service (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing, and two-term vice president under Ronald Reagan). The worldwide coalition against Iraq, the suffocating embargo, the massing of an international army to confront Saddam Hussein—it all happened because Bush drew on his experience in international affairs and all his carefully cultivated relationships…

1993’s Person of the Year was a group called The Peacemakers, comprised of Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat. Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, spent more than 25 years as a political prisoner for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system. When F.W. de Klerk became president of South Africa in 1989, he began to abolish discriminatory laws. On February 11, 1990, de Klerk released Mandela from prison. Four years later, South Africa held its first democratic elections, and Mandela won by a landslide. TIME wrote, “If the chain of events they have set in motion leads to the conclusion they both want, then the future will write of them, that these were leaders who seized their days and actually dared to lead.” The…

Dr. David Ho gave hope to millions in the fight against AIDS. Through his work, he successfully lowered the virus count in patients who received a combination of new and powerful drugs when they’d only just been infected, changing the disease profile from terminal to manageable. The tireless work by Ho and his colleagues is one of the reasons AIDS is no longer a defining disease of our time. In the early 1980s, the Harvard Medical School grad saw patients with a puzzling array of infections. Although nobody knew it then, these were some of the earliest known cases of AIDS. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ho suspected from the beginning that the ailment was viral in nature, and his efforts to isolate the virus made him the fourth…

On a summer day in 1994, Jeff Bezos quit his job at a New York City investment firm, packed up his car, and, with his then-wife behind the wheel, rode to Seattle to start a web-based business. By the time they arrived, Bezos had a business plan to sell books over the internet. Most investors thought he was crazy. A few years later, Bezos’ company, Amazon, became the hub for anyone who wanted to buy or sell just about anything online. Amazon was an apt name: The Amazon River, with its limitless branches, is a great metaphor for an e-commerce website that would end up serving so many needs. The TIME cover piece highlights three new trends online shopping introduced that are everywhere today: the ability for shoppers to…

In 2002, Three ordinary women put their careers and livelihoods on the line and bravely exposed dark truths. For this, they were recognized as TIME’s Persons of the Year. None of them wanted to be in the media spotlight; their first on-the-record media interview was for TIME’s December 30, 2002, cover article. In the summer of 2001, Sherron Watkins was a VP at Enron Corp. when she wrote a letter to chairman Kenneth Lay warning him that the company’s accounting methods were improper. In January 2002, a congressional subcommittee investigating Enron’s collapse released the letter and put Watkins in the headlines. Coleen Rowley was a Minneapolis-based FBI agent who wrote a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller accusing the bureau of brushing off her pleas that Zacarias Moussaoui, a…

In 2005 the world’s poor needed people to get interested, get mad, and then get to work. And that is what Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Bono did. Their alliance was an unlikely one, but it worked—an engineer’s job is to make things work; a rock star’s job is to grab attention. The Gateses started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in 2000, merging the Will H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation. In developing countries, it focused on improving people’s health and giving them a chance to raise themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the U.S., it sought to ensure all people could succeed in school and in life. Bono’s Debt, AIDs, Trade, Africa (DATA) was started in part by an endowment from BMGF. (In…

In Nov. 2008, when American voters chose Barack Obama to be the next president, the country’s shattered confidence needed a bailout just as bad as the failed banks and struggling auto makers did. The stock market was plunging, credit was tight, and unemployment numbers were shocking. Obama’s campaign theme was change—the kind of nuts-and-bolts change that could be seen and measured. The American people selected their first Black president, a relatively unknown Democratic senator from Illinois, because he seemed the most likely candidate to make that change happen. After the election, veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart put together a focus group to ask Virginia voters why they thought their state that gave Bush an 8-point victory in 2004 chose Obama by 6 points in 2008. Their responses clustered around…

TIME noted, “America’s Great 21st century contribution to fomenting freedom abroad was not imposing it militarily but enabling it technologically, as an epiphenomenon of globalization. And for a second act, globalization returned the favor, turning democratic uprisings in developing countries into inspirational exports for the rich world.” After years of economic decline, human rights violations, political corruption, unemployment, and poverty, young people worldwide banded together to say enough was enough. The relatively new connectedness social media provided helped grassroots groups to collectively organize more effectively than ever before. In December 2010, a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on a street in Tunisia in a fight against autocracy and sparked the mass protests in the Middle East known as Arab Spring. In Egypt, the outcry was…

Up until 2014, the ebola virus popped up in rural African villages every few years. But in 2014, an outbreak turned into an epidemic, thanks, in part, to improvements in Africa’s rural infrastructure that allowed people to move around more freely and spread the virus. To control the Ebola outbreak, many health-care workers had to risk their own lives. These heroes were featured in the cover story: Dr. Jerry Brown, medical director at the Eternal Love Winning Africa Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia: “I always had the fear of myself or one of my staff getting infected.” Dr. Kent Brantly, a physician with Samaritan’s Purse and the first American to be infected in 2014: “Ebola is a humiliating disease that strips you of your dignity.” Ella Watson-Stryker, a health promoter…

#Metoo was started to empower sexually assaulted people (especially young and vulnerable women of color) through empathy and solidarity. It encouraged victims to speak out about their experiences, call attention to the issue, and form strength in numbers. TIME’s cover features strawberry picker Isabel Pascual (pseudonym), lobbyist Adama Iwu, actor Ashley Judd, software engineer Susan Fowler, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, and a hospital worker who wished to remain anonymous. In addition to the cover subjects, the feature spotlights the following women: Bex Bailey, charity worker Selma Blair, actor Tarana Burke, activist Jessica Cantlon, professor Terry Crews, actor Sara Gelser, politician Blaise Godbe Lipman, filmmaker Megyn Kelly, journalist Celeste Kidd, professor Rose McGowan, actor Juana Melara, housekeeper Jane Merrick, journalist Lindsay Meyer, entrepreneur Alyssa Milano, actor Sandra Muller, journalist Zelda Perkins, producer…

In 2020, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, managed to knock off an incumbent president for just the 10th time in American history. The Biden-Harris ticket beat the Trump-Pence team by 7 million votes. The heated campaign polarized the country, and it was the first of its kind. COVID-19 was ripping across the world, so Biden could not connect with everyday people or his staff in the traditional ways. This made Biden’s choice of running mate more important than just balancing the ticket—he needed someone who represented a diverse America. He found it in U.S. Senator and former Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father. Harris was charismatic, competent, and more than 20 years younger than…

In 2022, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyv galvanized the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades. In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Zelensky’s decision not to flee Kyiv but to stay and rally support was fateful. From his first 40-second Instagram post on February 25—showing that his Cabinet and civil society were intact and in place—to daily speeches delivered remotely to the likes of houses of Parliament, the World Bank, and the Grammy Awards, Zelensky was everywhere. His information offensive shifted the geopolitical weather system, setting off a wave of action that swept the globe. The former entertainer understood innately that attention is the planet’s most valuable currency and all but cornered the global market. He did this through meticulous image-building and repetition…