Brief exploration of TIME Person of the Year.
List of TIME Person's of the year.
What is TIME Person of the Year?
TIME Person of the year was first published in 1928 and is the Times pick of the most influential people or person of that year.
How did TIME Person of the Year come about?
TIME describes the decision to create a person of the year was purely an accident because of a slow news week they couldn’t find a person of the week to fit on the front of their cover. “Here’s what happened: New Year’s week of 1928 had been a string of slow news days. In those years, TIME’s cover — which had only recently acquired its signature red border — was dedicated almost exclusively to portraiture, but there was nobody whose face seemed to fit the week’s events. As the publication date approached, the editors were at a loss. “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 a Man of the Year,” wrote then-publisher P.I. Prentice in the Jan. 1, 1945, issue. “This was an easy choice: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who had soloed the Atlantic in only 33 hours and 39 minutes, was the hero of 1927.” (It was also the case that Lindbergh had not been on the cover yet, an oversight that needed rectifying. The week that news of Lindbergh’s flight was reported, the TIME cover featured an old picture of King George V & Queen Mary in masquerade costumes.)”
Why is TIME Person of the Year important?
Well whether it is important is simply a matter of opinion however it has created a way of summing up the biggest story of world events over the course of the year and has been seen as marks of history.
Who has won TIME Person of the Year Before?
| Year | Person | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 1927 | Charles Lindbergh | First person to fly a plane solo non-stop across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris. |
| 1928 | Walter Chrysler | In 1928 Chrysler purchased Dodge Brothers, Inc., and later that year introduced the first Plymouth model. The corporation became a major company in the American automotive industry. |
| 1929 | Owen D. Young | Instigated the 'Young Plan' which was a settlement agreed between Germany and the Allied forces after World War 1. |
| 1930 | Mahatma Gandhi | Launched a new civil disobedience campaign against the colonial government’s tax on salt, which greatly affected Indian’s poorest citizens. |
| 1931 | Pierre Laval | Became the first elected Prime Minister in France. |
| 1932 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | President of the United States which at the time was in a deep depression economically. In the first inaugural address to be widely broadcast on the radio, Roosevelt boldly declared that “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper…The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” |
| 1933 | Hugh S. Johnson | Was tasked by Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring about the creation of the NRA which was to make sure there were laws for best practices for business. |
| 1934 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | Roosevelt's legacy was starting to take shape. |
| 1935 | Haile Selassie | |
| 1936 | Wallis Simpson | |
| 1937 | Chiang Kai-shek | |
| 1938 | Adolf Hitler | |
| 1939 | Joseph Stalin | |
| 1940 | Winston Churchill | |
| 1941 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | |
| 1942 | Joseph Stalin | |
| 1943 | George C. Marshall | |
| 1944 | Dwight D. Eisenhower | |
| 1945 | Harry S. Truman | |
| 1946 | James F. Byrnes | |
| 1947 | George C. Marshall | |
| 1948 | Harry S. Truman | |
| 1949 | Sir Winston S Churchil | |
| 1950 | The American fighting-man | |
| 1951 | Mohammad Mossadegh | |
| 1952 | Queen Elizabeth II | |
| 1953 | Konrad Adenauer | |
| 1954 | Senator John Foster Dulles | |
| 1955 | Harlow H. Curtice | |
| 1956 | Szétlőtt harckocsi | |
| 1957 | Nikita Khrushchev | |
| 1958 | Charles de Gaulle | |
| 1959 | Dwight D. Eisenhower | |
| 1960 | U.S. Scientists Represented by George Beadle, Charles Draper, John Enders, Donald A. Glaser, Joshua Lederberg, Willard Libby, Linus Pauling, Edward Purcell, Isidor Rabi, Emilio Segrè, William Shockley, Edward Teller, Charles Townes, James Van Allen, and Robert Woodward. | Time decided to dedicate this issue for scientists and scientific breakthroughs. In the 1960's there were several breakthoughs including space science and advances in DNA research. |
| 1961 | John F. Kennedy | |
| 1962 | Pope John XXIII | Was a key mediator in the Cuban Missile crisis during the cold war. |
| 1963 | Martin Luther King Jr. | |
| 1964 | Lyndon B. Johnson | |
| 1965 | William Westmoreland | |
| 1966 | Men and Women 25 and Under | |
| 1967 | President Lyndon B. Johnson | |
| 1968 | The Apollo 8 Astronauts: Anders, Borman and Lovell | TIME chose the three Apollo 8 astronauts, who had just completed man's first lunar flight. |
| 1969 | The Middle Americans | Also known as the silent Majority. |
| 1970 | Willy Brandt | |
| 1971 | President Richard Nixon | |
| 1972 | President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger | Nixon was the first US president to visit China. Kissinger was the National Security advisor at the time and traveled with Nixon to China. |
| 1973 | John Sirica | |
| 1974 | King Faisal | |
| 1975 | American Women | |
| 1976 | President Jimmy Carter | |
| 1977 | Anwar Sadat | |
| 1978 | Deng Xiaoping | |
| 1979 | Ayatollah Khomeini | |
| 1980 | Ronald Reagan | |
| 1981 | Lech Wałęsa | |
| 1982 | The Computer | |
| 1983 | President Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov | President Reagan of the United States and Andropov General secretary of the communist party in the Soviet Union had a fractious relationship at the height of the cold war. Yuri Andropov was taken to hospital and subsequently died a year later. |
| 1984 | Peter Ueberroth | |
| 1985 | Deng Xiaoping | |
| 1986 | Corazon Aquino | |
| 1987 | Mikhail Gorbachev | |
| 1988 | Endangered Earth | |
| 1989 | Mikhail Gorbachev | |
| 1990 | George H.W. Bush | |
| 1991 | Ted Turner | The founder of CNN. TIME wrote about the coverage of the Gulf war and Operation desert storm. |
| 1992 | President Bill Clinton | |
| 1993 | The Peacemakers: Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, F.W. De Klerk, Yasser Arafat | |
| 1994 | Pope John Paul ii | The first non-Italian Pope for more than 400 years and was an advocate for human rights. |
| 1995 | Newt Gingrich | |
| 1996 | Dr David Ho | |
| 1997 | Andrew Grove | CEO of Intel |
| 1998 | Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton | |
| 1999 | Jeff Bezos | CEO of Amazon |
| 2000 | George W. Bush | President of the United States |
| 2001 | Rudy Giuliani | Mayor of New York |
| 2002 | The Whistleblowers | Three Whistleblowers who uncovered fraud and the mishandling of information by the fbi in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. |
| 2003 | The American Solider | The Soldiers fighting in the middle east. |
| 2004 | George W. Bush | President of the United States |
| 2005 | Good Samaritans: Bill Gates, Bono and Melinda Gates | The philanthropists who are giving to help fight the worlds problems. |
| 2006 | You | The beaconing in of the Information age. |
| 2007 | Vladimir Putin | The President of Russia |
| 2008 | Barack Obama | The first Black President of the United States who brought the nation together. |
| 2009 | Ben Bernanke | Federal Reserve Chairman |
| 2010 | Mark Zuckerberg | The CEO of Facebook |
| 2011 | The Protester | The protesters who fought for their right. |
| 2012 | Barack Obama | Obama wins his second term in office beating Mitt Romney |
| 2013 | Pope Francis | The new pope. |
| 2014 | The Ebola Fighters | Stories of people who fought against the Ebola epidemic. |
| 2015 | Angela Merkel | Chancellor of Germany and an influential Leader on the world stage. |
| 2016 | Donald J. Trump | President of the United States in a divided time. |
| 2017 | The Silence Breakers | The voices that launched a movement against the people in power who got away with crimes. |
| 2018 | The Guardians | The Journalists who have risked their lives in dangerous places to speak out for the voiceless. |
| 2019 | ? |