Charles Lindbergh earned his place in history when he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, touching down in Paris on May 21, 1927. Time magazine, only four years old, had the habit of placing a portrait of a newsmaker on each issue's cover. That week, the publication neglected to put the aviator inside its iconic red border. (It was instead King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom.)
As that year came to an end, and as Time's editors struggled to find an appropriately newsworthy cover subject in the slow post-holiday period, someone at the magazine had an idea. Instead of identifying a man of the week for the cover, why not designate Lindbergh as man of the year? It would solve the problem of that week's cover while also putting the celebrated pilot, finally, onto the cover of Time.
When the first issue of 1928 came out on January 2, 1928 -- 96 years ago this month -- Charles Lindbergh was Time's first Man of the Year, and a venerable media franchise was born.
The oft-cited criterion for Man of the Year -- renamed Person of the Year in 1999 -- is "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."
By today's standards, the next two honorees don't quite seem to live up to Lindbergh's importance or to the lofty ambitions stated by the magazine. The 1928 Man of the Year (announced in January 1929) was Walter P. Chrysler, the accomplished U.S. auto executive who also invested in the Art Deco Manhattan skyscraper that still bears his name and would open a year and a half later. For 1929, it was Owen D. Young, a General Electric executive and counselor to U.S. presidents, who had developed a plan to reduce Germany's post-World War I reparations obligations.
For 1930, the honor went to Mahatma Gandhi, then imprisoned for his protests against the British rule of India. And in 1936, for the first time, the individual honored by the magazine was a woman: Wallis Simpson, the American divorcée for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne, became Time's first Woman of the Year.
Soon, the magazine's editors were leaning into the "for good or ill" part of the Man of the Year definition. Adolf Hitler was named 1938 Man of the Year. Joseph Stalin took the next year's honors -- and repeated the feat three years later. Winston Churchill (1940) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941, FDR's third cover) were sandwiched between Stalin's two wins.
For 1950, Time named its first group Man of the Year: the American Soldier. Such collective honorees quickly became a regular part of the winning mix: the Hungarian Freedom Fighter(1956), American Scientists (1960), the Apollo 8 Astronauts (1968), Middle Americans (1969) and American Women (1975).
By the 1980s, Time was willing to go fully conceptual. Instead of 1982 Man of the Year, it was the Computer as Machine of the Year. For 1988, it was Planet of the Year and the Endangered Earth. For 2006, as social media was first starting to take off, the Person of the Year was You, complete with a mylar mirror on the cover. That choice was mocked at the time, but it feels self-evident today.
In recent years, Time's editors have stuck with the more traditional choices of Very Important People: Donald Trump (2016), Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (2020), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (2022). But the aperture of who can be considered for the cannon has expanded well beyond those early-days industrialists and presidents. For 2017, the honor went to the Silence Breakers, the women who stood up to tell their stories and kicked off the #MeToo movement. For 2019, it was then-16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. And the 2023 Person of the Year is the world-changing phenomenon that is Taylor Swift.
Person of the Year is itself a major media event. What began as a last-minute effort to fill a hole and solve a problem now gets revealed live on national TV. In early December 2023, Time's managing editor went on the Today show and announced Swift's triumph. He also reported that she'd beaten out eight other finalists including King Charles III, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Barbie.
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