Reply #15: The title is, in ignorance, assumed to be an honor. [View All]

There was a massive public backlash in the United States after TIME named Ayatollah Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979. Since then, TIME has often shied away from choosing overly controversial candidates. TIME's Person of the Year 2001 — in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks — was New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It was a somewhat controversial result; many thought that Giuliani was deserving, but also many thought that the rules of selection ("the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news") made the obvious choice Osama bin Laden. They cited previous choices such as Adolf Hitler demonstrating that Man of the Year did not necessarily mean "Best Human Being of the Year".

1927- Charles Lindbergh
1928- Walter Chrysler
1929- Owen Young
1930- Mahatma Gandhi
1931- Pierre Laval
1932- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1933- Hugh Johnson
1934- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2nd time)
1935- Haile Selassie
1936- Wallis Simpson
1937- Chiang Kai-Shek and Soong May-ling
1938- Adolf Hitler
1939- Joseph Stalin
1940- Winston Churchill
1941- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (3rd time)
1942- Joseph Stalin (2nd time)
1943- George Marshall
1944- Dwight Eisenhower
1945- Harry Truman
1946- James F. Byrnes
1947- George Marshall (2nd time)
1948- Harry Truman (2nd time)
1949- Winston Churchill (2nd time)
1950- The American Fighting-Man
1951- Mohammed Mossadegh
1952- Queen Elizabeth II
1953- Konrad Adenauer
1954- John Dulles
1955- Harlow Curtice
1956- Hungarian Freedom Fighter
1957- Nikita Khrushchev
1958- Charles De Gaulle
1959- Dwight Eisenhower (2nd time)
1960- U.S. scientists
1961- John F. Kennedy
1962- Pope John XXIII
1963- Martin Luther King Jr.
1964- Lyndon Johnson
1965- William Westmoreland
1966- Twenty-Five and Under
1967- Lyndon Johnson (2nd time)
1968- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders
1969- The Middle Americans
1970- Willy Brandt
1971- Richard Nixon
1972- Richard Nixon (2nd time) and Henry Kissinger
1973- John Sirica
1974- King Faisal
1975- American Women
1976- Jimmy Carter
1977- Anwar Sadat
1978- Deng Xiaoping
1979- Ayatollah Khomeini
1980- Ronald Reagan
1981- Lech Walesa
1982- The Computer
1983- Ronald Reagan (2nd time) and Yuri Andropov
1984- Peter Ueberroth
1985- Deng Xiaoping (2nd time)
1986- Corazon Aquino
1987- Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1988- Endangered Earth ("Planet of the Year")
1989- Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2nd time)
1990- George H. W. Bush
1991- Ted Turner
1992- Bill Clinton
1993- Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk, Yasser Arafat, and Yitzhak Rabin
1994- Pope John Paul II
1995- Newt Gingrich
1996- David Ho
1997- Andy Grove
1998- Bill Clinton (2nd time) and Kenneth Starr