Time Magazine's Most Influential People of the Century

In 1999 Time Magazine listed their idea of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century, split up into five categories.

I thought we'd look at them one category at a time. How many of these people have you heard of? How many could you give a paragraph biography about?


I got 18 and a half. I recognized all 20 names, but I was wrong on one and half-wrong on another. I don't expect you to get that many, but I would hope most of you could at least get 12

Leaders and revolutionaries

• David Ben-Gurion
• Ho Chi Minh
• Sir Winston Churchill
• Mohandas Gandhi ("Person of the Century" #3)
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Adolf Hitler
• Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk)
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
• Vladimir Lenin
• Nelson Mandela
• Mao Zedong
• Pope John Paul II
• Ronald Reagan
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Franklin D. Roosevelt ("Person of the Century" #2)
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Margaret Thatcher
• The Unknown Rebel of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
• Margaret Sanger
• Lech Wałęsa