The TIME Centennial News Quiz

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Take the test of the century--100 questions based on the events of the past 100 years, as covered in the pages of TIME [ANSWERS ON LAST PAGE OF QUIZ]

FACES IN TIME Match each numbered description to the Man or Woman of the Year who fits it best.

1. "[This Person of the Year] showed that politics could be the art of the impossible; that force could speak softly and carry a small stick."

2. "[His] carefully cultivated air of mystic detachment cloaks an iron will, an inflexible devotion to simple ideas that he has preached for decades."

3. "[He] rose out of murky obscurity and carried his country with him up & up into brilliant focus before a pop-eyed world."

4. "[He] is obsessed with the idea that some day it may be possible to write a message on a pad at one's desk or bedside and have it instantaneously transmitted to the addressee anywhere on earth."

5. "With remarkable imagination and daring, he has embarked on a course, perhaps now irreversible, that is reshaping the world."

6. "A reminder of what was old and splendid, and also a fresh, imperative summons to make the present worthy of remembrance."

7. "He gave his countrymen exactly what he promised them--blood, toil, tears, sweat--and one thing more: untold courage."

8. "His mail brings him a daily dosage of opinion in which he is by turn vilified and glorified."

9. "Like most of mankind he was ill prepared for the destiny and responsibility which had been thrust upon him. He did not want the responsibility; the destiny rested awkwardly on his shoulders."

10. "Where most mid-20th century statesmen feel obliged to cloak their extraordinary qualities in a mantle of folksiness, he unabashedly regards himself as a historic figure and comports himself as a man of greatness."

11. "Curiously, it was in a jail that the year's end found the...man whose mark on world history will undoubtedly loom largest of all."

12. "[This] was a year of blood and strength. The man whose name means steel in Russian, whose few words of English include the American expression 'tough guy,' was the man of [the year]."

13. "He emerged as a tough, determined world leader. Finally seizing firm control of his office, he was willing to break sharply with tradition in his privately expressed desire 'to make a difference' in his time."

14. "The firm that [he] built has survived in one of the most tumultuous industries in history, emerging to become one of the most powerful companies of our age."

15. "When he talks, it is not only to his flock of nearly a billion; he expects the world to listen. And the flock and the world listen, not always liking what they hear."

16. "Greatest ambition of [this newsmaker] seemed to be to drop from world publicity's most glaring spotlight to utter oblivion."

Queen Elizabeth II ( ) Martin Luther King Jr. ( ) Mohandas Gandhi ( ) Corazon Aquino ( ) Andrew Grove ( ) Joseph Stalin ( ) Charles de Gaulle ( ) Owen D. Young ( ) Ayatullah Khomeini ( ) Harry S Truman ( ) Winston Churchill ( ) Haile Selassie ( ) Wallis Simpson ( ) Richard Nixon ( ) Mikhail Gorbachev ( ) Pope John Paul II ( )