Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. president who received the honor in 1932, 1934 and 1941, is the only person to grace the Man of the Year cover three times. U.S. presidents appear more frequently than any other group. They are: Harry S Truman (1945, 1948), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944, as a general; 1959), John F. Kennedy (1961), Lyndon B. Johnson (1964, 1967), Richard M. Nixon (1971, and with Henry Kissinger in 1972), Jimmy Carter (1976), Ronald Reagan (1980, and with Russian premier Yuri Andropov in 1983), George Bush (1990), and Bill Clinton (1992, and with Kenneth Starr in 1998).

TIME magazine's first Man of the Year was Charles Augustus Lindbergh, named in 1927 for his aviation exploits. "Col. Lindbergh is the most cherished citizen since Theodore Roosevelt," TIME reported in announcing the selection. Adventurers would not be named again until 1968, when the crew of Apollo 8 -- Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders -- were named Men of the Year for their Christmas-week journey around the moon.

The heads of large corporations received their due from time to time in the Man of the Year competition. In 1955, TIME named General Motors president Harlow Herbert Curtice. General Motors was the world's biggest manufacturing corporation, and under Curtice, it became the first corporation to earn more than $1 billion in net profits in a year. But Curtice was not the first head of an automobile company to receive the honor. That goes to Walter Chrysler, who was named Man of the Year in 1928.

TIME has sometimes named a group of people for its Man of the Year. In 1950, it was the American Fighting-Man. Hungarian Freedom Fighters (1956) and U.S. Scientists (1960) followed. In 1966, however, TIME named an entire generation, those 25 years of age and younger around the world. "That generation looms larger than all the exponential promises of science or technology: It will soon be the majority in charge," TIME reported. TIME would later honor Middle Americans (1969) and American Women (1975).

"There are some occasions... when the most significant force in a year's news is not a single individual but a process, and a widespread recognition by a whole society that this process is changing the course of all other processes." With that, TIME named the computer as its 1982 Man of the Year and recognized the controversy the choice triggered. After all, Margaret Thatcher had led Britain to victory in its war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, and Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker was seizing command in his battle against inflation. It was the first time an object was named Man of the Year.