Time, “The Weekly Newsmagazine,” was launched in 1923, and grew into one of the most successful and influential publications of the 20th century. In early January of 1928, in part to make up for its editorial lapse in having not properly celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh following his record-setting solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight the previous May, the magazine featured Lindbergh on its cover, hailing him as 1927’s Man of the Year.
That began a tradition that continues to this day, though it’s had some updating. In 1936, in place of a man, Time named its first Woman of the Year – Wallis Simpson, the divorced American socialite whose relationship with King Edward VIII of England caused him to abdicate the throne. In 1999, the publication got with the times and changed the honorific permanently to Person of the Year.
While being chosen by Time for this recognition is commonly considered to be a great honor, it has also “honored” some people who were less than admirable, including Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), and Vladimir Putin (2007). The point is to acknowledge influence and significance rather than to necessarily imply approval.
While representatives of 21 different foreign countries have made Person of the Year, the majority of those chosen have been American, and they come from 20 different states across the country. Perhaps because landing on this special cover is sometimes seen as a matter of fortune, the online gambling news and review site Gambling.com recently conducted a study – using OpenDataSoft, Mental Floss, and Time itself – to determine which states have produced the most Person of the Year cover subjects since 1927.
Some 42 Americans have been selected in all – six of them twice and one, Franklin D. Roosevelt, three times. In addition, some shared their cover position with others, like the three Apollo 8 astronauts who appeared for 1968 and the three “Whistleblowers” who helped bring down Enron in 2002. (Speaking of Enron, these are the most infamous white collar scandals in history.)
There have also been whole classes of people unnamed individually – for instance, The Hungarian Freedom Fighter (1956), American Women (1975), and Ebola Fighters (2014), as well as two non-human subjects, The Computer (Machine of the year in 1982) and The Endangered Earth (Planet of the Year in 1988), and one abstract: The Spirit of Ukraine (2022). (In honor of that beleaguered nation, here’s a list of 32 famous people you didn’t know were born in Ukraine.)
Note that repeat appearances are counted individually, and that the years given are those for which the accomplishments are being recognized, but the actual Person of the Year issue of the magazine always appears in the first few days of the following year. Ties are ranked according to the state’s earliest appearance, so that Indiana’s Frank Borman (1968) places above New Mexico’s Jeff Bezos (1999), and so on. (Our list below contains only 41 names because it covers states only, and thus omits the District of Columbia, birthplace of the 1954 honoree, former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.)
Leading the states are New York and Texas, each accounting for seven appearances – and incidentally each claiming two presidents who’ve been Person of the Year.
Here are the states with the most Time magazine People of the Year.
20. Washington
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 1
- Person of the Year: Bill Gates (2005 [shared])
19. Virginia
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 1
- Person of the Year: Coleen Rowley (2002 [shared])
18. Mississippi
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 1
- Person of the Year: Cynthia Cooper (2002 [shared])
17. New Mexico
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 1
- Person of the Year: Jeff Bezos (1999)
16. Indiana
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 1
- People of the Year: Frank Borman (1968 [shared])
15. Hawaii
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- Person of the Year: Barack Obama (2008, 2012),
14. Arkansas
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: Bill Clinton (1992, 1998 [shared])
13. Ohio
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: Jim Lovell (1968 [shared]), Ted Turner (1991)
12. Massachusetts
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: John F. Kennedy (1961), George H.W. Bush (1990)
11. South Carolina
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: James F. Byrnes (1946), William Westmoreland (1965)
10. Missouri
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: Harry S. Truman (1945, 1948)
9. Kansas
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: Walter Chrysler (1928), Hugh S. Johnson (1933)
8. Michigan
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 2
- People of the Year: Charles Lindbergh (1927), Harlow Curtice (1955)
7. Illinois
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 3
- People of the Year: Ronald Reagan (1980, 1983 [shared]), Peter Ueberroth (1984)
6. Connecticut
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 3
- People of the Year: John Sirica (1973), George W. Bush (2000, 2004)
5. California
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 3
- People of the Year: Richard M. Nixon (1971, 1972 [shared]), Kamala Harris (2020 [shared])
4. Georgia
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 3
- People of the Year: Martin Luther King Jr. (1963), Jimmy Carter (1976), Ben Bernanke (2009)
3. Pennsylvania
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 5
- People of the Year: Wallis Simpson (1936), George C. Marshall (1943, 1946), Newt Gingrich (1995), Joe Biden (2020 [shared])
2. Texas
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 7
- People of the Year: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944, 1959), Lyndon B. Johnson (1964, 1967), Ken Starr (1998 [shared]), Sherron Watkins (2002 [shared]), Melinda Gates (2005 [shared])
1. New York
- Number of People of the Year appearances: 7
- People of the Year: Owen D. Young (1929), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932, 1934, and 1941), Rudy Giuliani (2001), Mark Zuckerberg (2010), Donald J.Trump (2016)