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parsing the time frame from A.D. 1001-2000, but they nevertheless could not wait until the end of 2000, for marketing departments often trump editorial departments in such sales-driven businesses.) Two dozen editors consulted scores of experts and ranked the top hundred by a number of criteria, including how many people an event affected and how daily life changed after the event. And an odd bunch it is with some obvious picks (Gregorian calendar, gunpowder) and others, well, strangely quixotic (Don Quixote as the first modern novel, Haitian independence).

100. The Gregorian calendar: 1582

99. Rock and Roll: 1954

98. Deciphering the Rosetta stone: 1799

97. Modern Olympics: 1896

96. First modern novel (Don Quixote de la Mancha): 1605

95. First public museum (Ashmolean, Oxford): 1683

94. Defeat of the Spanish Armada: 1588

93. Anesthesia: 1846

92. Rise of the Ottoman Empire: 1453

91. Haiti independence: 1804

50. Mechanical clock: 1656

10. Compass for open ocean navigation: 1117

9. Hitler comes to power: 1933

8. Declaration of Independence: 1776

7. Gunpowder weapons: c. 1100

6. Germ theory of disease: 1882

5. Galileo discovers moons of Jupiter: 1610

4. Industrial revolution: 1769

3. Protestant reformation: 1517

2. Columbus makes first contact with New World: 1492

1. Gutenberg and the printing press: 1454

For some reason probably influenced by our humanity, we prefer talking (usually gossiping) about people more than events, and the Life editors could not resist the temptation to weigh in on who mattered, as well as what. They concluded their millennium celebration with the following ranking (surprisingly, given the lack of attention typically paid to science, five of the top ten are scientists, seven if you count Jefferson and Leonardo):

100. Carolus Linnaeus

99. Kwame Nkrumah

98. Ibn-Khaldun

97. Catherine de Médicis

96. Jacques Cousteau

95. Santiago Ramón y Cajal

94. John von Neumann

93. Leo Tolstoy

92. Roger Bannister

91. Nelson Mandela

50. Dante Alighieri

10. Thomas Jefferson

9. Charles Darwin

8. Louis Pasteur

7. Ferdinand Magellan

6. Isaac Newton

5. Leonardo da Vinci

4. Galileo Galilei

3. Martin Luther

2. Christopher Columbus

1. Thomas Edison

Fame and celebrity may land you on someone’s arbitrary list, but is it history’s list of those who really made a difference? Consider CBS News’s book People of the Century: The One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years, published in a coffee-table format. The list starts off reasonably enough, with Freud, Roosevelt, Ford, the Wright brothers, Gandhi, Lenin, Churchill, Einstein, Sanger, and Fleming filling out the early decades. But among the most important people of the later decades were, the editors conclude, Jim Henson, the Beatles, Pelé, Bruce Lee, Oprah Winfrey, Princess Diana, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Steven Spielberg, and (one hopes for nothing more than a touch of humor) Bart Simpson. Famedom infiltrates even the august halls of CBS News.

Finally, weighing in on 1999’s obsession with history’s lists is the New York Times Magazine, whose editors presented six themes (in six special Sunday issues), including:

1. “The Best of the Millennium” (fifty-eight writers offer their picks of the most significant events of the past thousand years)

2. “Women: The Shadow Story of the Millennium” (those who have for too long been left off history’s lists)

3. “Into the Unknown” (the great adventures of the last thousand years)

4. “New Eyes” (eminent living artists reinterpret history)

5. “The Me Millennium” (“from anonymity then to radical selfishness now”)

6. “Time Capsule” (what we should save for people in 3000)

In the final issue, Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel—a history of the past thirteen thousand years—suggested a clever neologism, apertology (“the science of opening”): “Just imagine an apertologist in the year 1000 trying to predict who would end up