The first person to be named "Woman of the Year" (later called "Person of the Year") by Time magazine was Wallis Simpson (USA), a socialite whose controversial proposed marriage to Great Britain's Edward VIII resulted in his abdication from the throne on 11 December 1936 (they later married in France on 3 June 1937). Wallis was the 1936 "Person of the Year", starring on the cover of the 4 January 1937 issue of Time.
The Person of the Year is a special annual issue of the US news magazine Time, in which they celebrate a person, group of people or even object that "for better or for worse... has done the most to influence the events of the year". The award was originally split into "Man of the Year" and "Woman of the Year", before being changed to the single "Person of the Year" in 1999.
The very first individual to be named "Person of the Year" was US aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927, in recognition of him becoming the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo on 20–21 May 1927. The accolade was recognized in the 2 January 1928 edition of Time, in which he appeared on the cover.
Only four other individual women have been named "Time Person of the Year" since the accolade began: Queen Elizabeth II (1952), Corazon Aquino (1986), Angela Merkel (2015) and Greta Thunberg (2019), the latter of whom is also the youngest person to ever receive the plaudit. Other female recipients have shared the title as part of a group or as a conceptual movement, such as in 1975 when Time celebrated "American Women" in relation to the rise of feminism.
