response 1 of 17:

Feb 11 21:13 UTC 1999

In no particular order:
1) Stalin
2) Einstien
3) Henry Ford

response 3 of 17:

Feb 12 18:24 UTC 1999

Um, if you say so. Actually, I think my influence on the next century
will be greater than on this one.

response 5 of 17:

Feb 13 15:57 UTC 1999

So don't waste your time. Lots of items on Grex are pointless.  Use "forget".

response 7 of 17:

Feb 13 17:51 UTC 1999

feel better now, sweetheart?

response 9 of 17:

Feb 13 21:38 UTC 1999

<sob>

you made me cry, i don't like you no more.

response 11 of 17:

Feb 14 19:54 UTC 1999

I guess I can't take credit....

response 13 of 17:

Feb 15 05:53 UTC 1999

I would have trouble picking a "person of the century," because a century is
a long time, and a lot happened.  Picking a "person of the year" would be
difficult in many years.  I suppose I would have to start out by picking
events, and then pick the person or people that did the most to shape those
events.  Then there would be the task of chosing one of those events as the
defining event of the century, but I think that would be pretty impossible.

I suppose my listing of events would include, in no particular order:

World War I
World War II
The Great Depression
The Civil Rights Movement
Computing and Telecommunications
Transportation
The Cold War

and proabbly many other things I'm not thinking of.  Ok, now who were the
people who influenced those events the most?  This too is very hard to
quantify, since all these things were the results of many people doing many
different things, but here goes.

World War I:
        I don't know all that much about World War I.  I believe it was touched
off by the shooting of a prince or a duke or somebody like that, if I'm
remembering correctly, but blaming the whole thing on the shooter probably
doesn't work, given that it was presumably a result of tensions that had
already built up over other things.

World War II:
        Probably Hitler.

The Great Depression:
        Touched off largely by people having way too much faith in the stock
market, if I remember correctly.  Was there any one person who was taking the
lead in encouraging that sort of investment?

Civil Rights:
        Thurgood Marshall, although the version of history we were taught in
school would have had it be Martin Luther King.

Computing and telecommuncations:
        This should be the one I know best.  On the telecommunications side
probably Alexander Graham Bell for the telephone, which takes us through what
was important for most of this century.  Once we get into the '90s and the
Internet (which existed before the '90s, but couldn't have really been
considered really important to people in general), maybe Jon Postel, or
perhaps Tim Berners-Lee, or maybe even Marc Andreesen.  As far as computers
go, maybe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but probably also some of the earlier
people who didn't get famous enough for me to know their names.

Transportation:
        Karl Benz, who made the first car, or maybe Henry Ford, for the
assembly line, but probably Benz.  Also, the Wright Brothers would have to
be in there as well.

The Cold War:
        Lenin?  Stalin?

Next question:  Were any of those the one defining event of the century?  I
don't think so.

response 15 of 17:

Feb 15 19:58 UTC 1999

While Chamberlain got Britain into WW II, there would have been a war with
or without him, most likely.  Germany was already invading countries at that
point, and Britain would have been somewhere on the list.  Chamberlain stopped
being Prime Minister pretty quickly after the war started, if I remember
correctly, so if I had to pick a British prime minister with a big impact
there it would be Churchill instead of Chamberlain.  I could also have said
FDR, or probably a few of the Allied generals, or even Stalin, in terms of
shaping the outcome of the war.

I didn't mention Mandela, since I was thinking mostly of American history.
As I said, though, in terms of the American civil righs movement, I would pick
Marshall rather than King as the most important person.

Without Stalin or Lenin there would not have been a communist Soviet Union
with a brutal dictatorship for McCarthy to rail against.  Without McCarthy,
Stalin still would have had a brutal dictatorship for Americans to get scared
of, and somebody else likely would have filled McCarthy's role.

response 17 of 17:

Feb 15 20:50 UTC 1999

Yup.