The 20th Century is coming to a close and every magazine and televison show
is making a list of the most influential people of the century. Why not
Grexers? Name one to five people that have had the most impact on this
century.
And the winners are:

17 responses total.

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

remmers

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

This is a pointless exercise.

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

It is still interesting to investigate why people engage in pointless
exercises. It seems to imply an attempt to reduce a very complex history
to a single point of ridiculousness. For one thing, the word "impact"
is undefined, so no two people will even have the same objective in
naming a headliner they happened to hear about. Secondly, everything
that happens is caused by a multitude of factors and persons - and credit
is often misplaced or not properly distributed. So, I don't use "forget"
right away, just to see what kind of nonsense is generated, as a student
of human nature.

feel better now, sweetheart?

Just because tomorrow is Valentine's day does not give you the right to
assume such familiarity......

<sob>

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

Define "like".  And then quit whining  Everything that happens is caused by
a multitude of factors and persons.  It's not Rane's fault you cried.

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

is too.

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.

I would agree that none where - because as you already surmised at the
beginning, there is no such thing.

Why not Neville Chamberlain instead of Adolph Hitler?
Why not Clark Maxwell instead of Bell?
Why not "what's his name" instead of Jobs?  :)
Why not Stanley instead of Benz?
Why nbot Mandela instead of King?
Why not McCarthy instead of Stalin?

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.

You're trapped. Pluck out any of the people you or I have mentioned, and
history would have been different - yet probably rather the same too. 

Yup.

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