If TIME Magazine had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, the Person of the Century

[etv78]

If TIME had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, who would they had picked as Person of the Century?

I'd guess Abraham Lincoln or Queen Victoria

[What Exit?]

Maybe Thomas Edison.

[stormie]

I'm going with Queen Victoria. She reigned for over half a century (1837-1901).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/The_Young_Queen_Victoria.jpg/140px-The_Young_Queen_Victoria.jpg https://www.theschoolrun.com/sites/theschoolrun.com/files/styles/188-148/public/queen_victoria.png

[11thuntitledposter]

From this vantage point, I'd go with the multiple discoverers of surgical anesthesia.

[BJMoose]

I'd go with the guys who told the surgeons to wash their freaking hands first.

[Derleth]

I'd go with the guys who told the surgeons to wash their freaking hands first.Surgeons were washing their hands. He told them they weren't washing well enough. Also, he was a Doper before the SDMB existed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

As accounts of the dramatic reduction in mortality rates in Vienna were being circulated throughout Europe, Semmelweis had reason to expect that the chlorine washings would be widely adopted, saving tens of thousands of lives. Early responses to his work also gave clear signs of coming trouble, however. Some physicians had clearly misinterpreted his claims. James Young Simpson, for instance, saw no difference between Semmelweis's groundbreaking findings and the idea presented in an 1843 paper by Oliver Wendell Holmes[24] that childbed fever was contagious (i.e. that infected persons could pass the infection to others).[25] Indeed, initial responses to Semmelweis's findings were that he had said nothing new.[26]

In fact, Semmelweis was warning against all decaying organic matter, not just against a specific contagion that originated from victims of childbed fever themselves. This misunderstanding, and others like it, occurred partly because Semmelweis's work was known only through secondhand reports written by his colleagues and students. At this crucial stage, Semmelweis himself had published nothing. These and similar misinterpretations continued to cloud discussions of his work throughout the century.[10]

Some accounts emphasize that Semmelweis refused to communicate his method officially to the learned circles of Vienna,[27] nor was he eager to explain it on paper. Read that last bit: He had in his immaculately-cleaned hands the cure to horrible death, and he wasn't eager to explain it to others. Wasn't fucking eager.

What a goddamned hero.

[C2H5OH]

If TIME had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, who would they had picked as Person of the Century?

I'd guess Abraham Lincoln or Queen Victoria

What? Still looking for someone to validate your decision to hold your piss until your bladder broke?

You're the only one who cared about that fight. You lost. Don't involve the rest of us in your stupidity.

[Derleth]

What? Still looking for someone to validate your decision to hold your piss until your bladder broke?Wrong century, stargazer.

[What Exit?]

If TIME had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, who would they had picked as Person of the Century?

I'd guess Abraham Lincoln or Queen Victoria

What? Still looking for someone to validate your decision to hold your piss until your bladder broke?

You're the only one who cared about that fight. You lost. Don't involve the rest of us in your stupidity.
What?

[eleanorigby]

If TIME had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, who would they had picked as Person of the Century?

I'd guess Abraham Lincoln or Queen Victoria

What? Still looking for someone to validate your decision to hold your piss until your bladder broke?

You're the only one who cared about that fight. You lost. Don't involve the rest of us in your stupidity.

Huh?

I'd say Abraham Lincoln. Queen Victoria, while active in government, also watched her power ebb away, (not due to her, but to the rise of strong PMs and representative government). But, for all I know, there's a European, an African, South American or an Asian person who should get it and we didn't learn about him (90% sure it would be a him).

[Ludovic]

I also am wondering what he is braheing about.

[etv78]

Something from my real life, in 2005!

[mjmlabs]

If TIME had debuted in 1823 instead of 1923, who would they had picked as Person of the Century?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_3.jpg/220px-Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_3.jpg

Fun Fact: Born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln! (For reals. 12 FEB 1809.)

[stormie]

I'd go with the guys who told the surgeons to wash their freaking hands first.The first doctor who tried to spread the word about cleaning one's hands before touching the next patient went a bit mad watching patients die because everyone ignored him.

Darwin for the win! And the Dar. Prolly the biggest influence on modern thought.

[Pencil]

Marx.

I can't think of a single individual who had more influence on so many, many millions of people. Billions in fact, even if PRC nowadays seem more fascist than communist.

[stormie]

There were other socialist out there being socialisty, but think where we would be without the concept of evolution! Others looking into the idea had such a different explanation the field of genetics may have never developed.

Bias alert: I am scientist.

[etv78]

Simon Bolivar
Metternich
Mark Twain
Pius IX

[Pencil]

There were other socialist out there being socialisty, but think where we would be without the concept of evolution! Others looking into the idea had such a different explanation the field of genetics may have never developed.

Bias alert: I am scientist.
There were other biologists out there sciencing* evolution**, but think about where we would be without the concept of communism***. Russian revolution, Cultural revolution, Pol Pot, the Kim family, Castro, the Cold War, the proxy wars of the 50's - 90's! :science:

Oh wait...



*Yes, I used it as a verb. Get over it.
** Wallace. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace)
***I'm fully aware Marx didn't come up with the term.

[Pogo]

The communism thing wouldn't play. All of the things mentioned as big results of communism happened years later, in the 20th century. Time Magazine wouldn't be able to prognosticate those events and they would ignore some weird philosophers. So, the board of the magazine in 1900 or 1901 (depending on your fight) would name someone whose impact they already knew.

I think the same thing might be true for some of the scientists as the importance of their discoveries wouldn't be known and/or forecast-able.

[stormie]

There were other biologists out there sciencing* evolution**
** Wallace. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace)

Oh h*ck! I did not know that! :blush:

I knew there was a zeitgeist but thought everyone else was heading in the wrong direction. And I call myself a scientist! :sciencefail:

[Swammerdami]

Darwin's Century by Loren Eiseley is a great read. Although Eiseley is obviously a huge fan of Darwin, the book makes clear that the simplification
Darwin & Wallace: Right / Others: Wrong
is much too ... simplistic. Others had anticipated almost all of Darwin's ideas, and Darwin himself reverted to some Lamarckism in later editions of his book.

One of the more surprising precursors to Darwinism is found in an appendix to an obscure 1834 book with an obscure title (https://books.google.com/books?id=DmYDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA384). (The link points to page 384 but the discussion is several pages.) Darwin himself admitted that this obscure appendix captured the essence of his Theory.

[Derleth]

One of the more surprising precursors to Darwinism is found in an appendix to an obscure 1834 book with an obscure title (https://books.google.com/books?id=DmYDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA384).Well by all means let's not mention the title.

;)

It's On Naval Timber and Arboriculture: With Critical Notes on Authors who Have Recently Treated the Subject of Planting, by Patrick Matthew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Naval_Timber_and_Arboriculture). It was a very wide-ranging work, apparently. Here it is on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53678) and in the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/onnavaltimberan01mattgoog); for our purposes, the interesting part begins here (https://archive.org/details/onnavaltimberan01mattgoog/page/n402/mode/1up) and really gets going a few pages later.

[stormie]

Yes, one hell of a thing. Includes a section on the ills of inherited nobility, as do so many agriculture books.