A History of the World in 90 TIME Covers

Where has the time gone? It was back in March of 1923, that the first issue of TIME hit newsstands. As we celebrate our 90th birthday, a look back at world history as told through 90 memorable cover stories.

A history of violence: Gun control in the pages of TIME

Happy 100th, Julia Child.

The TV camera zooms in for a close-up and focuses on her hands. She may be dicing an onion, mincing a garlic clove, trussing a chicken. Her fingers fly with the speed and dexterity of a concert pianist. Strength counts, too, as she cleaves an ocean catfish with a mighty, two-fisted swipe or, muscles bulging and curls aquiver, whips up egg whites with her wire whisk. She takes every short cut, squeezes lemons through “my ever-clean dish towel,” samples sauces with her fingers. No matter if she breaks the rules. Her verve and insouciance will see her through. Even her failures and faux pas are classic. When a potato pancake falls on the worktable, she scoops it back into the pan, bats her big blue eyes at the cameras, and advises: “Remember, you’re all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you.”

Read the rest of TIME’s November 25, 1966 cover story on Julia Child here.

Sin, sin, sin. Morning and night, that was all they talked about in the little frame house in the California poor-town where Norma Jeane Baker lived in the early years of the Depression. ‘You’re wicked, Norma Jeane,’ the old woman used to shrill at the little girl. ‘You better be careful, or you know where you’ll go.’ Norma Jeane was careful, especially not to talk back. If she did, she got whaled with a razor strop and told that a homeless girl should be more grateful to folks who had put a roof above her head. One night, when the child went to sleep in her cot, she had a strangely exhilarating and frightening dream: ‘I dreamed that I was standing up in church without any clothes on, and all the people there were lying at my feet on the floor of the church, and I walked naked, with a sense of freedom, over their prostrate forms, being careful not to step on anyone.’

On May 14, 1956 Marilyn Monroe graced the cover of TIME. In a cover story titled, “From Aristophanes and Back,” the blond bombshell spilled the secrets of her abused childhood for our readers. It wasn’t the first, or last time Monroe would appear in the pages of TIME. In fact, TIME mentioned her in nearly one hundred stories from 1953 to 1956.

On the 50th anniversary of her death, Richard Corliss revisits TIME’s 1956 cover story on Monroe. Read it on TIME.com here.

Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

Today TIME pays tribute to the trailblazers, visionaries and cultural ambassadors who defined a nation: The 20 Most Influential Americans of All Time.

Pictured: Professor Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), mathematical physicist at home in 1925. 

He was the greatest mind and paramount icon of our age, the kindly, absentminded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius: Albert Einstein.

This list comes from the new TIME book The 100 Most Influential People of All Time, which profiles spiritual icons, leaders, explorers, visionaries and cultural titans throughout human history.

Memorial Day

It’s the anniversary you can’t refuse. Here are 40 things you didn’t know about The Godfather. (Can you see our cameo?) 

Happy birthday, Albert Einstein

At Easter 1966, millions of Americans picked up what would become one of the most notable magazine covers in the history of the genre: TIME’s stark question asking “Is God Dead?” In retrospect, the cover—and the much-less-remembered actual piece that ran with it—represented a mainstreaming of the spirit of dissent and debate that characterized the era. The cover was back in the news last week with word that the main theologian profiled in the piece, William Hamilton, had died. Hamilton was 87; at the time of the 1966 article, he was a professor at Colgate Rochester Divinity School.

Interested? Don’t miss Jon Meacham’s fascinating column on TIME.com looking back at Hamilton’s story and one of the most controversial covers in TIME’s history.