Most Influential Leaders and Revolutionaries of the 20th Century according to Time 100. This century was one of the most amazing: inspiring, sometimes terrifying, but always fascinating.

Sure, the 15th century was wild enough, with the Renaissance and the Spanish Inquisition in full bloom, Gutenberg building his printing press, Copernicus beginning to contemplate the solar system, and Columbus spreading culture from Europe to the Americas. And of course there was the 1st century, which if only because of the life and death of Jesus, may have had the biggest impact of all. Socrates and Plato made the 5th century BC quite remarkable as well.

Let's take stock for a moment. To name just a few random things we did in a hundred years: we split the atom, invented jazz and rock, launched airplanes and landed on the moon, invented a general theory of relativity, designed the transistor, and figured out how to record millions of them. In tiny microchips, they discovered penicillin and the structure of DNA, fought fascism and communism, bombed Guernica and painted the bombing of Guernica, developed film and television, built roads and connected the world. Not to mention the peripherals they produced, like sitcoms and cable channels, "800" numbers and websites, shopping malls and free time, existentialism and modernism, Oprah and Imus. The initials spread like graffiti: NATO, IBM, ABM, UN, WPA, NBA, NFL, CIA, CNN, PLO, IPO, IRA, IMF, TGIF.

All of this produced some memorable characters. Look around. There is Lenin arriving at the Finland station and Gandhi marching towards the sea to make salt. Winston Churchill with his pure his, Louis Armstrong with his horn, Charlie Chaplin with his cane. Rosa Parks sitting on the bus with her and a boy standing in front of a tank near Tiananmen Square. Einstein is in her and the Beatles' studio on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Seldom does a century dawn so clearly and cleanly. In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, ending the Victorian era. His Majesty, as if it were a sign, died the following January, after a reign of 63 years. Her empire included a quarter of the earth's population, but the Boer War in South Africa marked the end of the colonial era.

In China, the Boxer Rebellion heralded the awakening of a new giant. In the United States, automobiles replaced horses, 42% of workers were engaged in agriculture (today it is 2%), and the average life expectancy was 50 (today it is 75).

The recorder was unveiled in 1900 at the Paris Exposition, where visitors flocked to be scandalized by Rodin's non-Victorian statues, and Kodak introduced the Brownie camera, a fitting symbol of a century in which technology at first it would seem magical, then it would become simple, cheap and personal.

That year the Scholastic Aptitude Test was born, which allowed a change of power from an aristocracy to a meritocracy. The Wright brothers went to Kitty Hawk to test their gliders. Lenin, 30, published his first newspaper calling for revolution in Russia.

Churchill, 25, was elected to the House of Commons. JP Morgan began working with a young executive named Charles Schwab to buy Andrew Carnegie and the US Steel conglomerate, by far the largest company in the world.

• David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, was the architect of a new nation-state that altered the destiny of the Jewish people and the Middle East.
• Winston Churchill, the master statesman stood alone against fascism and renewed the world's faith in the superiority of democracy.
• Mohandas Gandhi, his philosophy of nonviolence, and his passion for independence started a drive for freedom that doomed colonialism.
• Mikhail Gorbachev, a Soviet reformer, by gently opening the doors of reform, unleashed a wave of democracy that flooded the Soviet universe and swept away the Cold War.
• Adolf Hitler, the avatar of fascism, posed the century's greatest threat to democracy and redefined the meaning of evil forever.
• Ho Chi Minh married nationalism with communism and perfected the deadly art of guerrilla warfare.
• Pope John Paul II, religious leader, the most tireless moral voice of a secular age, reminded humanity of the value of individuals in the modern world.
• Ayatullah R. Khomeini, blatantly defying the West, revived the faithful of Islam and was the author of a new form of religious government. The recipes were often creepy
• Martin Luther King Jr., led a massive fight for racial equality that condemned segregation and changed America forever.
• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, driven by ideological zeal, reformed Russia and made communism a powerful global force.
• South African President Nelson Mandela, as the world's most famous prisoner and now the leader of his country, exemplifies a moral integrity that shines far beyond South Africa.
• Mao Zedong, his ruthless vision united a fractured people and inspired revolutions far beyond China's borders.
• Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, brought Big Government to its knees and stared at the Soviet Union.
• Eleanor Roosevelt, America's most influential First Lady, blazed trails for women and led the battle for social justice everywhere.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, brought America out of economic despair and revolutionized the American way of life. He later helped make the world a safe place for democracy.
• Theodore Roosevelt, with boundless energy and a passionate sense of nation, set the stage for the American century.
• Margaret Sanger, her crusade to legalize birth control fueled the women's liberation movement.
• Margaret Thatcher, champion of free minds and markets, helped topple the welfare state and make the world safer for capitalism.
• Unknown rebel from Tiananmen Square, with a single act of defiance, a lone Chinese hero revived the world's image of courage
• Lech Walesa, a Polish trade union organizer, took on the Kremlin and dealt a fatal blow to the Eastern bloc.

Information taken from Time.

Instructions

Place the characters in chronological order on the timeline. A tip, study first and then practice and consolidate what you have learned.

Enlarge or reduce the image with the zoom and adjust its size to the screen of your device. You can also act on the image and drag it to center it.