Kamala Harris Is the First Vice President-Elect to Be Named 'Time' Person of the Year

Time has named President-elect Joe Bide and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris its 2020 Person of the Year. The pair appeared together on the cover of the magazine, which was released on Thursday, marking the first time that a president-elect and a vice president-elect have ever received the honor together.

That's not the only groundbreaking aspect of Time's selection, either. While Harris has already made history as the first woman, first Black person and first Asian-American to ever win the position of vice president, she is also Time's first vice president-elect to earn the Person of the Year honor.

Biden, on the other hand, joins a long list of presidents-elect named Person of the Year. In fact, his appearance continues a nearly nine-decade long tradition of the presidents-elect being dubbed Person of the Year or Man of the Year, as the title was referred to in the years before 1999.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first commander-in-chief to receive Time's Man of the Year in 1932, thanks to the president's inspiring New Deal, which helped usher the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Roosevelt went on to receive the Person of the Year title two more times—in 1934 and 1941, respectively—making him the U.S. president with the most such designations.

Following Roosevelt, Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson were both named Man of the Year following election wins, although they technically weren't presidents-elect, since they both succeeded presidents who had died while in office. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were all named Person of the Year while they were actually presidents-elect.

There have been a few other presidents who were actually already serving a term when they were recognized as Time's Person of the Year. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 1959 Man of the Year, long after he first won the presidency in 1952.

Queen Elizabeth II was deemed Woman of the Year when Eisenhower initially went into office. Eisenhower had already received the title anyway, in 1944, when he was a general in the U.S. Army. And in 1945, he was dubbed the Man of the Atomic Year, following his orders to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

President John F. Kennedy also became Man of the Year after he served a year in the White House.

Of all the U.S. leaders to serve in office while the distinction has been given out, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford are the only ones to never be named Time's Person of the Year.

Along with Biden and Harris, LeBron James was recognized as Time's 2020 Athlete of the Year, while Dr. Anthony Fauci, frontline health workers and racial justice organizers were deemed Guardians of the Year. BTS was dubbed Time's Entertainer of the Year.