The TIME Magazine Vault

Robert W. Kelley—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

91 Years of Martin Luther King Jr.

"Born Jan. 15, 1929, in a middle-class Georgia family active for two generations in the civil rights cause, he was the second child and first-born son, named after his father, Michael Luther King. The elder King, pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, changed both their names when Martin was five to honor the Reformation rebel who nailed his independent declaration to the Castle Church," TIME explained to readers in 1968. "The small cruelties of bigotry left their scars despite King's warm, protective family life. He zipped through high school, entered Atlanta's Negro Morehouse College at 15, pondered a career and searched for 'some intellectual basis for a social philosophy.' Thoreau's essay 'Civil Disobedience' showed him the goal, and King picked the ministry as a proper means to achieve it."

91 Years of Martin Luther King Jr.

Robert W. Kelley—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

77th Annual Golden Globe Awards - Press Room

Kevin Winter—Getty Images

The Golden Globes on TV

"The Golden Globes' well-rated return to network TV (after years on cable and syndication) was something of a milestone in TV's awards-show mania," TIME noted in 1996 of the awards show that had its 2020 broadcast on Jan. 5. "Little more than a decade ago, the big four—the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys and Grammys—pretty much had the field to themselves. Now it seems as though every Hollywood interest group, craft union and country-music association has its own awards—and a TV special to trumpet them."

The Golden Globes on TV

Kevin Winter—Getty Images

Bettmann / Getty Images

TIME Remembers Audrey Hepburn

"When [Audrey Hepburn] died last week of cancer, at 63, it was as if we had to surrender the marvelous princess of all our better dreams," TIME observed when the actor died on Jan. 20, 1993. "Born in Belgium in 1929, she spent her adolescence in World War II Holland. She lost family to the Nazis, often went desperately hungry, and occasionally carried messages for the Resistance in her shoes. The war was a horror, but it left no discernible scars. Perhaps that was a little part of her magic: after slaughter and in the midst of chilling political uncertainty, the world found a grace in her that it yearned for."

TIME Remembers Audrey Hepburn

Bettmann / Getty Images

Baron Wolman—Getty Images

Jan. 14, 1967: Human Be-In

The moment that is often credited with launching the psychedelic '60s took place 50 years ago, when thousands gathered in San Francisco. "During a January 'Human Be-In' at Golden Gate Park," TIME reported that March, "10,000 hippies turned out to sing folk-rock songs, watch a psychedelic parachutist descend from a 'high trip,' and listen to Hindu prayers by Sometime Guru Allen Ginsberg, who has survived the transition from beat to hip."

Jan. 14, 1967: Human Be-In

Baron Wolman—Getty Images

A US Marine manning an observation tower surveys t

Roberto Schmidt—AFP/Getty Images

Jan. 11, 2002: Detainees to Guantanamo

The first arrival of Afghan detainees at Guantanamo Bay was immediately controversial. "At the heart of the matter is a question of legality," TIME explained the next week. "The Pentagon has resisted calling the detainees prisoners of war, preferring the terms unlawful combatants or battlefield detainees. It's easy to see why. Under the Geneva Convention, those holding true POWs are bound to release them at the end of hostilities; but that is the last thing the U.S. wants to do with men who may be al-Qaeda operatives."

Jan. 11, 2002: Detainees to Guantanamo

Roberto Schmidt—AFP/Getty Images

Tom Grill—Getty Images

On New Year’s Resolutions

"People who consider themselves sophisticated tend to disparage the making of New Year's resolutions. ('My resolution is not to make resolutions' is surely the most irritating rejoinder since the deeply annoying 'Let's not and say we did.') But it's easy to see why the snobs wince," columnist Mark Leyner wrote for TIME in 1999. "Yes, New Year's resolutions are glib, sanctimonious and self-serving. Yes, they are the haiku of holiday kitsch. But isn't glib, sanctimonious, self-serving kitsch the glue that holds us together as Americans?"