On Sunday the NCAA announced the 65 teams that will play for college basketball’s championship, affording some teams the opportunity of a lifetime while bitterly disappointing others. In recent years, to celebrate the occasion of one of America’s most beloved sporting events, Sports Illustrated has produced annual March-Madness-themed covers that cram in pictures of at least one person from every team in the tournament. See more after the jump. (At left: March 2008, featuring Kansas’ Brandon Rush).

A beautifully-designed Valentine’s Day cover used to be an annual event for many magazines, but today, Valentine’s Day has almost disappeared from the newsstands – except for the New Yorker. They’ve done an annual Valentine’s Day cover for over 70 years, and their covers keep getting better. We’ve collected 20 of the greatest New Yorker Valentine’s Day covers. Co-produced by Linda Rubes. See a sampling after the jump, and for the full list of 20 covers, visit here.

Black History Month is, among other things, a media event. And believe it or not, there was a time when the cover of a magazine was considered an unparalleled promotional powerhouse. Following is a collection of covers that feature an artist, personality, historical event, or publication of significance in black history. This series is co-produced by Linda Rubes of Fortune magazine. View the full list here. (Cover at left: Time, April 6, 1970, painting of Jesse Jackson by Jacob Lawrence, for a special issue on “Black America 1970.”)

Today is Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday, and for the people at Robert Newman Design, that meant compiling 20 choice Elvis magazine covers.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that represented a very specific period of media coverage. The Wall holds an iconic place in photographs and in the magazines of the mid-20th century, and inside we’ve collected a few of the defining magazine covers of the era, from the Berlin Wall’s beginnings in 1961 to its fall in 1989.