The world's news events piled atop each other with bewildering rapidity last week. Their character was remarkably varied: ominous, reassuring, inspirational, showy, frustrating. The death of the leader of the Soviet Union was announced, with all its implications for the future of that socialist superpower and its troubled relationship with the U.S. In the face of more violence and political uncertainty in Lebanon, President Reagan acted to redeploy the Marines. For the first time, men floated freely in the heavens, breaking away from the shuttle Challenger to become human satellites. In Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, the XIV Winter Olympics opened with impressive pageantry, only to have events "whited out" by too much of a good thing: snow. In sum, it was a remarkable week for journalism and for TIME.

It began on Monday with a meaningful moment for the magazine, as President Ronald Reagan celebrated his 73rd birthday and the 129th anniversary of the founding of Eureka College, his alma mater, by giving an address at the Illinois campus. His subject: the need for a historical perspective in evaluating the changes that have transformed America over the past five decades. In the process, the President was inaugurating TIME'S Distinguished Speakers Program, a series of lectures presented in connection with the magazine's 60th anniversary. The talks will be given by outstanding men and women of various disciplines and claims to fame who have appeared on TIME'S cover.

In introducing the President at Eureka, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Henry Grunwald recalled the familiar debate in the academic world between those who believe history is made by individuals and those who think it is the result of abstract, faceless forces. Said Grunwald: "We at TIME have always sided with the former school. In that spirit, TIME started out by putting a person on its cover every week, and the mainstay of that cover is still people." Grunwald called the Distinguished Speakers Program a "logical extension" of this tenet, one that would put TIME cover subjects "in direct touch with the public whose lives they have affected, and especially in touch with young people." The addresses will be given twice a year at colleges or universities picked by the speakers, who will be drawn from the worlds of politics, government, science, religion and the arts. They will represent a wide range of political and philosophic views and, it is hoped, will provoke lively discussion and debate between the newsmakers and their student audiences.

President Reagan, who has been on 24 TIME covers, caught the spirit of the program and the challenge the speakers could offer their audiences when he said: "I hope that 50 years from now, should TIME magazine ask you for your reflections, you'll be able to recall an era exciting beyond all of your dreams."

Indeed, examples of the excitement of our times unfolded all week long. Within minutes of the predawn news of Yuri Andropov's death, TIME'S editors were gathering to discuss the magazine's coverage and to deploy correspondents and photographers. In Moscow, Bureau Chief Erik Amfitheatrof, worried by the melancholy music on his morning radio but not yet knowing that a Soviet notable had died, prepared himself for a stressful day by a half-hour jog through the capital's slippery streets. His weekend turned into a marathon of interviews with Soviet and diplomatic sources about the possible successor to President Andropov.

On the receiving end of Amfitheatrof's reports were Associate Editor John Kohan and Reporter-Researcher Helen Sen Doyle in New York City, who worked together on both the main chronicle of events and an accompanying assessment of the Soviet military's strength and political influence. Kohan and Doyle are both fluent Russian speakers who have traveled and worked in the Soviet Union. They have spent more than 26 years between them studying that secretive country.

For a journalist, getting the story or pictures out of a war-torn nation can be as perilous as covering the war. So it was last week for Photographer Harry Mattison, on assignment for TIME in Lebanon. The Beirut airport was closed, making it impossible to ship film by air. All roads leading north, south and east were closed because of fighting. Finally the frustrated Mattison decided to walk some ten miles to the Israeli lines with the week's work of six photographers. Mattison is no stranger to the hazards of war: he covered vicious combat in El Salvador for three years. But, he says of the gauntlet he ran last week, "There were nervous troops from three different militias and the Lebanese Army in the area. There was mortar and sniper fire all around. At one particularly bad moment on the way south, a Lebanese Army trooper shot into the ground at my feet to force me to turn back. I have rarely been so scared." He finally reached Israeli lines, south of Beirut, where he was able to place the film in friendly hands. He then turned around and retraced his steps, again through enemy fire.

For TIME'S 20-member Olympics team in Sarajevo, getting the story was not life threatening, but difficult enough. This time the villain was nature. Snow, tons and tons of it, fell endlessly on the Yugoslav city, paralyzing communications, clogging roads, closing the airport, blurring the color in action-filled photographs and causing the postponement of event after event. Neither Eastern Europe Chief John Moody, who covered bobsledding, nor Associate Editor Tom Callahan, who wrote the week's main story, encountered major problems. Senior Correspondent William Rademaekers and Reporter Gertraud Lessing, however, braved treacherous slopes and icy winds of 100-plus m.p.h. to reach the Alpine-siding sites, only to find that the competition had been called off. Correspondent B.J. Phillips, making her way around town in a Soviet-built Neva Jeep-type vehicle, was glad to be assigned to figure skating. "There is some advantage," she said, "in reporting one of the few winter competitions that take place indoors."

From Moscow to Beirut to Sarajevo, the week was simply memorable. Three weeks ago TIME announced that it was adding up to 100 "bonus" pages in order to handle 1984's very special journalistic demands. This issue contains 62 editorial pages, which ranks it among the magazine's largest issues ever. In it is the detailed, dramatic and colorful coverage made possible by the use of such bonus pages: extraordinary coverage in an extraordinary week.