In 1931 the font Times New Roman, a serif (semi-structural details on the ends of some strokes that make up letters and symbols) typeface, was created by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent. The creation of Times New Roman came after Morison wrote an article criticizing the British newspaper, The Times, for being badly printed and "behind the times". Now Times New Roman is one of the most successful and ubiquitous typefaces in history. This success is primarily due to the fact that it has been the default font in many applications, such as web browsers and word processors.
The sans-(without)-serif counterpart has usually been Arial. Arial was originally known as Sonoran Sans Serif after its design in 1982. Arial is held in disregard by some type enthusiasts because of its popularity due to Microsoft. The professional typographers believe Arial is the ugly step-sister of Helvetica, with Helvetica being the Cinderella of sans-serif typefaces.
However, the times are changing! Calibri is now the Obama-of-fonts. She has replaced Times New Roman as the default in Office 2007 Microsoft Word. She has also replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook. And just like Obama, she is a humanist (a little sans-serif classification humor)! The times are truly a changin'.
Trivia question: which font is being used here at A Son of Liberty?