Y’all beat me to many of my choices…
Thomas Jefferson, FDR, Jesus, DaVinci, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, all my Grandparents I never met (3 of 4,) Paul, Ben Franklin, John, Martin Kuther King, Martin Luther (for that matter,) George Clinton, Brooks Robinson, Babe Ruth, Reggie, Rita Hayworth, Richard Petty, Jackie Robinson, Albert Einstein, Cleopatra, Shoeless Joe, Honus Wagner, Leadbelly, Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, Billy Gibbons, Julia Child, Teddy Roosevelt. I could go on and on…
I find it interesting that most people pick presidents to put on their list. Maybe it’s just me, but just the thought of talking to a president puts me into sleepy-mode.
My pick? Hank Williams Sr. He was so young when he died and I bet he had a lot more great songs in his head that he just hadn’t put down on paper yet. He would be so cool to talk to. Maybe give me a guitar lesson while we’re at it.
My other pick would be Lane Frost. Everything I read about him is so amazing. He just seemed like the sweetest person and he died far too soon.
OOOO! Hank Sr. and Mark Twain! Forgot both of them!
I would want to do so with the following in One on one sessions(some of these people wouldn’t do well in a group):
HP Lovecraft
Groucho Marx
President George Washington
President Abraham Lincoln
Jesus Christ(I’d like to ask him to clarify various events and qoutations as well as his stance on certain issues).
Topics would be vary from person to person, but would pretty much be all around the board.
I’d like to have a Round Table with the following people:
Gen. Robert E. Lee
Gen. US Grant
Gen. George S. Patton
Gen. Edwin Rommel
Gen. George Washington
Gen. Cornwallis
Napoleon Bonaparte
Julius Ceaser
Assume a universal translator is available. The topic for that Discussion “Warfare, and how would YOU fight a “War on Terror”?” I’m tempted to throw in some Admirals, but maybe that should be a seperate discussion, but I don’t know who the truely great Admirals of history were. Though they probably wouldn’t be able to see much.
I expect that to be a very spirited dicussion. Though if it got too off track, I might have to do it one on one or, pair off by historical period (Washington and Cornwallis, Lee and Grant, Patton and Rommel).
Limiting myself to living people, I find my list much more eclectic:
My Lovely Wife
Dolly & Mr Parton
John & Mrs Cleese
Jay & Mrs Leno
Meatloaf and his wife
Ken and Mrs Burns
Menu?
Roast Goose
Chestnut Dressing
Grilled Vegetables
Assorted breads
Pecan Pie
I have nasty feeling if you had dinner with Princess Di the converstaion may centre on Charles being a bastard and what’s new on the catwalk this season. While I’m not a Royalist I’d rather have dinner with her mum-in-law. I bet she has many a tale to tell about the people she has met. Saw a documentry once of her entertaining Ronald and Nancy on the QE2. She had an amazing expression on her face, amusement, bewilderment and frustration all at the same time (of course that was after he started to go ummmm downhill).
I’d like to have dinner with a gathering of Roman emperors. I’m sure the conversation would be good but the entertainment and menu would be even more mind boggling. OK so I don’t want to have dinner with them…just hide in the corner and watch them.
Yes, it’s so difficult knowing what to serve otherwise, isn’t it?
If you’re doing war on Terror, you should invite Ho Chi Mihn and Sheridan and leave off Patton and Rommel (what do armored boys know about counter insurgency?).
My list in order of preference
Jesus (clarification of certain historical records, tape to be given to press afterwards)
Julius Casear (leadership skills, inspiration, oratory)
Lincoln (need I explain?)
Adolf Hitler (methods of propaganda, speechmaking)
Of sourse, this is once again ased on the availibility of a universal translator and a body guard, the individuals being in a talkative mood, and the knowledge that I still wouldn’t get anywhere with certain girls if i picked them 
I’d have Jesus’ mum and dad and his brothers/sisters, to find out about what sort of stuff he got up to when he was a kid…I’m sure they could put a slightly different slant on this ‘messiah’ thing.
I stared at my computer screen trying to think of some interesting people to name. Then I decided it would depend on my mood. So:
Historian Hugh would invite
Hitler
Charlemagne
Peter the Great
Elizabeth I
Abe Lincoln
Jerry Springer lovin Hugh would invite
Madelyn Murray O’Hair
Jesus Christ
Hitler
Churchill
Mystery lovin Hugh would invite
The Black Dahlia
Lee Harvey Oswald
Jack the Ripper
Edward and Richard, sons of Edward IV
Not gettin’ any lovin’ Hugh would invite
Cleopatra
Marilyn Monroe
Jenna Jameson
Anastasia, wife of Ivan the Terrible
Oh, and we’d have hotdogs, Pringles, and Lemonade.
I’d say both alive and dead. I’d invite Charles Lindberg and Patty Wagstaff. Of course I have no doubt that they’d both be interesting dinner company individually, but the look on Lindy’s face when Patty tells him what she does in an airplane would be priceless.
Ummm…Can I invite someone whose head has been detached from his body? I’d have Ted Williams over for a Fenway Frank, just so that he could have his say about whether he really wants to be in that cryonic tank.
I’d love to talk to many other people, such as Richard Feynman, Douglas Adams, and Madeleine Albright, but I think I would pass out in my soup with the stress that they would have no interest in talking to me! 
Rasputin
Louis Riel
T. E. Lawrence
Julius Casear
Aristotle or Socrates (whoever was available), Michelangelo, Sir Francis Drake, Ben Franklin, V.I. Lenin, Confucius, Winston Churchill, and The Buddha Gautama.
I would want great conversationalists. This is dinner, after all, not an historical interview. With that in mind…
Jesus (He’s just got to have a terrific sense of humor)
Chuck Yeager
James Clerk Maxwell
Maya Angelou
Robert Frost
Hillary Clinton
William Goldman
Barbara Tuchman
Most of mine would be dead folks from the nineteenth century:
Oscar Wilde
J. A. M. Whistler
Charles Baudelaire
Lord Byron
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Richard Wagner
And dead people from the twentieth century:
Gertrude Stein
Alice B. Toklas
Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir
Albert Camus
Virginia Woolf
Pablo Picasso
and a few honorary dead guests from previous centuries:
Voltaire
Michelangelo
Dante
Epicurus
Homer
We’d all go to the Cafe Florian in Venice, or, if that’s closed, to Denny’s.