Guess who's coming to dinner

If you could invite exactly ten guests from any time period and from any place for a once in a lifetime evening with you where you may ask or talk about anything you please (assume you have universal translators), who would they be?

Here’s my list in no particular order:

Ludwig von Mises
Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
Jesus of Nazareth
Siddhartha Guatama
James Randi
James Burke
Thomas Jefferson
Charles Darwin
Ayn Rand

Boy, this is harder than it looks… I must have changed this list a dozen times…

Well, I’m not sending an invitation to Jesus, you just never know when He will be here.

So, I figure a nice dinner party, with lively conversation is the best Idea. I loose one guest, cause I want to be there.

Mohandas Gandhi
Sheherzad
Thomas Jefferson,
Abigail Adams
Sulieman
Josephine Baker
William Shakespeare
Cleopatra
Me
Kathryn Hepburn

I need a bigger table.

Tris

I would assume, since I’m the one giving the party, that it’s 10 guests plus myself.

Here’s my list:
Jane Austen
Mark Twain
Jimmy Stewart
Thomas Jefferson
Henry David Thoreau
Douglas Adams
Annie Oakley
Franklin Roosevelt
Benjamin Franklin
Sophocles

You get one more, Tris! Who is Josephine Baker?

Kat, your list is very interesting!

Wasnt Josephine Baker the african american dancer who make a career in France and helped in the resistance during WWII?

My list:

  1. Mother Theresa
  2. Plato
  3. Mohandas Gandhi
  4. Beethoven
  5. Verdi
  6. Miguel de Cervantes
  7. Pedro Albizu Campus
  8. José Martí
  9. Eugenio María de Hostos
  10. Karl Marx

A good combination to get music and lively conversation from the guests…

But if I get one more, someone doesn’t have a dinner partner! Look at that list. Who do you figure goes stag out of that group?

Josephine Baker 1925 - 1975 American expatriate showgirl, singer, dancer, spy, writer, rights activist, and one woman social whirlwind of Paris, before, during, and after World War II. I figure her as a natural dinner partner for either Gandhi, or Jefferson. Not that I would turn down her company myself, mind you.

Tris

Hmm…any ten people? Sure, I’ll give it a shot.

In no order,

Albert Einstein
Matt Groening
Alexander the Great
Cleopatra
Jerry O’Connell
Margaret Weis
Tracy Hickman
Hank Azaria
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Sir Isaac Newton

Hmm…half of my list is made up of entertainers, and another three are scientists, and two world leaders. If I could combine their powers, I could do anything!

In no particular order, with short descriptions.

1)Miyamoto Musashi, famous Japanese swordsman. Bested over 60 opponents in single combat.
2)J. Robert Oppenheimer. I can’t believe Bouv picked this before me. Called the Father of the Atomic Bomb.
3)Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest physicist/mathematicians ever.
4)Genghis Khan, conqueror.
5)David Halberstam, journalist.
6)Sir Francis Walsingham. Spymaster for Elizabeth I.
7)Malcom X. Militant civil rights activist.
8)George Bernard Shaw, playwright.
9)Amadeus Mozart, composer.
10)Benjamin Franklin, inventor. Statesman.

My wife picks
1)Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
2)Mary, Queen of Scots.
3)Jane Austen, author.
4)Jesus of Nazareth
5)Stephen King, author.
6)Peter Sellers, actor.
7)Julius Caesar.
8)Malcom X.
9)Mary Shelley. Author of Frankenstein.
10)Stevie Wonder.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? :wink: It’s awfully author-heavy, I’ll give you that.

Hmmm. This is tough, but I’ve finally settled on:

[li] Isaac Asimov[/li][li] Francis Bacon[/li][li] Thomas Jefferson[/li][li] Catherine the Great[/li][li] Che Guevara[/li][li] Marie Curie[/li][li] Albrecht Duerer[/li][li] Michael J. Fox[/li][li] Sappho[/li][li] Charles Darwin[/li]

But at least you know the wine would match every course and you wouldn’t run out of dinner rolls.

  1. My paternal grandfather
  2. My maternal grandfather
  3. Ben Franklin
  4. Thomas Jefferson
  5. George Carlin
  6. Margaret Mead
  7. JFK, Jr.
  8. Eleanor Roosevelt
  9. M. Gandhi
  10. Simone Signoret

And to round out the table, Duck Duck Goose.

You could solve all the world’s problems by desert!

  1. Richard Feynman
  2. George Sand
  3. Sir Richard Burton (the explorer and translator, not the actor)
  4. Jimmy Buffett
  5. Veronica Franco
  6. Tom Robbins
  7. Dorothy Parker
  8. Oscar Wilde
  9. Zora Neale Hurston
  10. Lady Lois Robbins, my paternal great-grandmother

With apologies to my esteemed guests whos names I have horribly misspelled…

  1. Socrates
  2. Karl Marx
  3. Stanly Kubrick
  4. Sylvia Plath
  5. Rumi
  6. Leonardo DaVinci
  7. Sergei Eisenstein
  8. Fydor Dostoevsky
  9. Igmar Bergen
    10.Linus Torvalds

D. W. Griffith (silent movie director)
Buster Keaton (silent movie comic actor)
Bill Mauldin (cartoonist and author)
James Thurber (humorist and cartoonist)
Edgar Allan Poe (author)
Edie Sedgwick (Pop Sixties superchick)
Thomas Sully (Early American portrait artist)
John L. Sullivan (turn-of-the-century boxer)
Bugsy Siegel (gangster)
Mary Todd Lincoln (theater-goer)

Good to see Franklin and Jefferson on so many lists already.

For me:
[ul]
[li]Benjamin Franklin[/li][li]Thomas Jefferson[/li][li]John von Neumann[/li][li]Charles Darwin[/li][li]Samuel Johnson[/li][li]Geoffrey Chaucer[/li][li]Leonardo da Vinci[/li][li]Galileo Galilei[/li][li]Maimonides[/li][li]William Calvin[/li][/ul]