Can I argue that JFK shouldn’t be on this list? I can’t think of anything he did in his life that would suggest that he would have done anything good.
Austria was hellbent on declaring war on Serbia, and the Archduke was just an excuse. It was a pretty flimsy excuse, when you consider that it occurred in Bosnia, which had been annexed by Austria. The terrorist WAS Serbian, but he wasn’t endorsed by the Serbian government. At one point, the Black Hand, of which Princip was a member, was patronized by the Crown Prince Alexander, who wanted to control it himself (ie, keep it for good, and use it to help Serbia, not blow people up), but he later decided it was a waste. I’m simplifying, of course.
And Germany-the Kaiser especially-was dying for a chance to show off.
Christopher Marlowe, for pretty much the same selfish reasons as Manda JO.
Albert Einstein.
I’d go back and save him before the Nazis got there hands on him.
If we could get him to America then the Germans would never have gotten the bomb and won World War II, and the last 55 years of cruelty and totatlitarianistic rule would never have happened. The good guys would have won and it would be a better world.
I wish I could do that.
Lou Gehrig.
The fact of the matter is this: If you put everyone’s problems in the whole wide world into a hat, and then you passed the hat around, you’d be lucky to get your own problems back.
Lou Gehrig understood that.
For my money, we ought to keep people like that around for as long as possible. And – if possible – longer.
–B
Anne Frank.
Tibs.
Jaco Pastorius
so so sad when he was killed. I miss all the music he didn’t make.
I’d save that one kid who would have went on to have cures for AIDS and Cancer. This kid would have been brillant as an adult. Unfortunately he died while test riding his homemade rocket ship that was constructed out of filled gas cans, petrolium jelly, and a pilot light. He would have been brillant as an adult. Sure was a stupid kid though.
(Just saying in my fevered brain (I feel terribly ill today) kinda way that it’s hard to know who we’ve lost that would have made a difference.)
[…admiring Scylla’s brilliant post…]
Pericles. Get him some antibiotics. Other choices are good too.
Hitler, so he could be captured and tried at Nuremberg.
for JUSTINH who said supra (above), “Can I argue that JFK shouldn’t be on this list? I can’t think of anything he did in his life that would suggest that he would have done anything good.”
See: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html
Partial quote: "His [JFK’s] Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” As President, he set out to redeem his campaign pledge to get America moving again. His economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty.
Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society.
He wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations…"
An now I would like to add Martin Luther King.
Have a nice day. 
Ooh, toughie. Hands down, Gandhi. The world could have used Gandhi for a little while longer than it did… While I’m at it, maybe I should figure out a way to get Hitler to not fight in World War I (or at least give him a cushy desk job, so that his little nerve-gas incident never occured), and get him into the Vienna art school, so that World War II and the ensuing staring contest between the Soviets and the West never would have happened.
So many choices. My opinion?
Save Lenin. No, not me, Lenin the leader of Russia. The longer Lenin stayed alive, the less time Stalin would be in power. Also, Lenin undoubtedly had plans to actually move towards communism following NEP, unlike all of his successors.
But that’s just what I think.
We want to save someone who passed on well before they had finished giving great things to the world? No contest:
Jim Henson
for curiosities sake either ghengis or kublia khan, I mean the mongols were close to england when kublia got sick and died, how would the world be with him around for another 20 years?
for selfish reasons Bob Marley. (ok not entirely selfish, he was a serious proponent of world peace and tolerance)
schplebordnik wrote:
Oh, come come now. You know as well as I do that if you saved Edith Keeler, Spock would just go back through the Guardian of Forever and let her get killed again.
Will Rogers–The world always needs more laughter and a good grasp of reality.
WallyM–same reason.
I’d save Archimedes. At the rate he was going, before he was foolishly killed by a Roman centurion, he might have discovered the principles of analytic geometry and many more principles of optics back in Ancient Greece, and greatly increased human progress.
Tracer is inarguably right. You have to kill Spock while saving Edith.