# If you could meet one famous historical figure.... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 20, 2000, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189 "2000-07-20T02:46:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![D.Lerious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee59a6/32.png) [@D.Lerious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D.Lerious)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/1 "2000-07-20T02:46:26Z")
who would it be and why? what you two talk about? ---
**Author:** ![Zoing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecccb3/32.png) [@Zoing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoing)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/2 "2000-07-20T04:56:18Z")
historical? too many to count. one, i suppose, would be alexander the great. he seemed interesting. non-historical would be terry gilliam. i worship that man. ---
**Author:** ![Nacho4Sara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Nacho4Sara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nacho4Sara)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/3 "2000-07-20T05:10:53Z")
I’d love to meet Walt Whitman. From his poems, which I love, I have an idea that we think similarly. And since he completely birthed the American poem, I’d love to try and get inside his brain. Also, TS Eliot. I’d love to ask him about the first stanza from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Did the excerpt from Dante’s Inferno mean that he sees hope? That we have a chance, because Dante _could_ go back though Guido thought he could not, because he could spread the truth? Or is there nothing but desolation? And was the “overwhelming question” a marriage proposal, or was it about hope and the future? “Do I dare to eat a peach?” _sigh_ Just wondering. ---
**Author:** ![Nacho4Sara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Nacho4Sara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nacho4Sara)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/4 "2000-07-20T05:12:12Z")
Heeeey, sorry about that underline thing. My bad. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/5 "2000-07-20T07:47:04Z")
It would have to be Jesus. I could ask him about being a Jewish revolutionary and horrify him by telling him what has been done in his name over the last 2000 years. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/6 "2000-07-20T07:49:01Z")
Or Hitler , but just so I could give a good swift kick to the 'nads . 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DRY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@DRY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DRY)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/7 "2000-07-20T10:22:12Z")
Probably either King Richard III of England, or Julius Caesar. I’ve read extensively about both of them (several biographies of each) and they both strike me as fascinating. Both of them were depicted in so many ways, both positively and negatively. It would be nice to form my own opinion based on first hand evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Osip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4491bb/32.png) [@Osip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Osip)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/8 "2000-07-20T11:21:51Z")
Nikoli Tesla. WOuld talk about any and everything. Osip ---
**Author:** ![PRISM02](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@PRISM02](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PRISM02)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/9 "2000-07-20T12:28:01Z")
Believe it or not, Albert Einstein, because I feel that there is a serious flaw in his time and space theory but don’t have the understanding to explain it. ---
**Author:** ![stuyguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/10 "2000-07-20T14:54:14Z")
Pris, you know I can’t get enough of your “smut shop” posts, so I hope you won’t be offended when I tell you that there is something very amusing about this sentence: “I feel that there is a serious flaw in his time and space theory but don’t have the understanding to explain it.” ---
**Author:** ![soulsling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@soulsling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/soulsling)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/11 "2000-07-20T14:59:02Z")
Theodore Roosevelt. He battled through so much hardship in his lifetime, and still managed to conquer his fears, stand for what he believed in, and succesfully be happy. I would like to ask him about his personal feelings on family and relationships. To get to know him as a person. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/12 "2000-07-20T15:07:34Z")
This is a tough call. I’d probably want to meet the Venerable Bede and Virgil. I won’t burden you with my reasons. 🙂 MR ---
**Author:** ![kiffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/d78d45/32.png) [@kiffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiffa)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/13 "2000-07-20T15:08:22Z")
While there are lots of folks who could be interesting in one or two topics, I really would like to sit in LBJ’s cadillac convertible, drink bottled beer out of the cooler, carouse around the Texas countryside, discuss the art of politics in his era and the difference b/w then and now, social justice and civil rights and why/how the hell did he fuck up in Vietnam so badly. I would also like to discuss men and women, what he found so charming in women and what he loved in his wife, his art in intimidation, intimacy, persuasion, cajouling. I hated him during the Vietnam War. Now I find him fascinating. The fact that his presidential library is the epitome of what such an institution should be allows historians, political scientists, journalists to really delve into his documented past. Therefore, we’ll have lots of interesting material to read in the coming decades. ---
**Author:** ![Ceejaytee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ceejaytee/32/2956_2.png) [@Ceejaytee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ceejaytee)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-meet-one-famous-historical-figure/26189/14 "2000-07-20T15:37:14Z")
Benjamin Franklin. Fascinating guy. Renaissance man. Diplomat, scientist, inventor, writer, rebel. I worship that man. “He tore lightning from the sky and the scepter from the tyrants.” (Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, about Frankin) and my old sig: People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. –David H. Comins (Comins’ Law)