I find this topic really fascinating. You can really get a bead on the personality of the person answering this type of question.
Here are the parameters:
You have 24 hours to spend at your destination. You’ll be impervious to detection, but able to interact with any and all individuals of your choosing. It’s basically a free pass so you can show up and not be labeled as a witch or warlock and get burned at the stake or drawn and quartered.
Language is not an issue.
Geography is not an issue. You automatically show up at your destination.
Where would you go? What would you do? Would your destination be based on personal gain, or as a purely knowledgeable experience? Revenge perhaps?
Myself, I’m torn between 2 destinations: A cash windfall, or a pursuit of experience. Here’s my experience… I would spend a day at the opening games of the Flavian Amphitheater. I’d find out once and for all if they really did flood the thing for mock sea battles, and finally see what real Roman gladiators had to endure. It’s so far beyond the modern experience that I bet hollywood got it completely wrong.
Either my own childhood (to see how it matches my memories), or about a hundred years from now (to see what cultural changes we’re creating without knowing it).
I’d like to go to Waubunsee County, in Kansas, circa 1918-1926.
This would let me see my maternal grandparents as young people, from their courting to their marriage.
Since I have to choose one day, I’d go, on Christmas Eve, 1923, to the little Lutheran church where Grandma first went to church with Grandpa. She wasn’t raised in a church, and this was the first time she went there with him.
At 106 Grandma is still with us. She was born, one year to the day, after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. Talk about change in your lifetime!
Something like this, but I would need a heavily armored survival capsule. I would like to watch the sun expand and engulf the earth in a few billion years.
Plan B would be to be as close as possible to a supernova and still survive.
Like most people here, probably, I’d want to go back to visit famous historical figures, and also to see how my own ancestors were living.
Then I’d want to have some fun with rock and roll history, and go to:
Various places in the mid 1950’s, to watch the early Elvis, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, any number of rockabilly musicians on the scene then, etc., etc., etc.
Hamburg and Liverpool, 1962, to see the Beatles before they became huge.
The Whiskey, summer of 1966, to see the Doors and especially the set they did with Van Morrison and Them.
Today I’m almost incredulous that the whole psychedelic “head” music era was barely five years after the Beatles were still hammering out old R&R covers, interspersed with their originals, in the clubs.
I’d first go deposit a minimum amount in a Swiss bank account that bears interest. Then I’d make a reservation at Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and party hearty.
The parameters don’t limit the number of trips so I wouldn’t travel that far. Just go to tomorrow, learn all that I can so when I return to today, I’ll try to make it a better tomorrow.
I can’t choose just one place. I would travel back to Florence Italy during the Renaissance to watch Michaelangelo carve the statue of David and watch Leonardo paint the Mona Lisa. Then I would got to Egypt and witness the buillding of the pyramids.
I’d either be present at Jesus’ crucifixion, or at his tomb two mornings later*. (If I could get 48 hours rather than 24, I wouldn’t have to choose.)
Second choice: go back in time to 1971, and have a lively conversation with my 17 year old self.
Third choice: wait until I’m in my 80s, then jump forward in time 25-30 years to have a conversation with my son. Being over 50 years older than him means I don’t have high hopes of seeing much of his life past age 40 or so. I’d love to get one glimpse of his life past the end of mine.
Bonus pick: jump forward in time to A.D. 2101, to see if war is beginning.
*Wonder if I might get written into the record as one of those mysterious persons/angels at the tomb who greet Jesus’ friends.
That would be fantastic! I really hope you get the chance one day.
As a baroque music enthusiast, I’ve always been curious to hear what the celebrated castrati really sounded like, so I should like to go to London in 1734 and attend a performance of Artaserse by Broschi and Hasse, in which both Farinelli and Senesino sang.
