Sometime in September, 1985, at college, so I could meet my future husband sooner. (“Hi, honey!”)
If you could travel in time to see a single event on a single day in a single place: where and when?
Yeah, this. Seeing that event would have a big influence on my current belief that the Jesus suffering story is exaggerated bullshit.
It would be both terribly sad and facinating, but I’d want to watch the Titanic sink.
I was alive during this period, so you’re a spring chicken, baby. If you were actually present at those events it would be pretty amazing. I’d love to have seen the wall come down with my own two eyes.
[9/11 was weird enough where I was - in Newfoundland, where the transatlantic planes had to find a landing spot. ]
See. No fair killing Hitler, but you can listen to a speech.
We’re gonna hafta sell tickets.
It would be fascinating to go back and talk to the Greek Playwrights Sophocles and Euripides. I think they overlapped around 470 BC. In fact quite a few of the playwrights were alive around that time.
Now I’m picturing Jesus being whipped, and as he’s driven to his knees, blood spattering everywhere, he looks up and makes eye contact.
“So, real enough for ya, bitch?” (in English of course, with a slight Bronx accent… and a sardonic smile)
The raising of the American flag atop Mt Suribachi on Iwo Jima
Actually, that made me think: if I really want to Fight Ignorance Including My Own, I’d request seeing an event that I’m currently convinced didn’t occur.
So I’m going to get to see Atlantis sinking (or maybe show up a year before, at their zenith… can I learn the language before I go?), Jesus walking out of the tomb… or maybe Amelia Earhart landing safely and partying with heretofore unknown islanders!
30th July 1966, I could’ve been one of those people on the pitch who thought it was all over. In fact, perhaps that was me…or will be me…or is me…whatever. Think about it. If I was there then I would* know *it was all over anyway and so why not run on the pitch and immortalise myself?
I think I need a lie down now, causality is messing with my head.
Another option would be to be there at the opening night of “Romeo and Juliet” or "The Magic Flute"or a similar seminal work. But I think I’d restrain myself from running onto the stage for those.
I want to see those final days when that spinning asteroid heads unstoppably towards Earth. I want to see people skip jobs & work & school to come together on hilltops, knowing that there is no escape and no reason to hurt or take from others. I see it as culminating in an afternoon of weeping, prayer, and the holding of each other with the end coming right about sunset.
I can’t say that I was in the best position to witness those events but I was involved in some sense. 911 I was living 35 miles away, my Guard unit was called in and I saw the smoking ruins on that day. When the Berlin Wall came down I was stationed in Germany. I have a piece of the Wall that I chiseled off myself.
Julius Caesar’s death.
If everyone were offered this time travel excursion, the cruxifiction would be standing room only. Just read the reviews of others.
Trinity test shot
Cool. Thanks.
I would like to be present when the first word was spoken and understood, wherever and whenever that was. I’d like to know how it came to be necessary to speak.
Whitehall Palace on December 26, 1604, for the first recorded performance of Measure for Measure. Not only do I want to know how Shakespeare’s company handled Isabella’s reaction to the Duke’s proposal (one of the great “does she or doesn’t she” moments in world drama) and what King James thought of the play, but I’m sure Christmas celebrations at a seventeenth-century court would be well worth seeing in themselves.
Naturally, I would also give anything to see Love’s Labour’s Won, but since we don’t have any definite performance dates, it would be pretty hard to calibrate the time machine.
The collision that created the moon. Maybe from a safer vantage point than on proto-Earth, though.
Obligatory Buffy quote:
Vampire:This weekend, the night of St. Vigeous, our power shall be at its peak. When I kill her, it’ll be the greatest event since the crucifixion. And I should know. I was there.
Spike: You were there? Oh, please! If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock. I actually was at Woodstock. That was a weird gig. I fed off a flower person, and I spent the next six hours watchin’ my hand move.
My answer too.
Back up position is I would like to see the gunfight at the OK corral.
I’d love to witness The Big Bang. Not sure where I’d stand to view it, though.