The lulz?
You can keep Columbus from returning to Spain without killing him. At least not directly killing him.
You’re supposed to be making things at least marginally worse. How does changing a conflict in which the obvious bad guys won to a conflict in which the obvious bad guys lose qualify as making things worse?
You want my Benevolent!Skald from Counter-Earth, or at least his gear. I’ll PM you the vernier settings and you can go check out his fortress of virtue. 'm pretty sure all the poison gas has dissipated by now.
ETA: Also, I think your Madison plan will prevent South Carolina, at the very least, from ratifying the Constitution, and probably several other states as well. Not all of them Southern states. On balance I think that will outweigh preventing the Civil War, so have at it.
I’d go somewhere I know archeologists find dinosaur fossils in the mid or early 20th century, but during the dinosaur age. Arrange a bunch of dino bones in the bog so that when an excavation crew charts the site the fossils spell out “SATAN ROCKS.” This discovery popping up when the creationists are defending Genesis against the evolutionists by claiming Satan placed dinosaur fossils as a deceipt ought liven up the debate a tad.
It would be amusing to put some stirrups and spurs in among the bones of dinosaurs.
Can I make lot of trips? None of them will take long, but there will be a lot of them. I would appear in the Forum in Rome during the empire, where I would fire off some guns, claim to be a mighty sorcerer, and demand to see the Emperor. Once in his presence, I’d give him some information about the future, or a useful bit of advice. In return I would make some crazy demand, like, ‘Give me a pound of pickled herring and bolt of wool! I shall return in a fortnight to claim it, and you will do well not to anger me!’ Then, I’d set off a flash-bang and hop forward exactly two weeks. I’d appear in the Forum again and repeat the whole process of advice and crazy demand (‘Your body guards must form themselves into a human pyramid when I next return!’) for decades, maybe centuries. Long enough so that it would be known as a real thing, not just some bit of folklore. Oh, and if any emperor refuses a demand I couldn’t kill him, but I could help his rival with my sorcerous powers (which means giving them knowledge and maybe advanced weapons [like primitive rockets]). I’d also show up to a few monarchs in the middle ages and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, just to prove that my influence extends forever
The kings and emperors of the future would always be ready for the mad sorcerer, his mighty powers and his asinine demands! It would be great!
I would talk to Joseph Smith and convince him to call his new religion ‘Dianetics’.
Sneak up behind Sirhan Sirhan and put him in a headlock, though I’m not entirely convinced that would’ve helped.
Pack laptops, large projection screens, and a projectors. Set up (in disguise, of course) at various mid-1800s Ku Klux Klan meetings. Proceed to play repeating video of Obama’s inauguration, Sotomayor’s confirmation, and other relevant clips, all with a large caption at the bottom reading, “You are all wrong, and your efforts went for naught.” Smile and depart.
Two things:
You have to make the world marginally worse. Having a President Bobby Kennedy instead of a President Nixon wouldn’t do that (except, arguably, for the folks who get a commission for managing Woodward’s and Bernstein’s assets).
Your trip has to be a minimum of 100 years into the past.
:smack: I just realized that! I’m an idiot! I should’ve said that I’d go back in time and show Roosevelt which countries ended up with nukes. He might have changed his mind.
Foil McKinley’s assassin. TR would never be president. That would be bully.
Naw. Sometimes we have to just ignore some of Skald’s little rules. So, I liked the “no killing” part, but not the “have to make the world worse” as then- why do it at all?
Go back to Lourdes in 1858 and appear to Bernadette Soubirous 18 times…dressed as Ronald McDonald.
Maybe bring LSD to ancient Rome. Inform the Trojans & Emperors that sex with anyone is better, or they’ll never get sick. We’d end up with aqueducts in the Salvador Dali design.
I always wanted to go back to a Neolithic tribe brandishing my Bic lighter.
If we are to believe Orson Scott Card’s alternate history Pastwatch, preventing Columbus from his trip or stopping him from coming back could lead to a nice peaceful world living in harmony, or to an absolutely horrible catastrophe on genocidal proportions, depending on how it and the consequences are orchestrated. So following OSC’s ideas of the Tlaxcala conquers the world -timeline there could be plenty of opportunities for mischief.
True that, helping the Trojans against the Greeks would be a good deed in the short run. But maybe the victory and well-tuned tampering on Trojan rulers’ attitudes would enable Troy to establish a stable conservative empire that a few hundred years later prevents ancient Greeks and the hellenistic world from taking on scientific progress and philosophy as they did in reality? Thus depriving the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world of its science background and slowing down the technological progress. Plenty of mischief possibilities there and at least worth of trying.
One decidedly not nice way of tampering with history: Mongol Great Khan Ögedei was a heavy drinker and died after one night of excessively fun drinking in 1241, presumably because of the excess fun. At that time the Mongol Empire was in the middle of a massive offensive campaign against Europe that was going well but was suddenly halted because of his death. Go back and somehow prevent Ögedei’s death (how though? Bring AA brochures in Mongolian?) thus allowing the Mongol army continue their attack towards west and possibly conquer all of Europe. Uh oh.