# Time Travel-Actual incident? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 2, 2000, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830 "2000-08-02T11:51:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![egkelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/db5fbb/32.png) [@egkelly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/egkelly)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/1 "2000-08-02T11:51:57Z")
A few years back I read about a couple of elderly Englishwomen, who were visiting the palace of Versailles , sometime around 1910. They claimed to have stumbled onto a garden party which took place sometime around the year 1778? They claim to have seen Marie Antoinette, and described the guests (clad in 18th century garb) in great detail! I believes that historians verified that much of what they reported was historically accurate. I have never been able to find out more about this alleged incident; does anybody know more? ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/2 "2000-08-02T12:06:37Z")
I don’t believe it for a minute, but it’s a great story! ---
**Author:** ![TheThill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheThill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheThill)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/3 "2000-08-02T12:25:20Z")
Yes, I saw it too yesterday, er, I mean tomorrow… ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/4 "2000-08-02T14:11:28Z")
Upon hearing an incident of this sort I always analyze the possibilities; a- Two elderly ladies travelled in time b- Two elderly ladies are senile, (and/or drunk. and/or lying, and/or…) I bet the correct answer is b. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/5 "2000-08-02T14:18:19Z")
I believe I read this story in _The People’s Almanac_ along with a story about a man who purportedly disappeared into the fourth dimension. 'S the only place I remember reading about them and frankly I don’t buy it. Maybe we could get Cecil on the case - this one sounds like it’s worthy of a tackle. ---
**Author:** ![darkcool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@darkcool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/darkcool)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/6 "2000-08-02T14:27:54Z")
Oh, please. ---
**Author:** ![jasonb94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/71e660/32.png) [@jasonb94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasonb94)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/7 "2000-08-02T14:33:13Z")
I remember seeing a pseudo-documentary on Discovery Channel about a US Navy vessel that supposedly traveled through time during WWII. IIRC, the Navy was working with Tesla to make ships invisible. The experiment produced the desired result, but sailors on the ship (USS Eldridge?) reported that they were flung back or forward in time. What kind of documentation is there of this event? Anyone with more details? ---
**Author:** ![Montfort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Montfort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Montfort)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/8 "2000-08-02T14:56:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jasonb94 \* > \*\*I remember seeing a pseudo-documentary on Discovery Channel about a US Navy vessel that supposedly traveled through time during WWII. IIRC, the Navy was working with Tesla to make ships invisible. The experiment produced the desired result, but sailors on the ship (USS Eldridge?) reported that they were flung back or forward in time. What kind of documentation is there of this event? Anyone with more details? \*\* Do a search on the **Philadelphia Experiment**. I know Cecil’s covered it. (The short answer is: it didn’t happen) ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecb155/32.png) [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/9 "2000-08-02T15:04:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jasonb94 \* > \*\*I remember seeing a pseudo-documentary on Discovery Channel about a US Navy vessel that supposedly traveled through time during WWII. IIRC, the Navy was working with Tesla to make ships invisible. The experiment produced the desired result, but sailors on the ship (USS Eldridge?) reported that they were flung back or forward in time. What kind of documentation is there of this event? Anyone with more details? \*\* I once saw a documentary called “Final Countdown” about an aircraft carrier group (USS Nimitz, I believe) in 1980 that encountered a strange storm, and when it was over, they found themselves in 1941 in radar contact with the Japanese air group that attacked Pearl Harbor! The Captain and the Executive Officer (who looked strangely like Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen!) went round and round with the moral implications of attacking the Japanese and thus preventing America’s involvement in WWII, even going to far as to scramble a couple F-14’s and do a flyby on the incoming planes. So anyway, they finally decided they had to attack, but just at that moment, the storm came back and took them back to 1980. How exciting, It almost sounds like a movie! ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/10 "2000-08-02T15:04:23Z")
This is less of a hijack than the previous poster’s tiring evocation (yet again) of the [Philadelphia Experiment](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=28224). The fact-based graphic novel From Hell has a similar incident. As the killer in 1888 walks with the first of his victims down an alley, he looks through a window into a 1950’s living room, complete with television and a man in post-WWII clothing looking at the pair in astonishment. The author, Alan Moore, based the incident on the real report of a man who lived in the home with that window in the 1950’s. He heard people talking, pulled back his curtain and saw a man and woman in Victorian dress walking down the alley. I’m sure this is no more true than the incident in the OP, but it’s pretty neat and eerie nonetheless. Moore put several other time-trick scenes in the book, most of them near the end. They’re all based on eyewitness reports of strange phenomena. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/11 "2000-08-02T15:18:46Z")
There was an articl…er…short story in an issue of Asimov’s earlier this year in which Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein participated in the Philadelphia Experiment. I’m sure it was historically accurate. How can you say that the Philadelphia Experiment didn’t happen? Art Bell told me it did. ---
**Author:** ![Avumede](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/avumede/32/7235_2.png) [@Avumede](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avumede)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/12 "2000-08-02T15:18:54Z")
Every once in a while, on a Saturday night, I see people in strange historical garb congregating around the neighborhood Masonic lodge. I stay away lest I am pulled into the bizarre time distortion field. ---
**Author:** ![Outrider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9d8465/32.png) [@Outrider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Outrider)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/13 "2000-08-02T15:29:09Z")
[blatant hijack] If you’re the kind of person who enjoys speculative time-travel novels, “Time and Again” by Jack Finney is probably one of the better ones out there, and has achieved something resembling cult status since it was first published in 1970. I’ve never read the book in english, but the russian translation was superb. [/blatant hijack] ---
**Author:** ![missbunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/76d3ee/32.png) [@missbunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missbunny)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/14 "2000-08-02T15:42:18Z")
I hear that people living in Williamsburg and near Sturbridge Village (MA) often see people dressed in period clothes. Sometimes these people are even talking like they did in the olden days! Obviously there is some kind of time-warp-worm-hole thing going on here on a massive scale. Also, real fairies were living in some little English girl’s yard (proof: photographs!); some person in the 40s (or thereabouts) was the reincarnation of Bridie Murphy (proof: Irish accent and knowledge of Irish daily life & history!); and the aliens have infiltrated every level of our government and there’s an international conspiracy to hide this from the American people (proof: sorry, that’s classified). I’d go with sailor’s “B” or assume that the two women happened upon a _costume_ garden party. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/15 "2000-08-02T15:55:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Outrider \* > **…“Time and Again” by Jack Finney…I’ve never read the book in english, but the russian translation was superb.** A pravda li? Nikogda ne znal, chto perevodili Finney na russkom. Haven’t read _Time and Again_ but I have read several of his short stories. Heavy on the nostalgia but a good read nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/16 "2000-08-02T18:01:21Z")
I went back in tme once, to the 1930’s. I found this weird “time portal” thingy. Me and my friend had to go back, because I was looking for my doctor (he was lost there). I fell in love with this beautiful women, but I had to let her die, so Hitler wouldn’t win World War II. It’s kind of a long story. What? ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/17 "2000-08-02T18:50:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ZenBeam \* > \*\*I went back in tme once, to the 1930’s. I found this weird “time portal” thingy. Me and my friend had to go back, because I was looking for my doctor (he was lost there). I fell in love with this beautiful women, but I had to let her die, so Hitler wouldn’t win World War II. It’s kind of a long story. > What? \*\* Another case for burning all old Star Trek episodes. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/18 "2000-08-02T20:14:48Z")
**EG,** if you’re still with us, here’s a website that includes a version of the story you describe. [http://sites.netscape.net/fantasyrock/timeshifts.html](http://sites.netscape.net/fantasyrock/timeshifts.html) But be warned: here is where they’re coming from– > [@](#): > > The first and foremost piece of evidence [of time travel] can be found in unearthed archeological oddities like manufactured metal objects, devices, and tools found encased in rock millions of years old. And then there are the human-like footprints found in dinosaur territory. But the most pervasive evidence that someone of something is continually altering our world, and therefore the fabric of our reality, is an event called a Time Shift… I found this by putting “Englishwomen Versailles party” into Google. There were other hits, but I don’t have time to C & P them. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/19 "2000-08-02T21:48:30Z")
The Eldridge/Philadelphia Project story is a canard, which IIRC was the product of the imagination of the same Charles Berlitz who foisted the Bermuda Triangle on us. If Asimov did indeed write such a story (and I’d love to get linked to references to it; it’d be a fun read!), he was having some gentle Asimovian fun with the urban legend. The account of the two women, however, stands on a little firmer ground. Whatever happened to them (and I won’t rule out fraud, daydream, or whatever) was that they were touring the gardens of the Petit Trianon, one of the “out-palaces” at Versailles, when they came upon this anachronistic event that they viewed and later described. There were no costume parties or such going on – the area was a public park at the time. Do a search on Petit Trianon, and see what you come up with. ---
**Author:** ![triton277](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@triton277](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/triton277)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2000, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830/20 "2000-08-02T22:00:02Z")
Yeah, it probably happened. In fact, I once saw a documentary on another case of time travel. There were these two kids who were in danger of flunking history and then one of them would have had to go to military school in Alaska and then their band would have had to break up and the only way they could pass history would be to get an A on their final presentation. So what they did was they got a telephone booth and traveled through time and picked up historical figures. Then they brought the figures back to their presentation and the historical figures did the presentation for them and the two kids got all the credit. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty impressive feat of science myself. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-actual-incident/27830.md?page=2)