Timeline Diddling

Firstly, if this concept has already been discussed to death in the SDMB, I heartily apologize and ask the Mods that Be to relegate it to the dustbin posthaste.

Secondly, I recognize that diddling with time is a theme rimed with hoarfrost and nothing new at all, but by limiting the timeline as I have done, perhaps we may evoke some things of interest.

Thirdly, I am cognizant that the ‘go back in time and kill your grandpa’ paradox leads to the never ending time loop paradox. I believe this is popularly referred to as ‘Temporal Eddies’ (no relation to Haskell who ended up as a cop in the San Fernando Valley.)

Fourthly, if time travel were possible, only the most dimwitted would attempt to change one jot or tittle of it for fear of unmaking themselves in the process.

Fifthly, how do we know someone has not already played silly-buggers with history?

So, with these caveats firmly in mind (but for purposes of this thread, completely ignored):

If you could change one event which occurred in the last 105 years, what would it be? How would the world look today due that change? Minor or major – take your pick.

For example:

If you could screw up Babe Ruth’s batting average, would we now be eating Ty Cobb chocolate bars? (I am not a baseball aficionado, so don’t know if that exactly works, but you get the idea.)

If you could stop Teddy Roosevelt from picking up the Panama Canal mantle from France, how would the lack of the canal impact on global commerce, WWI, WWII and subsequent events?

If you had strangled Barry Gordy in his crib would we have ‘Reality TV’ today? What would have taken its place?

And here’s the big one – if you could have run up on stage and pre-empted Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ what tack might time have taken in the absence of this tempest in a ‘D’ cup?

Kindly forgive the lengthiness of this OP and respond as you see fit.

I wouldn’t really do this, but it’d be interesting to see how far time ripples can flow. I’ll go back to some random morning of my childhood and make myself eat something different for breakfast. Perhaps my eating cereal instead of oatmeal on November 5th will have a negligible effect, or perhaps this little detail will have a ripple effect and drastically change my or someone else’s life.

I’m torn between going back to 1914 and preventing the assassination of Franz Ferdinand or going back to 1982 and buying 10,000 shares of Microsoft.

Do the 1982 one, if for no other reason that saving the Archduke’s life probably won’t matter much, other then changing the outbreak of WW1 by a few years at most.

FTR, Baby Ruths were named after Grover Cleveland’s daughter.

And a Ty Cobb candy bar would most likely be nothing more than a large turd with nuts.

Definitely the stock option. I was born in '82, so it would have been nice to grow up with some wealth if I could have convinced my mom and dad to invest

Hitler? Stalin? Pft. There’s riches to be made.

Oh, wonderful. Now I’m always going to have that image in my mind when I try to eat a candy bar.