What historical event do you wish you had been alive for?

[cochrane]

@Amateur_Barbarian

I was alive, but still in diapers, so I’d pick August 5, 1962, LA, with a stop at a hardware store for a crowbar.

@JKellyMap

Help us numbskulls out. RFK was '68…wasn’t Malcolm X killed in New York?..hmmm…???

Goodbye, Norma Jean.

[JKellyMap]

Ah, yes. Thanks. So, you would have broken into her house and cleaned out her medicine cabinet?

[Annie-Xmas]

Oh to have seen one of Shakespeare’s plays and talked with the writer.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@JKellyMap

Ah, yes. Thanks. So, you would have broken into her house and cleaned out her medicine cabinet?

I dunno. Something.

The ultimate kitten to be saved.

Fun fact: her house WAS extensively bugged with gear not available to the general public in 1962. It was all found embedded in the construction around 1985.

[Ranger_Jeff]

I was alive, but too young to have appreciated it then, but I wish as an adult I could have attended one of those lunch time sessions at the Cavern Club circa 1961 or so.

[SpoilerVirgin]

@jtur88

I doubt if the Wright Brothers flight got the kind of media coverage that would place it in the living memory of anyone still alive in 1969. “Being alive” for an historical event is not the same as knowing that it happened and having a sense of its lmport or having your life impacted by it in any meaningful way.

The first flight at Kitty Hawk was front page news around the country. Here it is in the San Francisco Call. It wasn’t quite the moon landing, but it was recognized as a significant and newsworthy event at the time.

I would be in Philadelphia in 1787, watching the creation of the United States of America.

[Grestarian]

@Amateur_Barbarian

I was alive, but still in diapers, so I’d pick August 5, 1962, LA, with a stop at a hardware store for a crowbar.

I can’t figure it out.
LA = Los Angeles? The Zoot Suit riots were decades earlier and the King Riots were decades later.
LA = Louisiana? That’s really got me mystified!

—G???

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Grestarian

I can’t figure it out.
LA = Los Angeles? The Zoot Suit riots were decades earlier and the King Riots were decades later.
LA = Louisiana? That’s really got me mystified!

Mrs. Mortenson would be disappointed. (Already answered above…)

[jacksparrow]

That’s a great question, and one I almost always use as a conversations starter when I’m with someone for an extended period of time. My choices:

1- Construction of the Pyramids in 2,600 bce
2- The murder of Julius Caesar on the steps of the Senate
3- Plymouth during the first month that the Mayflower and crew were in America
4- Egypt during Ramses the Great’s rule
5- Ford’s Theater when Lincoln got shot
6- Greece/Athens when Socrates died
7- Hawaii during King Kamehameha’s time

Edit- Also add:
8- Gunfight at the OK Coral
9- Custer’s last stand
10- On deck of the Titanic when it hit the iceberg

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

The 1910 appearance of Halley’s Comet. It was an extremely close approach and bright apparition, and there much less light pollution back then.

At least I did get to see Hale-Bopp, though.

[Yumblie]

@Airman_Doors_USAF

Back in 1969 there was the expectation that we would continue our space exploration after we landed on the Moon. Of course, that never really happened, for a variety of reasons. It’s been our crowning achievement as a people, the placing of men on another celestial body. I frequently find myself wondering if I will be alive to see us go back, or to go on to explore other planets.

I wish I had been alive to see it happen. Alas, the last landing was in 1972, and I was born in 1976. What event do you look back at and say to yourself “Boy, I wish I had been there to see it”?

When I saw the thread title this is what I immediately thought of. I get chills when I see the original footage, trying to imagine what it must’ve been like to see it live.

[pohjonen]

About 12000 years ago I would like to have been standing (safely) on a hill watching the deluge from Glacial Lake Missoula roar by.

[clairobscur]

@Airman_Doors_USAF

I wish I had been alive to see it happen. Alas, the last landing was in 1972, and I was born in 1976. What event do you look back at and say to yourself “Boy, I wish I had been there to see it”?

Born in 1976, you might live until 2060 or so. With a bit of luck, you could see men landing on Mars. Don’t have regrets.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@pohjonen

About 12000 years ago I would like to have been standing (safely) on a hill watching the deluge from Glacial Lake Missoula roar by.

That, or the first few hours of the Mediterranean filling when the dam across the now-Gibraltar strait gave way. According to the new Cosmos, it took a year for the sea to fill.