great answer! and i love your nickname!!
“i for one greet our new insect overlords…”
keeping with that theme, i nominate:
the release of the movie Batman and Robin
Tom Neidenfur’s pitch to Jack Clark in the '85 Dodgers-Cards League CHampionship series.
The too-early death of Jim Hensen.
The Dewey Decimal system. System of oppression, if you ask me…
The mistaken shooting of Stonewall Jackson following the battle of Chancellorville.
(As a side note of lunacy- I personally don’t believe that Jackson’s survival would have allowed the South to win the war. But Jackson, having survived the war, would have been a prime candidate for promoting healing between the two sides. He was one of the most esteemed heros in the South; but he was also a Determinist who would have accepted the South’s loss and the destruction of slavery as God’s will and turned his efforts towards carrying out God’s will, and he had already shown distaste and disgust for slavery and anti-freedmen laws by holding schools for freedmen where he taught them to read and write. Personally, I don’t see it as too much of a stretch to think of the new University of Freedmen being Howard-Jackson University, had Jackson survived; and I think having such an obvious hero make such obvious efforts at reconciliation may well have made a difference.
On the other hand, given the excorciation of Longstreet, and the distancing of Lee, perhaps not.)
Whatever fuckhead traded George Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000 to keep his failing theater afloat after the 1918 baseball season. Curse aside, he was a helluva ballplayer.
I wouldn’t touch military history, with the possible exception of getting Joyce Kilmer the hell away from German Sniper fire for the duration of WWI. Might have saved his life, thus saving his children from years of sexual abuse, thus saving his grandkids from the same thing.
Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor: good answer!
I was going to say the destruction of the temple of Artemis (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) by the Goths. But you’ve found something better!
So I’ll suggest the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc. She’s a poignant historical figure whose life story has always moved me.
Arnold, I’ve seen the ruins of the Temple of Artemis at Izmir, Turkey. No matter how little there is left, it is STILL an impressive sight. In the same vein, and just around the corner: Celcus’ Library.
The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hirsoshima and Nagasaki. Such sad, sad disasters.
I would like to erase from history the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip. It can be argued that there is a possibility that if the Archduke had not been killed that day then the whole 20th century might have been peaceful. That assanination sparked WWI which, in turn, lead to the utter collapse of most of the governments and economies in Europe. The Germans (along with the Italians and others) turned to fascism and the Russians turned to communism. You know the rest of the story.
I believe that historians of the future will consider June 28, 1914 as the first day of the 75 Years War between the titanic forces of democracy, fascism, and communism which ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Everything that happened in between will be considered part of the same series of events in history. WWI, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, D-day, the Berlin airlift, the Cold war, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Afghanistan, will all just be battles in a much larger war.
If, in truth, all of these events would have happened anyway. That there is no chance that mankind could have avoided the gigantic mistakes of fascism and communism. That the Holocaust was an inevitable part of human nature. Then, in that case, I guess the one event I’d like to erase from history is the evolution of humanity. Think of what a beautiful world this would be without any people with their false gods and stupid selfish ideas.
John Corrado, Jackson probably would simply have gone back to teaching at VMI, with the slight difference being the students worshiping the ground he walked on rather than considering him to be the oddest teacher at the school. 
kinoons said:
This could be true. I would still prefer to have most of my family (or at least the descendents they never had the chance to leave) still alive.
Iguana.
That’s simple: the rise to power of Hitler.
Without Hitler there would have been no Holocaust, no Japanese war, Stalin would have burned himself out, London would not have been bombed nearly to dust, no death camps, no Japanese torture camps, no nuclear bombs, none of the mess with France and Italy, and it is doubtful if the American Communist Party would ever have formed and McCarthy would have remained a second rate politician.
Even so, on the flip side, each horror has had beneficial effects, so it is difficult to say what should not have been. Ask any Jewish Death Camp survivor and he or she would probably agree that Hitler would be the one incident in history to ‘never have been.’ Ask a scientist and he would point out how because of WW2 we have synthetic rubber, synthetic oil, space craft, jet engines, antibiotics, synthetic fabrics, better foods, better food preservation, better weapons, better surgical and medical techniques. We also have nuclear power, nuclear medicine, sophisticated defensive and offensive weapons, new construction techniques and better aircraft.
The thing is, the price was exorbitantly high.
Pontius Pilate dismisses the case against Jesus of Nazareth.
That car crash that killed Princess Diana. I’d go back and keep her from getting into that car.
AHunter: I’m confused by your post here.
Are you Christian or not?
I’m asking because your original post is open to two different interpretations, depending on your religious viewpoints.
–Tim
See, now, there’s a problem with erasing events or even memories of events such as the holocaust. Think about those poor idiots who deny that the holocaust ever happened. They are all racist and hateful. They refuse to recognize the horror created by such sentiment. Without the holocaust, how many more such people would there be? This extends to many events in history. I’m glad that these things have happened in our past. Thus they are prevented from happening in our future. I would not want my grandchildren to face a Hitler.
If I were to erase an event from history, it would be the spilling of that weird stuff on my trousers yesterday morning. Man, that sucked.
the birth of jesus
I’ll be selfish and say I’d go back to Sept 25, 1986, and keep a car containing the prettiest lady in the world off the road.
{edited per request of poster-slythe}
Thanks Slythe, you’re the best.
Ugly