Where would you time travel to? (Please read the setup)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’d love to see the first performance of Rhapsody in Blue; I have to wait about 7 years, I think. I might also go back to watch the Wright brothers. I know the OP said the big events will have already been documented, but it sounds like the time machine would give the experience of actually being there. Plus, I’d do it properly; see their workshop, their kite experiments, some of the public demonstrations after the first flight, etc.

What about being the first to visit famous events as their hundredth anniversary came up. Someone mentioned the Boston Molasses Flood. Or I could be the first to discover what caused the Hindenburg explosion.

22

Using an optical microscope involves putting the sample on a glass plate and mounting it in the holder so that it can be brought to the focal point and the light will shine through. It also may require staining the sample to bring out details. You can’t just look at things in the wild and expect to see anything.

23

I’ve thought about this before, and some of the places I’d most like to visit (mostly about elucidating major steps in the early evolution of life) would require bringing along a state of the art genetics lab and the scientists to run it. And “the past” is a really long time, with interesting species spread far and wide temporally. So I settled on 50,000 years ago. This time-frame would allow me to see anatomically-modern Homo sapiens at a time of great technological innovation, and see Neanderthals, Denisovians, and Hobbits (and any other archaic human species that may have still been around. I’d also like to see giant ground sloths and glyptodonts (along with other lost ice age megafauna), along with more recent extinctions such as the dodo, the Carolina Parakeet, and Steller’s sea cow.

24

I’m going to steal someone’s boarding pass and take two trips: one to the P-Tr Extinction Event (the Great Dying), the other to the K-Pg Extinction Event—two of the greatest game-changers our planet’s biosphere has endured.

Granted, both of these events would most likely already be recorded, as per the parameters of the OP. But, since they were global in affect, I’d like to witness them first hand, from a variety of locations and times of my choosing.

I’m more interested in experiencing the diversity of life prior to the catastrophic events, but concluding the trips with the unfolding catastrophes would add pulse-quickening drama/horror to the ends of the Permian and Cretaceous periods.

It would be a bittersweet experience: bitter because the events closed the door on an incredible variety of life-forms; sweet because they opened new evolutionary doors, eventually leading to us.

The OP doesn’t mention length of stay for the trips, so I’ll stay 6 weeks on each trip and do a lot of zipping around the planet—providing I can survive that long. Not being able to touch, taste or smell anything sounds problematic. Do I have to bring my own food? And, I was hoping to eat a variety of fauna, seeing what tastes like chicken. Then again, having the giant Permian insects unable to touch me is a good thing—big bugs give me the heebie jeebies.

It sounds like I may be protected in the time machine (if I can’t touch the environment, maybe it can’t touch me?). If so, I’d like to journey into the unfolding events themselves. I imagine something along the lines of a Dante’s Inferno experience. If I’m *not *protected, I want to see the approaching catastrophe (asteroid impact, or whatever), then high-tail it out of there just before the point of mortal danger.

If I steal another boarding pass, I’d witness Ben Franklin annoy the heck out of John Adams when they shared a bed in an inn in New Jersey in 1776. I imagine it would be as funny as the bedroom scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. “Those aren’t pillows, Mr. Franklin!”

25

Yes you can, because I have.

It’s true that staining and mounting is essential for some specimens, and helpful for others, but it’s not universally necessary for observing microscopic life.

26

Assuming that they haven’t already been done, I would like to see three things in particular:

  1. The battle for the Alamo
  2. The battle of San Jacinto
  3. The gunfight at the OK Corral

If they’ve been done, I’d like to follow the Old Dutchman around and find out where his mine really was. Or follow the Mary Celeste. Or find out what really happened to Ambrose Bierce. Etc.

27

Jenny Lind singing.

William Gillette performing onstage.

David Garrick performing onstage.

An ancient Greek poet (Homer himself, assuming he really existed, and if we can locate him) performing the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Demosthenes giving one of his famous speeches.

The Eleusinian Mysteries.

Hebrew priests performing ceremonies in the Temple.

I presume someone has already filmed the Last Supper. I would go back and follow the Grail around, to find out what actually happened to it.

My mother is a genealogist, and I would like to watch some of my ancestors in action. Both my grandfathers served in World War One. In a couple of years, their service will be past the hundred-year mark.

28

It might fall into the “already been done” category, but I’d take a look at the later years of Pepi II and find out if he really did reign for 94 years.

29

I would like to see and record the conception of Jesus, if that act wasn’t covered in the OP.

30

I’d like to go back 30,000 years and watch the Pleistocene megafauna of North America before humans arrived. And find out of sabertooths really had big old jowls that covered their fangs.

31

I live in the Colorado mountains. Surrounded by ski towns that used to be gold mine towns. I’d love to see what it was like ‘back in the day’.

32

Probably been done, but how 'bout The Charge of the Light Brigade?

Drunk History on Comedy Central did a real nice telling of this story recently. Worth a look.

Immaculate answer!

33

Go back yo US Civil War and record the “Rebel Yell” - it is completely lost - the ones who used to preform it were too old by the time recording technology came along, and require the performers to be at a full run.

And, before I was done, I would find out - to my own satisfaction, if the rule against affecting events it the past was* really* impossible. Maybe Hannibal’s elephants could sense me.
Or maybe have some fun at Gladiator games…

34

I would find some poorly documented odd interesting corner of history to see what actually happened. Civilian auxiliaries in World War II or the career of the USS Constitution after the War of 1812 or the Texas Navy of the Republic or anything like that. Maybe go see what things were like for my dad’s ancestors in Courland Russia before they bought boat tickets to New York. I’ve suspected that they fled the Pogroms, but I obviously don’t know for sure.

35

Isn’t it pretty well understood that it was “More! More! More!”? :smiley:

36

As long as you can be perfectly safe in your observations, the collision between Theia and the proto-Earth would be interesting.

37

That must’ve been a neat trick. But I would go back and actually experience life on earth amongst the prehistoric creatures (being invisible is fine, but I will require sense of touch, smell and taste. On the other hand, it’d be just dandy if the carnivores of the time were unable to see, smell or taste me).

Then on the way back to present time I’d stop off in Victorian England to photograph Jack the Ripper in the act.

38

A Lot of posters are not reading the OP.

I assume Hastings has been done so Stamford Bridge.

Or find out what happened to the missing last panel of the Bayeux Tapestry.

39

Disasters are definitely the sort of thing you can’t really capture in a video. I suspect by this point there are at least plans for tours of the world’s great disasters, with geologists as tour guides. Also prehistory zoological tours with paleontologists as tour guides.

I was trying to set it sort of like you’re ghostlike - should have mentioned the “nothing can touch you”. Note: this was to prevent the thread turning into a discussion of time travel paradoxes, so just assume that you can’t change the environment and it can’t change you.

BTW, love your name.

But I’d be expecting people to break out into singing “Sit down, John!”

And wouldn’t that fun to watch the fundies go ape shit when something didn’t match what the bible says. Even if you could prove that Mary was a virgin when Christ was born, you KNOW the flood never happened.

40

And now required viewing for American History students!