If you could go back in time and watch -- but not change or interact with -- one historical event, what would it be?
If you could go back in time and watch -- but not change or interact with -- one historical event, what would it be?
For the sake of the argument, you get to arrive up to 24 hours before the event starts and leave up to 24 hours after it ends.
Tough to choose, but I think it would be interesting to see what the heck was going on with the dancing plague of 1518.
29Would I still be able to remember the visit? Witnessing the hiding of some long lost treasure would still be directly beneficial.
25Sure. That's a good one.
8
The start of the universe. The big bang, or even what came before that. The big dinner and a movie.
1724 hours before the beginning of time, there was oldGregg. And oldGregg said, "This is lit", and it was.
10Given that time itself began at the Big Bang, would you get stuck there forever? I’m not familiar with the laws of “what if” scenario physics
2I bet it would be like one of those shitty tiktoks/shorts where the instant the video starts the person is mid word. Because that dopamine cycle doesn't have time for you to properly cut a video.
Personally I think the position would be harder to nail down. You can't exactly fit a person into a singularity without some compression. So you'd have to start watching it after at least a few nanoseconds so you'd have room for your physical body.
2
The conception -- not birth -- of Jesus. Assuming God doesn't show up, I'm still watching two human beings go at it, and that's kind of fun on its own.
15In later apocrypha Mary was described as being about 12 when she was married into the household of Joseph who was the eldest person in the town.
So in reality you'd probably be watching a child being raped, either by someone in their household before falling pregnant and being married off to someone else before she started showing, or by an old guy who married her, or by one of his older male children after she was taken into his household.
So maybe less fun than you'd think.
25
I had heard that Mark Twain was a fantastic orator, so I would love to be in the audience for one of his shows.
13Normandy Beach, D-Day. You read about the scale, but to see it in person...
9I'd like to see the asteroid that finished off the dinos and Mount Vesuvius erupting.
8For everyone who doesn't want to google it, Mount Vesuvius is the volcano that destroyed Pompeii.
It's also what I'm interested to see in person if I could go back.
2
Either watch the building of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Watch and record what happens. I can't interact or interfere (which mean I would have zero effect on the time line), but I would have video evidence of how they did it. Since it took years to build (supposedly) we don't really know how long it took, I would watch the beginning week or two of it.
Be a hell of a shock if it really was "aliens". lol
8I wanna witness the Roman who graffitied about being gay in the bathroom stall - just to see the kind of man they were.
8Gay, probably.
9An astute observation
2
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
8Chaka when the walls fell.
1
I would love to see the moment humans first learned complex speech patterns. Yes it was probably a long process. But to see the first complete sentence uttered would be cool as hell. Even better if I could somehow understand it.
7The first human being to say something like, "I am grog" and you walk up and hit them with modern day internet slang they're just going to say fuck this and go back to the trees
1
Can I watch the first moon landing from the moon? Or maybe one of the big astrod impacts....
6I want to see a day during the Cambrian explosion
6I think it would be a toss up between attending the sermon on the mount and spending a day in America before Columbus landed.
5How is your Aramaic? Assuming it did happen.
3- -1
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5The big bang, especially if I can record it (don't think that counts as interacting, it's just a more trustworthy version of the recording it into my memory)
Especially since this means we'd get the conditions before it
4Schrodinger would agree with you.
1
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4This comment is art.
At first, having witnessed a birth, I thought "even seeing your kids birth is rough... I think you'd feel pretty cheated out of a powerful wish"
And then I thought "That's some high grade narcissisim to even imagine that"
But then I thought about that, despite how gross a birth is... You'd get to see your parents young. In a moment that you'll maybe live yourself one day. In a terrible moment... But maybe (hopefully) shining as their best strongest selves through it.
And now I think that's my wish too... To get to see my parents when they were younger and dumber than I am now.
4
Can I move around and replay and can I watch at speed multiples like 100x? There are so many land formations I'm interested in seeing formed. From major things like chimney rock to a creek at home that's 200ft below the hill tops alongside it. If it's only for one event I choose the end of the last great ice age. If I only get 24 hours real-time I choose observing Hitler the 24 hours before he killed himself.
3I'd probably choose something for entertainment. Maybe see what a Shakespeare show at the Globe was really like (extremely chaotic from what I've read)
Or see Hendrix play live at Woodstock!
That makes me sound a bit shallow maybe - there's a lot of questions I have about what early Christianity was like before the Catholic church came on the scene, what sort of a ruler Richard III was, similar sorts of dry questions... But given the choice I'd probably want some rowdy entertainment
3The construction of the pyramids in Egypt.
3D-Day, somewhere were the scotsmen landed. Imagine hundreds of planes in the air, thousands of ships, the soldiers take the beaches and behind them a bagpiper is playing.
2Record that lost speech of Lincoln.
2The fall of the Colossus of Rhodes or the Assassination of Julius Caesar.
2@MariaRomanov the buddh’s enlightenment
2I've grown increasingly convinced Nefertiti served as inspiration for later stories about Helen of Troy, so I'd very much be interested in seeing the arrival of "beautiful woman who arrived" at Pharoh's court, and the way the only woman ever depicted in the smiting pose in Egyptian history carried herself into a dangerous new environment.
What charm and wit did she possess such that Akhenaten felt the need to both acknowledge in the boundary stelae at Armana that she got everything she desired but to adamantly deny that the idea for the city was hers?
How much of reworking the entirety of Egypt's religion into a solar cult was the result of her influence, and just how did she see her role in that paradigm?
I have many questions about her that I'd probably have answered with 24 hours of being a fly on the wall observing her and her husband's interactions.
2the death and or funeral of ghengis khan
2Would like to witness the Ides of March, from the beginning of the day till the end.
1I'd love to see Hannibal crossing the Alp's with elephants! and if I had only 24hrs i guess it would be at the point they emerge from the mountains and romans see the elephant sand shit themselves. (I'm not sure that part ever happened)
1Jesus Christ and the sermon on the mount, specifically the sharing of fishes and loaves of bread.
1I wanna see superman land in Kansas
4
I will kick the first lungfish back into the primordial sea.
-1I will help you
1