Is it bad that all of the moments that popped right into my head are sports-related???
In the spirit of dukemomLA's survey questions, let me throw out the following, since it's a matter of some curiosity to me. If you could go back in history, and assuming you could understand the language being spoken, what would be your top five choices? My candidates, in order of preference:
(1) Follow Jesus of Nazareth around. Catch the sermon on the mount.
(2) Watch the Buddha training his monks.
(3) Catch Ralph Waldo Emerson on the lecture circuit.
(4) Go to New York in 1927. Watch Lindbergh take off, catch a few Yankees games, Cotton Club in the evening (was it open then?).
(5) Catch the Beatles in Hamburg or Liverpool in the early '60s before they hit it big.
Is it bad that all of the moments that popped right into my head are sports-related???
Would we be allowed to participate in the event to which we choose to go back, thus possibly changing the course of history or profiting from an attractive investment opportunity? Or would we have to just watch?
In no particular order:
1. Shoot some pool with Jackie Gleason
2. Have a few drinks with Winston Churchill (FDR can join us)
3. Take a spin around a ballroom with Fred Astaire
4. See Sinatra in his prime
5. Hear Farinelli or Carestini sing
6. Attend the premier of Beethoven's 9th in Vienna
7. Spend a few days with da Vinci
I deliberately left off sports and went with personal things, also omitting stuff like 'make sure Hitler gets into art school' etc.
Looking over it, that's quite the odd collection...Gleason and da Vinci? Makes you wonder!
There are so many premieres I would want to attend. That would definitely be one of them. The dual premiere (can you believe they did both on the same night?!) of his 5th and 6th would be up there as well.
Also, apparently the opening night of Death of a Salesman had the audience in complete silence at the end for a long time.
Opening night of Star Wars (wasn't quite born in 1977...) would have been cool too.
It's too bad we're not allowed to get involved, or I'd knock that apple out of Eve's hand so fast...
"Time and Again," a novel by Jack Finnery, set in NY at the turn of the last century, or was it the one before the last; rich in its description of NY at that time, and a plot that tingles with an attempt to alter history. Worthy of a summertime fling.
Last edited by greybeard; 07-17-2007 at 02:11 PM.
I'd go back to last Wednesday, borrow as many $$ as possible and invest in a Dow index.
I'd like to be at Pearl Harbor (from a safe distance) and watch it happen - and watch the fallout over the next few months, and years of WWII.
That may sound morbid, but it would be facinating watching the "9/11" of the 20th century happen live.
I would also like to go back to the morning of April 14, 1865, to approach Abraham Lincoln. I'd tell him, "Hey man, you're wife's gonna ask you to go to the theatre tonight. I dare you to tell her you'd rather have your head blown off."
-EarlJam
Grow a pair and go to Hiroshima then.
You'd even get a quick replay if you jetted over to Nagasaki a few days later.
I would not want to be anywhere near Pearl Harbor or those sites when stuff happened...I wouldn't really find it fascinating. Its not like it was a good battle or anything -- it was just tons of one-sided death and destruction.
Last edited by tombrady; 07-17-2007 at 03:47 PM.
Yes, but it was one of the most historic and pivitol events in American history. I didn't say I'd jump up and down and celebrate it. It would just be interesting to see it unfold.
And yes, from a lonnnnnnnnnnng distance away I wouldn't mind seeing the Hiroshima event (good suggestion). Again, it was awful, yes. I would not wear face paint, cheer and wave pom poms. It would just be facinating to see.
-EarlJam, who sincerely embraces the concept of and longs for world peace.
Hiroshima jokes: Too soon?
No one's joking about Hiroshima...or Nagasaki. Arguments can be made for both sides - and I've read some on both sides. My only point here is that the events changed the world, and therefore they would be interesting to see happen.
Nothing funny about it....nothing to be happy about or to celebrate....in fact, quite the opposite. Just answering the thread poster's question.
-EarlJam
Yeah. Really important to communicate here that a desire to see them does not equate to a celebration of them or a thankfulness that they happened.
It's why movies like Tora! Tora! Tora! or The Alamo or JFK and so on and so on are popular. We are facinated by these events. Anyone who's ever watched a documentary or a movie, Saving Private Ryan (Normandy) is another one, has basically shown a desire to want to SEE it happen or to better understand it.
-EarlJam
A prime benefit of time travel is that I would not have to sit through horrible movies like Pearl Harbor or The Alamo. I would just go back to those moments in time and see what really happened. Granted, there would probably be no background music to set the tone but I could bring my iPod.
But in all seriousness, many of history's greatest debates, such as the one surrounding Hiroshima, would never be resolved even if we all could go back to witness the events. People simply have different points of view and will thus interpret the same exact thing a hundred different ways. The true benefit of witnessing an event such as Hiroshima is that those present would have a better appreciation for the horrors mankind is capable of and be inspired to never forget it.
I think I would have like to either join Lewis & Clark on their trip Westward; or to be a pioneer on the Oregon trail.
The expansion of the American West, the excitement and the newness of it all, I think would have been nearly a religious experience. The first time I saw the Rocky Mountains in person was amazing, driving into Colorado from the flat prairie of Nebraska, and I'd seen pictures. I can't imagine what it would be like to feel like you were one of the first (non-Native Americans) to ever see the splendor.
I also would have liked to have been member of the court in Russia at the times of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.