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Originally Posted by Ciaran
I think that there's two aspects to this i.e. firstly, time travel to an era / place in history that interests us and, secondly, the ability of time travel to intervene and effectively change the course of events.
On the first, I'd like to go back to two thousand years ago and see what Jesus was really like i.e. whether he was THE son of God or one of many well-intended, holy men and women or, worst case scenario, another charlatan (I mean no offence in saying that, as I have a Christian faith, though it is regularly tested).
I'd also like to go back to the Ireland of the 1500s and 1600s. This period of Irish history appears particularly bloody, evil, unloving and dark to me. In simple terms, I don't like it. However, I'd like to understand what it was like to live through in practice rather than through the over-simplified lens of history centuries later.
Within a US context, I'd love to go back to 1920s NYC - roaring twenties, prohibition, corruption, all-too-easy money, flappers and, of course, the Yankee's Murderers' Row team of that era - the greatest baseball team that there ever was or will be.
In terms of changing the course of events? I've made more mistakes and bad choices in my life than most, and will continue to do so, but there isn't a single defining one so I wouldn't look to change anything I've done. However, if I could change a single event in history it would likely be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which led to the start of World War One. World War One and its immediate aftermath caused so many problems that still impact on the world today.
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The assassination was the last straw that finally led to war, but the reasons for the assassination were fomented earlier on. MentalFloss is doing a WWI centennial, tracing the small and big events that ultimately added up to Franz's visit to Sarajevo that day in 1914, on the days they began, 100 years later:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/category/ww1. It's really interesting, and tragic. It's almost as if everyone
knew there was going to be a big war, but when?
In America, the "Great War" has largely been pushed aside for Vietnam and WWII, which is incorrect as WWI contributed to the unrest today in the Middle East, the communist movements in Russia, China and Vietnam, and World War II itself. So many consequences.