If you could go back in time, what events would you change?

[Frodo]

My list:

1. Have Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon survive his illness in Babylon, and live long enough to have Arabia conquered and secured as part of his vast empire (he was probably going to die young anyway).  Have it remain under Hellenistic rule for 350 years before coming under Roman control for another 500 years.  

2. Have Mesopotamia conquered and consolidated during the early part of Augustus' reign shortly after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra.  Doing so would effectively emasculate Parthia (and later Sassanid Persia) and eliminate it as a serious military threat to the integrity of the Roman Principate/Empire.

3. Have Nero Claudius Drusus live a full life (he died a month after falling from his horse before he was thirty), and have Augustus retain him as governor of Gaul, and co-commander of all Roman forces in Germania alongside Tiberius.  This maintains Roman control of Germania up to the Elbe River until the advent of Trajan.  

4. Britain is conquered as in OTL, but the revolt of Queen Boudicca succeeds in throwing Rome out of the British isles permanently.  

5. Have Trajan conquering Dacia and the rest of Germania Magna toward the beginning of his reign (in the 2nd century, A.D.) up to the Vistula/Dneister line. This becomes the new permanent Roman frontier for centuries afterward.

6. Constantine is killed at the Battle of Milvian Bridge -Maxentius lives on as emperor of the Western Roman Empire. 

[Χahar]

Those events appear to cement Western control over most of the world (with the exception of #4). Not something I would approve of.

[Bo]

I'll add some more later, but here's my five since 1850:

-Prevent Lincoln's assassination
-Have Empress Dowager Cixi die a decade or two earlier
-Kill Hitler (before he comes to power and becomes famous)
-Prevent the Vietnam War
-Have Gore win in 2000

[hawkeye59]

Save the Library of Alexandria, definitely.

[dialectical fetishist]

Nothing. I'm scared of what the butterfly effect would wreak.

[justW353]

Nothing. I'm scared of what the butterfly effect would wreak.

[feeblepizza]

1. Kill John Wilkes Booth (therefore stopping Lincoln's assassination)

2. Kill baby Hitler

3. Have Taft reelected in 1912

4. Have Perot elected in 1992

5. Have McCain elected in 2008

[Thomas D]

1. Kill John Wilkes Booth (therefore stopping Lincoln's assassination)

2. Kill baby Hitler

3. Have Taft reelected in 1912

4. Have Perot elected in 1992

5. Have McCain elected in 2008

I'm all for killing Hitler. But I don't think I could kill baby Hitler. I'd wait until he was at least 18.

[Bo]

I'll add some more later, but here's my five since 1850:

-Prevent Lincoln's assassination
-Have Empress Dowager Cixi die a decade or two earlier
-Kill Hitler (before he comes to power and becomes famous)
-Prevent the Vietnam War
-Have Gore win in 2000

If I was thinking about the butterfly effect, then I'd just change the last event and also prevent any genocides/famines that occurred worldwide after 1992.

[Proud Lieberal from Northeast]

Prevent The Mikado's parents from having sex, so we'll be spare from his tyranical rule

[afleitch]

I wouldn't kill Hitler; I would do whatever is possible to destroy Italian Fascism in the 1920's. Better to 'kill' the ideology rather than it's standard bearer. If Hitler hadn't been there, someone else would have.

[Swedish Cheese]

Nothing. I'm scared of what the butterfly effect would wreak.

You wouldn't even make Thatcher loose in 79?


I would have made the winners of WWI be kinder to Germany in the Treaty of Versallies. Breaking Germany into a poor weak state that couldn't care for itself was the primary reason for nazism being able to grab hold of the nation.



 

[big bad fab]

Just "small" things... :

I would have prevented Chirac from dropping Juppé in the midst of 1995 demonstrations in France and from organizing new parliamentary elections in 1997 (in a nutshell, prevented Villepin from becoming Juppé's and then Chirac's adviser !).

I would have prevented bombings in Madrid in 2004, so that Zapatero wouldn't have become PM.

I would have supported Beria so that he would have won over Khrushchev and Malenkov in 1953.
Alternatively, I would have made sure Shelepin won over Khrushchev or even Brezhnev in the  1960s.
Alternatively, I would have made Brezhnev die in 1977, so that we would have had a fight between Kirilenko and Kulakov to become Nr.1.

So many kremlinological regrets erased !

[Former Moderate]

I'd go back to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and let my dad catch me raping my mom. I'd then head on up to the stage and play something that "really cooks."

[Communists For McCain]

10. Bring abunch of tabloid magazines from the future to show to Michael Jackson circa 1982 to drive the point home as to why Neverland Ranch would be a bad idea.
9. Reveal Nixon's involvement with the Watergate Scandal DURING THE MIDDLE OF THE 1972 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.
8. Send a bomb threat to President Kennedy's Secret Service squad while he is in Dallas.........
7. Tell Fonzie not to jump the shark.
6. Tell Hunter Hearst Helmsley not to do Katie Vick.
5. Bribe the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to accept Adolf Hitler into the academy.
4. Kidnap baby Stalin and give him to a random Gypsy woman.
3. Go back to the morning of March 18th, 1982 in Knoxville, Tennesse with a copy of the autopsy report of one Andrew Aycock showing traces of cocaine in his system, to save the future of metal from the evils of cock rock.
2. Release the contents of Chinese Democracy IN IT'S COMPLETED FORM over Napster (for free!) in 1999, and watch the chaos that results.
1. Go back in time to January 1970 and tell Anita Durst that her future son is going to be the anti-christ and that the only way humanity can be saved is if she aborts the little demon and spare us all the evils that will fall upon our generation.

[True Federalist]

Convince Taft to let Teddy have the Republican nomination in 1912.

[Chairman Wow]

Save the Library of Alexandria, definitely.

Try and save the rest of Tacitus' history too while I am out and about too.

[Bo]

Convince Taft to let Teddy have the Republican nomination in 1912.

Out of curiosity, why not the other way around?

[J. J.]

I'd be worried about killing Hitler.  Suppose a more intelligent, less crazy Goring takes control of Germany and they are better prepared for WWII (starting in 1944-5).

[Bo]

I wouldn't kill Hitler; I would do whatever is possible to destroy Italian Fascism in the 1920's. Better to 'kill' the ideology rather than it's standard bearer. If Hitler hadn't been there, someone else would have.

Yeah, but if another Fascist came to power in Germany, there might have been no Holocaust, which would have been a great thing in itself.

[Thomas D]

I'm sorry but I have to do this. NSFW


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEszTzdUMcY

[A cowboy always follows his beard]

Ok well....

1. Kill the Axis leaders in 1939.
2. Save many books lost to history
3. Give Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton info about 9/11.
4. Tell Micheal Jackson how creepy he'll grow up to be, possably kill his evil dad.
5. Save all the music made before we could write it down.
6. Make TR win in 1912, and improove his health.
7. Kill the moron who wrote Protocalls of the Elders of Zion.
8. Get the hostages out of Iran days before Election 1980 (Just to see the results)
9. Convince the executives at Nintendo to have Sony make the CD-I instead of Phillips.
10. Show Karl Marx a documentary on Communist China.

And finally:

11. Convince my past self to ask out this really beautiful person I went to high school with.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

In order from most to least important.

1. Eliminate the "Butterfly Ballots" in Florida, in the 2000 presidential election. Find out who would have really won. I suspect it would have been Gore. Bush would never have become President, and McCain probably would have won in 2004.

2. Do whatever it takes to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Most of our current "Terrorist Problem" comes from states that were once part of this Empire, keeping it intact would hopefully solve this problem.

3. Go back a few billion years and hurl Mars at Venus. I'm curious to see what would happen.

[True Federalist]

Convince Taft to let Teddy have the Republican nomination in 1912.

Out of curiosity, why not the other way around?

Because with Taft running but not Teddy, then LaFollette would have almost certainly made a third party run of his own in 1912, and the electoral map would have looked something like this:



Wilson: 333
Taft: 163
LaFollette: 35

Teddy was the only one who could possibly have held together the fractious GOP in 1912 and not have had the Progressives split off.  The split was inevitable but it could have been delayed until after the World War.

[Bo]

Convince Taft to let Teddy have the Republican nomination in 1912.

Out of curiosity, why not the other way around?

Because with Taft running but not Teddy, then LaFollette would have almost certainly made a third party run of his own in 1912, and the electoral map would have looked something like this:



Wilson: 333
Taft: 163
LaFollette: 35

Teddy was the only one who could possibly have held together the fractious GOP in 1912 and not have had the Progressives split off.  The split was inevitable but it could have been delayed until after the World War.

Interesting. I haven't heard that possibility before. In that case, I guess Teddy would have been a better pick. What do you think Teddy would have done differently from Wilson (other than managing to gain U.S. entry into the League of Nations)?