It would depend on the kind of time travel machine it is. Am I physically there, like most fiction or is it just a “time telescope” like the film Payday?
If it was just remotely viewing, I’d check out a lot more stuff like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and other stuff I wouldn’t wanna see if it meant putting myself in danger.
I’d go back to 5 years before the sacking of the Library of Alexandria so I could check out what’s in there before it all goes up in flames. My time travel would also give me the automatic ability to read and understand all of the languages and dialects that were used.
jfk behind the fence on the embankment
probably to see that supernova or something was easily visible from earth and there were like tapestries of it & stuff, sounds cool to see & I’m sad I wasn’t alive to see it. I’m not even sure if it was real or not now.
Watching the whole Artimis mission this year made me think back and imagine how following the Apollo 13 rescue would have been like
The Continental Army taking over the airports from the British during the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s.
/s
Woodstock
I’ve heard if you remember the 60s, you weren’t actually there so that must mean I was there despite being born in 1985.
The very moment it was decided tu put skulls on nazis’ caps, making them the baddies.
I just want to walk around the city of Ur, go to the market, eat some food, maybe buy some low quality copper
Maybe get some nasty food borne illness. /S
Not a historical moment, but I would visit my favourite Author and thank him for the books he wrote.
The actual, living person that was Jesus Christ, performing one of his reported miracles. I’m leaning towards him walking on water or multiplying the bread and fish.
I’m good, I got plenty of historical events at home.
EDIT nevermind I thought of a good one. I want to go to right before the Permian extinction and check out all the wildlife.
I’d like to see the earth as it was before the Great Oxidation Event, especially if there were any cool pre-oxygen lifeforms.
Wasn’t it all single celled lifeforms then?
Also it was less of an event and more like million years or so. You’d just stand there in sludge while nothing is happening. Until getting beamed back lol.
Well I don’t know, I wasn’t there!
This is monstrous, but the first Europeans going to Western Africa to enslave people. It must have been clumsy, awkward, brutal, violent, and coercive. In short, one of humanity’s most callous, idiotic moves.
If I could interact (using modern tech), I’d sink every one of those ships with mines and drones. I’d monitor boats from space. I’d send a few of the slavers back knowing — and telling — only that enslavement will destroy them and Africa is not theirs to exploit.
The rest who survive would be taken care of, taught the strengths of diversity, other cultures, and West African ways of living. They would be the welcome wagon for any Europeans to return. Their tasks: stave off invasion, disrupt slaving activity, open negotiations with Europe. Undo the scourge of that institution and the attendant supremacy that followed.
Then, I’d set the same protections for the Americas. Unfortunately, Asia is accessible over land and contact predates my selected moment.
IDGAF if — as consequence — it sets human development back by 400 years of labour, resource exploitation, and “progress”. It’s worth it.
Maybe you already know it but the biggest slave traders were from Africa. They hunted their enemies, slaved then and sold them.
A question, then. To whom were enslaved persons being sold? Within Africa, it was expensive in terms of time and resources. No plantations, no national- or international-scale socioeconomic reinforcing the institution.
The biggest slave traders were from Africa
That, my friend, was not on an industrial scale until the Europeans created a transnational market for it.
Yes, slavery is a part of many histories. Prisoners of conflicts, poverty, inter-family disputes, etc. led to people being enslaved. It was also normal, to the point of socially reinforced, to free slaves. This was known as manumission.
The transatlantic trafficking in humans, and the perpetual enslavement of their descendents was on a scale unlike anything before. They were the “biggest” slave traders only if/when you neglect all the descendents born into bondage. That is a virtually unique stain on human history.
Further, in virtually every society on earth, it was not “race-based” bondage. It was debt-bondage or honour-bondage as an alternative to being killed in battle. There was a path to freedom, and a comparatively short one compared to institutionalized slavery.
Oh that’s easy - the Zanclean flood.
What is now the Mediterranean sea used to be a land mass full of grass fields. A few million years ago, the Strait of Gibraltar gave way and hundreds of millions of cubic feet of water poured in. It’s debated how long it took to fill up the Mediterranean. Could’ve been weeks, could’ve been decades. But for whatever period it was, it’d be nuts to sit there and watch it all unfold.
Imagine the noise
