If you were allowed to travel back in time and change one event of history, what would you change and why?

Question

You can only change or alter just one event and will have to predict the outcome folowing the change.

.......for example - if you changed the history by preventing the romans to build the colosseum, you will have to predict what would the subsequent history will be?, where would the first olympics take place? etc etc...

Answer 1

Dangerous stuff - Read Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder."

Answer 2

Haven't I seen this question before? Oh, well...

I think maybe if we had won the Quasi-War with France in the John Adams Administration, it might have prevented Napoleon from becoming Emperor, which would have prevented over a century of power struggles between the European nations, prevented World Wars I and II, saved the African continent from the economic ruin brought on by colonial exploitation by Europe, and kept Hitler from killing 6 million Jews and millions of other innocent people.

My first choice might be preventing the institution of slavery, but that issue has so many different angles, and such a long history, I wouldn't know where to start.

Answer 3

Wouldn't change a thing because of the time paradox. By changing one incident in history, all others throughout history are changed, including possibly your birth. If something is changed and it affects your birth, or that of your parents, you might not have been born. If you weren't born, how could you be there to make the change? See the paradox? That's why if such a thing as time travel were ever possible, people would only be allowed to go back as observers.

Answer 4

I think you may mean the Athenians not the Romans. The Olympics started in Athens, Mount Olympus after which they were named was the supposed home of the Greek Gods.

The Colosseum in Rome hosted many kinds of games, chariot racing and gladiators come to mind also the throwing of the Christians to the lions,

I would try to prevent the birth of Adolf Hitler. Why? Isn't it obvious? 6 million people would not have been killed and World War II need not bave happened.

Answer 5

I wouldn't change any event because I would not be able to appreciate the changes that it would make. For example if I was to go back and prevent Hitler coming to power, then it is a fair bet that Germany wouldn't have become a powerful military nation, and western Europe would have been left wide open for a soviet invasion. I don't know if this would happen, but it would be a distinct possibility.

Answer 6

If you could go back into time and change one event....Yikes, that would be monumentally catastrophic.

Consider the following: you kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you do it? You wouldn't dare kill him, haven't you learned not to mess with the space time continuum? Consider the possible consequence. You kill Hitler as a young child, years later, say 1933, Ernst Roehm instead becomes dictator, in mid 1930s, HE decides to begin 'heavy water' experiments which lead to the first nuclear bomb built in 1939. With that device, he easiliy defeats mother russia and the allies, and the Final Solution is 'completed.'

Your mistep in the space time continuum caused the death of ALL European Jewry and enslavement of half the planet...way to go!....you should'a stayed home in bed where it was safe and leave the living to others..

Answer 7

I would like to travel back to the middle ages and prevent the religious authorities from harrassing scientists like Galileo and Copernicus.

If they had been free to do their stuff without persecution, science would be a few hundred years more advanced by now. The Internet would have been invented in the 1700s, probably. And religion would be long dead.

Incidentally, the religious authorities are still up to their tricks today, denying evolution theory and trying to block stem cell research.

So maybe we don't need to travel back in time to make a difference.

Answer 8

Fun question.

I'd stop the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria.

In it's time it housed the greatest collection of knowledge from the all over the world. That one king decided that his legacy and his mark in history would be to destroy it is ... beyond contempt.

The world would have moved forward much quicker -- and, I believe, insight into our society, religion, philosophy and life standards would have improved much quicker.

Answer 9

9/11

Answer 10

I would have stopped the slave trade and the wrongful import of millions of Africans to America. This country, with slaves, created a society that has never been right, fought it's worst war over it, and continues to have racial strife today due to the import of slaves.

Answer 11

George Washington was a 33rd degree Mason, and head of his local chapter. He laid the cornerstone for the White House in full Masonic regalia. (This is for the ill-informed first person to post on this topic.)
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Now, what would I go bck and change? I would go back to about the year 33 and kill Saul of Tarsus so he wouldn't found a new religion based on a perverted misunderstanding of the Nazorean movement. We'd probably all be Mithraists today, celebrating his birthday on DECEMBER 25, but it couldn't be as big a disaster as Christianity has abundantly proven itself to be.