Ask Lemmy

Dinosaurs

BMW 1992, to prevent the invention of Xenon HID Headlights. 😈

I wanna help tear down the Berlin wall

Something smaller. I would like to go with my mom to see Elvis in a high school basketball gym.

I assume view means I can't interfere and no one knows I'm there.

The Practical: Pro Sports locker room strategy talks. Might improve my odds.

The Philosophical: Follow around Siddhartha just before he became enlightened.

The Whimsical: The Mayor of Rotenburg, Germany out-drinking the leader of the army that had them under siege, thus sending them home as losers, sparing bloodshed on both sides, while himself dying of alcohol poisoning shortly after.

Probably to the moment the first land creature came to be. Just so I could kill it.

I'd love to spend some time visiting the world of my youth, just to experience again the world before the internet. ThenI'd go back a hundred years to see what the house I live in looked like back then, as well as the neighborhood and town around it, and other places I'm familiar with. And maybe continue stepping back in 50 year increments...

I'd also love to go back and visit favorite clubs and restaurants that don't exist anymore.

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.

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 just want to walk around the city of Ur, go to the market, eat some food, maybe buy some low quality copper

The Continental Army taking over the airports from the British during the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s.

/s

jfk behind the fence on the embankment

The Nov 12-13 Leonids meteor shower of 1833, which was said to have been measured in excess of 100,000 meteors viewed per hour (about 27+ per second). This obviously was profound to basically everyone alive at the time who could see it (it wasn’t visible in Europe), and honestly it just sounds cool. I wanna see the insane space fireworks!

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.

Mitch McConnell's death. Just to settle this once and for all.

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.

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

Not a historical moment, but I would visit my favourite Author and thank him for the books he wrote.

After watching a video about this last week I would pick man first arriving in Australia. the animals that existed there way back then make the stuff that's in Australia today look tame. I just want to see the faces on these early humans when they realize how fucked they are. Giant Komodo Dragons, Giant Koalas, Giant Snakes, a damn Crocodile that could run on land. It's amazing any of them survived.

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.

Watching Hitler killing Hitler.

Woodstock

The very moment it was decided tu put skulls on nazis' caps, making them the baddies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg?wprov=sfti1

In 1561 a space battle happened in broad daylight (edit: dawn actually) over Nuremberg, so I think I'd like to see that, assuming I could come back just after, 1561 would be a shit time to live

Edit- link, other linked wiki articles in the link are worth reading as well.

I'd like to see the earth as it was before the Great Oxidation Event, especially if there were any cool pre-oxygen lifeforms.

OG Woodstock easily

Not really historical event but, I'd be really curious to travel back to see my distant relatives, and what they were like, their personalities and quirks, likes and dislikes, their styles of humour. See their faces in 3d. Start with my great great grandparents and skip down the line as far as I can go. Actually, I'd love to see my nan again one more time, can I start there?

I just want to see dinosaurs

is it just viewing? am I safe from harm? is there automatic translation?

If I could do it from a safe spot in space - the Theia impact that formed the Moon.

Blackbeard burying his treasure.

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.