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Original poster

If you could go back in time to any point in history

87 replies

choolip · 13/09/2025 20:05

If you could travel back in time to any location or era, when/where would you choose?

Rules are-
You get 24 hours
You are invisible so safety isn’t an issue and you can go to ‘off-limits’ places.
You are unable to touch anything so cannot alter or change the past, when the 24 hours are over you return straight back to the present and time resumes as normal.

You can move around as much as you want and use transport (if it exists in that time period) if you wish to see different locations within the time limit.

OP posts:
Cheeseismyfavourite · 13/09/2025 20:10

I’d just go and spend Sunday lunch watching family in the late 80s/early nineties. It was such a happy time. Everyone would still be alive and it would just be great to see everyone together

didntlikeanyofthesuggestions · 13/09/2025 20:11

I'd watch Henry VIII making love. Something to tell the grandchildren about.

LavenderBlue19 · 13/09/2025 20:17

I'd love visit to London in the early-mid 1600s - it was such a pivotal time in our history, and probably almost unimaginable from a modern POV. I'd love to know what it was really like.

mumofoneAloneandwell · 13/09/2025 20:21

Just a 90s Christmas day in new York 😭

Or generally a childhood Christmas day with my dm and siblings (I am estranged from them now)

weasleylover · 13/09/2025 20:23

The Tower of London mid June 1483. Since the mystery of the Prince’s in the tower.

iseethembloom · 13/09/2025 20:26

I’d spend time listening to John Coltrane (or someone of legendary status) playing in a jazz club on 1953, on 52nd Street, New York.

or

I’d stroll through Elizabethan London - Southwark and the City - in 1600 and try to watch a production of Hamlet at the old Globe Theatre. I’d hope there wouldnt be any bear baiting on any street corners, as that would upset me a bit.

but most of all

I’d go back to my late husband’s last week , January 2025, and tell him how much I love him.

TheeNotoriousPIG · 13/09/2025 20:31

I would like to have seen life on St Kilda before the residents evacuated in 1930. I just have a thing for islands, self-sufficiency, a more rural lifestyle and sheep!

Alternatively, I think that it would have been interesting to see the lives of my grandparents when they were in their teens, as they grew up in the country during WW2. Both have/had interesting tales of that time!

KelsCommemorativeSausage · 13/09/2025 20:35

I would go and see the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace when it was in Hyde Park.

I'd go further back and see the old London Bridge with the buildings on it.

CorneliaStreet · 13/09/2025 20:36

I go back to 1973, New York so I could go and see Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden.

MummytoE · 13/09/2025 20:39

I think I would like to see where they buried Cleopatra. Love this thread btw so many interesting answers

MummytoE · 13/09/2025 20:43

TheeNotoriousPIG · 13/09/2025 20:31

I would like to have seen life on St Kilda before the residents evacuated in 1930. I just have a thing for islands, self-sufficiency, a more rural lifestyle and sheep!

Alternatively, I think that it would have been interesting to see the lives of my grandparents when they were in their teens, as they grew up in the country during WW2. Both have/had interesting tales of that time!

Love your second option. Would love to see a day in the life of my grandmother in her 20s.

TheScottishPlay · 13/09/2025 20:46

1938 Great Exhibition in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. My grandparents went there on Honeymoon.

The Kings Road in the late 50s and early 60s, particularly Bazaar Boutique to see Mary Quant at work.

Otherwise, New Year celebrations at my Grandparents in the 70s and early 80s with all the family there enjoying steak pie and trifle after sledging in the field if we'd had snow.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 13/09/2025 20:47

I’d love to see a premier of a Shakespeare play. Would be fascinating to see what the first audience thought and if it had to be rewritten much.

justDontKnowWhattadowithMaself · 13/09/2025 20:50

I would go back to the early 90's to a rave off the M25 or Blackburn and just dance all night. Enjoy my youth again.
Time spent getting ready with friends, having a beer or two then going out dancing for hours on end, then back to an after party and making more friends.
More dancing, having a good time before having to go back to reality.

IMissSparkling · 13/09/2025 20:56

I live in Edinburgh. I'd love to go back to 1900 or so and spend the day wandering about the city to see what I recognise and what has totally changed. I have my route all planned, just need the time machine!

SeaAndStars · 13/09/2025 22:04

Can I change the rules slightly and go back through time in one place?

I've spent the last 2 years renovating my cottage. It was built in the 1830s and was in a terrible state of neglect when I moved in. I've done most of the work myself and have found many little things that people who lived here previously have left behind, probably by accident, in the loft, garden and under floor boards. It's just everyday things like little bottles, hair grips, fag packets, a war time postcard and a shoe buckle but it's set my imagination racing.

I'd love to spend a day just watching my home through the years - perhaps peeping in every 5 years or so for 10 minutes from the time just before the cottage was built. I'd love to see the men who built it, the people who've called it home, the babies born here and the brides who left the door for the church over the road. Have previous owners had pets? Did they grow their own food like I do? I'd especially like to see what it was like during the war and drop in for on Christmases past.

purplespink · 13/09/2025 22:11

I’d need to see Jesus in real life. Can’t decide between the day he was born or the day he died.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 13/09/2025 22:12

I'd go back to whenever the moon landing took place (1969?) and watch Neil Armstrong take his first giant step live along with the rest of the world. It's the only thing in relatively modern history that I wish I'd been alive for.

If I can have another one then the year 2000 please. I have such happy, nostalgic memories of it. I think because it was the last point the world felt kind of innocent and happy, pre 9/11 changing everything. And also some of my favourite people would be alive and well so it would be a nice break from missing them all the bloody time!

ShowOfHands · 13/09/2025 22:16

Christmas Day in my Granny's farmhouse. She was born in 1889 so probably early 20th century. Just after WW1 possibly so that she'd be married and settled. I know she'd have all the family there so I could meet all these people I've seen in photographs and letters and ask them the questions I'll never have answered. I met my Granny but she was a very old lady. I'd like to speak to her at the beginning of her life.

neverstopthelaundry · 13/09/2025 22:20

Such a good question. I'd like to be in the room when the king opened La Galerie De Glass (Hall of mirrors) at Versailles for the first time to his court and then listen to all the gossip but it is translated into English in my ear as my French is appalling.

Wander round the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition in 1851 but also wearing a massive dress to feel the weight of it and restriction and be thankful for modern dress.

Sit with Jane Austen as she finishes Sense and Sensibility actually lots of authors, Shakespeare, Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Stephen King, I am aware that takes a left turn.

Watch them build my childhood home and visit my past teenage life just to see how far I have come.

Teado · 13/09/2025 22:20

Berlin 1945, and what happened in the bunker.

On a lighter note, my grandmother’s youth during WW1. She was amazing but I only recall her as a very elderly lady because she was eighty when I was born. I’d love to see what she was like at 22 when she fell in love with my grandfather.

2pence · 13/09/2025 22:23

Reading Festival 1992, what a line up! Can’t think of a better way to spend 24hours.

MyElatedUmberFinch · 13/09/2025 22:28

I’d love to go to a really posh ball about 300 years ago in England or France.

WhitegreeNcandle · 13/09/2025 22:39

SeaAndStars · 13/09/2025 22:04

Can I change the rules slightly and go back through time in one place?

I've spent the last 2 years renovating my cottage. It was built in the 1830s and was in a terrible state of neglect when I moved in. I've done most of the work myself and have found many little things that people who lived here previously have left behind, probably by accident, in the loft, garden and under floor boards. It's just everyday things like little bottles, hair grips, fag packets, a war time postcard and a shoe buckle but it's set my imagination racing.

I'd love to spend a day just watching my home through the years - perhaps peeping in every 5 years or so for 10 minutes from the time just before the cottage was built. I'd love to see the men who built it, the people who've called it home, the babies born here and the brides who left the door for the church over the road. Have previous owners had pets? Did they grow their own food like I do? I'd especially like to see what it was like during the war and drop in for on Christmases past.

Edited

Me too. I live on a farm with evidence of Iron Age roundhouses and Roman villas. I would adore to be able to see what life was like at Michaelmas every 100 years.

Or to listen to Jesus preach a parable.

Or to the Tower to see what happened to the princes.

BrillantBriony · 13/09/2025 23:12

Argh… really hard one. Ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia. If I had to choose out of the other above it would probably be Mesopotamia.