If you could go back in time and witness any big event in history, which one would it be

[MyPithyCat]

For me it'd be the first commercial radio broadcast on 2nd November 1920. That's the best type of radio (even though it'd adverts every 15-20 minutes) but I'd love to see how it all began

This is a brilliant thread @MyPithyCat and I've been thinking a bit more about it and I have ruled out meeting people because I think it would probably be very disappointing. I'm sure having a pint with Dylan Thomas in Browns would be fun for about ten seconds...

But additional things I would like to witness:

• The Minoan civilisation before the tsunami
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (and I wouldn't say no to the other wonders either)

Roswell

So many , the reign of Tutankhamen, how did he die, the time of Christ, did he exist, likewise the reign of King John, was there really someone like Robin Hood and after the Romans left, King Arthur, would be so interesting to find the reality around many of our myths and legends

Roswell crash 1947

I am enjoying this thread but I'm worried about the repercussions.
Shakespeare writes an extra play about the mysterious lady watching him when he debuts his plays at the Globe.
An extra person at the last supper or Henry VIII has an extra wife...
Be careful out there Mumsnetters!

2 september 1945.

Oh good call, yes me too.

THe princes in the Tower for me - and also to be a fly on the wall as HVII tried to find out what happened to them. AN ancestor of mine was their tutor (a rather negligent one I feel) who was later appointed Bishop of Ely which makes me wonder what he knew.

THe house of the Papyri in Pompeii a long time before Vesuvius blew to know what was in the library.

I'd also love to meet Livia - I suspect she was a real power behind the throne.

The first Easter.

Also the Library of Alexandria and maybe attend a lesson taught by Hypatia ( with the magical ability to understand her).

I would like to have been a the construction of the Kennett and Avon canal - specifically in Bath , specifically around 1790/1800.. with an inexhaustible supply of muslin and more invites to balls than I know what to do with .

Not a major event.
September 5th 1885, the wedding of my Great Grandparents on my maternal Grandfather’s side.
They married in the newly built village church that I got married in 100 years later, without even knowing that they had lived here.
I would love to walk the village streets back then, I’ve seen maps but no photos exist, not online anyway, and see my GGrandparents in the church, I’ve seen the book with their signatures and that was magical, they both died years before I was born, him 1900, her 1935 and there is nobody left alive now to remember them, my Mum would have been a young teen when her Grandma died.

This was my first thought too

Definitely worth it. I saw him in 1972 at Southampton Civic Centre. Totally amazing.

I could nominate something culturally esoteric or of major global historical importance, so you would consider me to be a person of learning & discernment. But I’m not going to because that wouldn’t be the truth.

The honest answer is that I would like to go back to 30 July 1966 and to Wembley Stadium. “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over. It is now!”

Same!

My colleague was there! She hired a car and drove there from Oxford.

I know it sounds awfully morbid but me too. Or the plague of St Justinian.

Not that I'd have wanted to catch either of course. Just be a kind of ghost, observing.

So many! Maybe Princess Elizabeth Tudor getting the news that she was now queen.
I'd love a wander through Dickens' London, too.

I was a student when the wall fell and a couple of years later had a German flatmate who was there. She said everyone she knew went there because they knew history was being made.

That would be amazing!

Great thread.

Mine would be the Duchess of Richmond's ball in Brussels on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.

Loosely on the subject, for sheer shock value, I'd like to see how truly awful Haworth was at the time the Brontes were living and writing in the Parsonage. I was reading something the other day about how unspeakably horrific conditions in the village were, and how is was known as the Village of Death. Patrick Bronte himself outlived all his children (imagine that) and worked tirelessly to improve sanitation. Stomach churningly, the wells and the pumps were located near the graveyard, and mortality was so high, more and more bodies were being piled into the ground and the ooze was infecting the water supply. It beggars belief.

I know it sounds weird to want to see it, but sometimes these details grab me.

Like others I’d like to have seen the Frost Fairs (I was obsessed with a story of these in a Blue Peter Annual decades ago). I’d also like to go back to where I live in a northern mill town during the height of the Industrial Revolution to see how different it was. Where I live has a reputation for unemployment, sink estates, grooming, all kinds of horrible things, and it would be interesting to see how different and busy it was.