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

Brexit.

Yes i would say this. I'd love to just be present and observe it safely from a protected distance but be in it. I'd love to watch dinosaurs and be close enough to feel and sense what that period was like.

I'd love to be part of medieval England and experience the poorest of slums. There's so much. I love history.

Yes to Stonehenge. How on earth was that achieved. Great things to ponder.

On a darker level, I imagine often the shock and horror to be the first to visualise and identify what was being done to people during the Holocaust. I cannot fathom how destabilising and horror inducing it would be to be part of those liberating camps and seeing what people were doing to other people. Not truly knowing this has been happening and seeing the full depravity of human capacity to harm. What was that like.

I appreciate it's very negative and dark but I have an inclination to want to truly know how awful humans can be. ( Not be that myself btw)

Moses and the parting of the Red Sea

Northern soul niters in the 70s of which I was too young to attend.
The Twisted wheel.
Cleethorpes pier.
The Highland room (Blackpool)
Golden Torch.
I would have been between 5 and ten when these were on and have legendary status within the Northern scene.

Ooh, no, I hadn't seen this one! Thank you, I'll give it a go.

I started with a series of articles in the Atlantic (I especially enjoyed the Mark Rylance one, here: https://archive.ph/J0gtJ) and then read Elizabeth Winkler's book, "Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies", and then got into Alexander Waugh's theories. I've also been trying to read more from those who think it really was Shakespeare (plenty of material there!) because I want to look at both sides - but so far, the gaps seem to be ignored or skirted over with maybe some magic happened, which isn't super convincing.

Glad it's not just me 😂

Ive always been a great admirer of Queen Elizabeth I and would like to have been at her court.

I’d quite like to witness Emmeline Pankhurst et al in a meeting.
London during the blitz.
Death/Funeral of Queen Victoria
Bronte Family dynamics.

Surprised how many people want to go and see awful events. In theory I like the idea of the Great Exhibition and later displays at Crystal Palace but since it was all about the might of the British Empire and the Victorians absolutely believed in their God given superiority above all other races there were exhibits that we would find offensive now, such as displays of 'primitive people' (i.e. family groups of Somalian villagers). The frost fairs I think could be fun, although again, there would have been animal cruelty we wouldn't like.

I think what I'd really like is to go back to the early or mid 20th century and meet my grandparents in their prime and talk to them and their siblings about their lives and wartime experiences. One was one of the first British doctors in Bergen Belsen, one had been in India during the war and apparently met Gandhi (I suspect he would have seen the Bengal famine as well but he never spoke about that), one had been an Ambulance driver during the German air raids on their city during the second world war, one had been at Dunkirk (and Egypt, Greece and Italy in the second world war. Everywhere horrendous), several of them worked in British colonies around the world, some emigrated post war. They were all in their 30s during the war and by the time I was old enough to be interested they didn't really want to talk about it anymore, at least not to someone young enough to still think it all sounded like a big adventure. But what incredible experiences, whereas their children (silent gen and original post war baby boom) had lives that are much more familiar to us.

Yes! I’ve read a few of Gaskell’s books but that was the first - I loved it.

I’d really like to see from the creation of earth after the Big Bang, to primordial soup, through to first man …. So just a few billion years lol

It's a fiction novel but it convinced me. I had never even heard the theories before.

My grandma saw Queen Victoria’s funeral cortège pass by in Windsor. She was 17.
Mother in law was bombed out twice during the Blitz and my aunt was a nurse in a hospital in Fulham when it was hit. She went to France just after D Day to nurse in a field hospital. I’d love to see that era from a safe distance. History is so much more interesting when your family were directly involved

The construction of the pyramids of Giza or the Haitian Revolution.

Samuel Pepys wrote a fantastic description of the fire of London in his Diary. So vivid you almost think you are there.

I´d go with you to the Beatles concert!

I feel this too. My English gran lived through the Second WW obviously and was in the fire service, she spoke generically about the war and the V2 rockets, but friends of hers died and she had to bag their bodies and obviously she never went there again with her mind. My Spanish gran lived through the civil war, her dad and uncle were murdered, she never spoke about it. When I was young (I was born in 74) I wanted to hear stories, as it all sounded so adventurous. Now I am older I realise that my "stories" were their "lived history" and their ptsd.

We would have to be invisible, because we would be acting weird, talking weird, and tripping over long skirts, we would stick out a mile.

Interesting witnessing the mile high fall with Atlantic water refilling the Mediterranean basin. Just one thing, Gibraltar doesn´t have mountains as such, just one large rock. But I would bring some goodies to your picnic.

I would be interested to have seen the evacuation of St Kilda, Scotland. For an entire community to come to a decision to leave all that they had probably ever known, and to be moved to the Scottish mainland... it just seems incredible. Many of the men apparently went to work in forestry, despite possibly never having seen a tree before, as they don't grow on a lot of the Scottish islands! The evacuations of other islands fascinates me, too, like Alderney during the war, when it was taken over by Nazi soldiers. I read that a farmer dropped his wife off at the boat, then went back and stayed, so as to look after his cows!

Hmm this thread has made me think a lot.. maybe I’d like to see -
The first time a human made friends with a horse enough to be let on its back for a ride…how far back did that happen, how exhilarating was it, how long did they stay on, where was it and what was that world like? A moment that in many ways enabled many others (good and bad).
Worship or ceremony at Stonehenge (or dreary council meetings? 😁) - to experience it fully the way it was intended. I have stood inside the circle at dawn and it gave me a shock of joy - I’d love to see what it was meant to be like.
Like some others, my home town in its heyday - I come from industrial South Wales so we’re talking turn of the 19th/20thC coal mines, coal coking, power station, the lot. Awful really but such a massive change. And then I’d like to go by train like my mother did to Newtown in mid Wales and see the country side when we had more birds, fish, hedgerows, wildlife, than we do now.
Lastly, maybe take a peek at a ball at Versailles, just for fun - wouldn’t mind a look in the kitchens too.

I used to work in the historians dept at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority back in the 80s. One of the two historians was Lorna Arnold who wrote the book "A Very Special Relationship" about the atomic weapons trials in Australia (I typed up her notes for her). It was extremely interesting going through all the top secret papers when she was researching the book. I've just seen a copy on sale on Amazon for £100! I need to get in my loft because I'm sure I've still got my copy up there, which she signed for me.

5th Nov 1605. Id tip Guy off and tell him to be extra vigilant in his ploy

Have you seen the film "Waterloo" (it's on TV quite often)? The ball scene seems like the next best thing to being there (although of course minus a few Heyer characters!) 😀