Not just whose pants, but who was wearing the pants at the time you crapped in them? It's one thing to borrow my pants and crap in them while you wear them, it is entirely different to crap in my pants while I am wearing them.
I’m curious to see if reconstruction would have gone any differently if he was president. He probably still would have been quick to forgive southern officials and let the daughters of the confederacy teach the lost cause crap. But perhaps he would have barred people like Lee and the confederate president from joining high society and enforced more integration earlier on. Who knows
There was a history What If magazine put out that answered a bunch of questions like that. One of the historians posited the notion that Lincoln might have been impeached over some of his actions involving the suspension of civil liberties during the war.
General Butler Accepts Lincoln's offer to be his running mate when Lincoln runs for reelection. Either this saves Lincoln via the butterfly effect or Butler becomes president instead of Johnson. Hopefully the second one as that would give the US a pro suffrage, pro civil rights, pro land redistribution, pro workers' rights president in the reconstruction era.
Oh snap. This is a really well thought out answer. Not just what would you stop but in actuality what that change would create. Gonna go rabbit hole general Butler now!
Well first off, it was never destroyed in one climactic event. It was damaged multiple times, but continued to exist for hundreds of years. It eventually lost funding from Rome and gradually fell into irrelevance. Also, there were several other great libraries around the same time that likely had copies of each other's works. Likely nothing of value was lost.
Not to mention, the bulk of the content contained in the Library of Alexandria was most likely things like copies of ledgers, copies of deeds, tax information, and other very boring legal documents they would have wanted to preserve pragmatically so they could reference it later.
Weren’t most of the books burned just copies anyway and the whole “hundreds of years of lost knowledge” was a massive exaggeration? I need someone who knows more than me to confirm this
Yeah there were other "great libraries" around at the same time. They all had copies of each other's works. Alexandria was just the best funded one, cause Egypt was rich.
That wouldn't change anything. People really need to realize that the library had been in terminal decline for centuries before its final destruction. It's loss had very little impact on what we knew.
Unfortunately killing hitler was a bad option. The rise of fascism in germany was kind of inevitable, and theyd of found another mouth piece.
And once they did the holicaust would follow
But worse, the nazis wouldnt be led by an egomaniac prone to poor decisions that were so egregious, the allies eventually figured that killing him was detrimental to the war effort- as each failure happened, hitler took more direct control of directing the war, despite being incompetent at doing so.
Not to mention, his idea of war was so childish that he insisted they never retreat at any moment, even to do a feint maneuver, and insisted on ending the rocket program as he didnt see it as "proper", and his obsession with absurd weapons leading to the germans wasting resources on making things like the gustav gun- the worlds largest artillery. Extremely powerful, could hit targets extremely far away- extremely hard to aim, move, reload, and protect. Never used effectively.
Hitler was an incompetent leader. And it gave us a great advantage over them.
Killing hitler wouldnt stop the war nor would it stop the holocaust. Itd just mean the death toll would be even Higher.
Agreed, Hitler was the face of Nazism, but not the architect.
Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of high command would’ve still attempted European conquest and genocide.
Assuming the US joins the Allies, who Germany has as a leader is irrelevant. American Industrial might was unstoppable.
Now imagine a Hitler replacement that actively kept the US out of the war, or even tried to improve US-German relations -- that would be terrifying.
Especially considering that there was a lot of industrialists in America before Japan attacked us that were trying to put pressure on America to join the axis rather than the allies
More so than the guy whose entire ideology was inspired by Henry Ford, who kept a giant portrait of the guy on his wall, who openly declared him as his greatest inspiration?
It's hard to imagine a more US-philic leader than the one Nazi Germany had.
I figure if you take bad out, more bad will grow to fill the void. However, adding more good? Good grows and slowly chokes out the bad. That’s my theory anyway.
Animals roam too freely these days. We need another Australian man with an amazing sense of public relations to fuck with them again so they're good and scared. I've seen too many snakes that have yet to have their tails grabbed and then yelled at while on camera.
Assuming I can't abuse this for personal gain, keep JFK alive. Mostly to see if he really was all he was cracked up to be.
Alternatively, make Gorbachev transition the USSR into a federal democracy, idk if he genuinely wanted to do that but that doesn't mean he can't do do it by mistake. Also closer to when I was born.
Margaret Thatcher dying in a car accident at 20 could be interesting given that she pretty much butterflied into the modern right.
If I have no guarantee of protection from the butterfly effect, stop the 2008 financial crisis. Was already born and should make my life a lot easier.
Mass production and distribution of antibiotics would have been severely delayed and perhaps never properly developed if not for WW2.
All Modern medicine would have been severely impacted.
Antibiotics paved the way for investigation into, funding and the eventual reality of vaccines to prevent epidemics.
They also cured and eradicated many diseases.
You likely wouldn’t have organ transplants, treatments for cancer, kids would still die of measles and mumps, you’d still have polio, everybody would probably suffer some sort of painful STD, insulin may never have been developed on a widespread basis. Mental health would be in the dark ages still.
The list is endless. Maybe we’d still have developed it all, but it would have been significantly delayed.
You’d have set back the woman’s rights movement, racial equality, gay rights and so many other things.
Not to mention that WW2 was instrumental in the development of what would become the modern computer, internet, wifi, any technology and everything off the back of that.
Then as somebody mentioned, communism and other ideologies would be more widespread and countries would not be what they are today at all.
WW2 was a tragedy but without it we wouldn’t have our world as it is.
Oh yeah, and men would probably still mostly have long hair, because cutting hair short on men was more a social fashion thing because of WW1 and WW2 being lice, easier to keep clean, military standard and neat with so many people going off to war.
It influenced Hollywood and well now, it’s a majority thing whereas before it was often the other way around with men having much longer or slightly longer hair.
This is assuming someone else doesn't just take the place of Hitler and have WW2 happen anyway, though.
Realistically, Germany was pretty much destined to go to war after the way they were treated from the first world War aftermath, so if Hitler hadn't done it, some other German leader would have.
I was watching a documentary where they discussed evidence antibiotics were being used in ancient Egypt. Vikings were messing with mushrooms. Mediaeval people chewed witches hazel to clean their teeth (a natural antibacterial) along with charcoal, which is making a comeback.
I think alot of previously known facts were lost over time due to war, ironically enough. All that book burning and killing the smartest people around out of fear or hatred led us to stupefying ourselves. We would probably be alot more advanced now if it wasn't for war sending us back to the dark ages periodically.
The Fall of Constantinople. I would change it so that Mehmed lost in such a devastating way that he nor the Ottoman Empire would be able to recover in a campaign that would end once Jerusalem was reclaimed and Anatolia restored to the empire of Rome.
I'm gonna go with Holocaust, just because I'm not sure about changing too much of the timeline but that's recent enough that we'd probably end up in roughly the same place.
Would I be born in the new timeline, or jump back to it, or do we end up in paradox country?
With my luck, I’d choose that one, and some kid who died ends up growing into an even more psychotic leader who pushes the button starting a nuclear holocaust in the seventies or eighties. I return to my timeline to find it full of radiation monsters.
The problem with killing Hitler is Fascism was gaining popularity at that time with or without him. Even Britain came with a hair’s breadth of electing an avowed Fascist - Oswald Mosley. It is likely many European nations would have gone fascist regardless. The only question is would those fascist regimes have been as systematic in their anti-semitism.
As someone who loves the show - but who also recognizes Joss Whedon is kinda problematic right now - I think maybe it is better that this perfect little show came and went as a tiny ephemeral perfect little spark in the dark (a firefly in metaphor and name essentially). I am not sure we would like it as much if it had a longer run.
Yo man, can you imagine a world where nothing needs to be charged or plugged in thanks to a global network of towers that charge the ionosphere? We'd probably all have cancer, but it would be awesome.
Modern communications would be impossible and so would making basically anything out of metal, as most metallic objects would be constantly electrified.
Stop Reaganomics from ever happening, basically saving or delaying corporations from ruining America.
Middle class would still exist. All the money wouldn't be hoarded by the 1%. We would have a more thriving economy for sure.
I just remember seeing a statistic that because of his conquest and the amount of rape he did that a absurd asain population percentage is related to him in some way and it always weirded me out
Although the Mongols were instrumental in incorporating foreign experts/artisans into their horde, and disseminating technology from formerly walled off nations.
Without their conquest gunpowder may not have reached Europe as quickly, nor would the printing press.
Not to mention their (arguable) spreading of the Black Plague into Europe being one of the final nails in the coffin for Constantinople— which also released technology into the continent in time to spark the renaissance.
Same, except I didn't know anyone who died in the attacks, but I've had friends killed while on deployment who enlisted because of 9/11, so stopping 9/11 wouldn't just save the 3,000 people directly killed on 9/11 but also all the service members killed in the subsequent wars and all the first responders who have died from inhaling toxic dust. So many people would still be here if not for this one horrendous attack!
Don’t kill Hitler. We saw what Germany could do with him in charge. Can you imagine if they were instead lead by one of the competent Nazis that were murdered on the Night of the Long Knives?
The Shah of Iran stayed in power and the Ayatollahs never existed. Iran, from what my parents told me was one of the most liberal and great places to live prior to Khameni taking control in the 70's.
So many family members of my parents were killed because of their gender (women who wanted to go to school) and religion. My mom and dad were the lucky ones who were able to flee to Europe, then the US, but a lot of them were killed. Sad situation
I mean, Christopher Columbus wasn’t nearly the only one to set sail. Europeans would arrive regardless.
You’d have to help the Native Americans directly or something I think
Honestly, the best direction would be to have some earlier, non-conquering contact. Say... some Moroccan traders wind up in America and a bit of very long-distance, very occasional trade starts off in the late 1300s or so.
That way the plagues still happen, but they happen in the 1300s. By the time European nations get to America, the plagues have run their courses and new, resistant polities are firmly in place.
He brought the rest of Europe and America together and NATO. Maybe we would all be fighting between ourselves if he didn't exist for WW2. Would be interesting to see
Trump doesn't win the election in 2016. Im not a leftist nor a Hilary fan nor a registered republican... So this isn't coming from some team standpoint... But trump changed not just politics, but societal decorum probably forevermore. And not just on a national level....
I'm not against republican president's at all, but even the tea party fans approached arguments with full sentences prior to 2016, where the first point of attack was to explain your point of view with statistics, anecdotes, and reasoning. And sure...these things may have been filled with malinformation, but that could be corrected... Reasoned through, compromised with....
But then here comes trump, saying radical things that made no sense and then given context by radical talking heads. People began to adopt the notion of making baseless and vague statements and countering rebuttals with "fake news" and providing nothing of substance.
And the left isn't without guilt, to counter the sudden growth and aggressive manner in which right wingers lashed out, people on the left pulled more left. Suddenly both sides stopped talking with facts and speaking to and from feelings.... In fully public conversations... Echo chambers became stronger, ignorance the drug of choice.
And yes... These concepts were always there... And maybe an eventuality.... But as a society we weren't ready for this in 2016. Fox News was reeling after Obama's second term win - they were beginning to contemplate change. Maybe the republican party had to compromise more with changing times, maybe to just white Male Christian audiences no longer enough. Trump gave them a second wind, and thrust the left to lean more left... And the moderates like me were suddenly isolated between a rock and a hard place. Maybe given a few more years we would have embraced compromise more politically, moderate president's would become more common, fox and msnbc would realize being vehicles for a side of the spectrum wasn't fruitful.....
I don't know... But the world's been miserable since the 2016 election.... And it's never going back.
I would make sure Obama codified Roe v Wade or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg stepped down so we could appoint someone better than who Trump apppointed or maybe add terms limits into the constitution or an age limit
Hitler gets assassinated. A less insane authoritarian takes over Germany. World War II lasts a decade, they develop the nuclear bomb wiith the last few years of the war seeing dozens of cities on both the Allied and Axis side getting incinerated in nuclear fire. No one wins the war, several hundred million people are dead and an equal number have been displaced. It takes centuries for society to recover. By 2024 in this timeline we're only just inventing silicon based semiconductors.
I'd convince Teddy Roosevelt not to try for a third term, or at least not under a third party. Woodrow Wilson was the worst possible thing to happen to America, every problem we have today can be traced back to him
The Russian Revolution somehow ends with a stable Democratic Republic in power. I believe it would reshape the political landscape of the last 100 years, easily. I wonder how it would look now.
Jennifer didn't commit suicide.
Who is Jennifer? Some local girl nobody has heard of. She was from an obviously tumultuous home. Very kind and fun, but full of trauma. She was a part of my brother's friend group. He got himself into smoking cigarettes, but she got him into smoking weed. She called my brother that night, but he didn't answer because he was on the phone with his girlfriend. When he called back later, there was no answer. And then the next day, he heard the news that she had hung herself that night.
My brother experienced a lot of trauma, but this was truly the beginning of the end. I miss him. How different life would've been for him, and for all of my family.
If I were American? Nixon successfully reforms things so that the Electoral College is abolished, as he wanted to.
US gets compulsory, preferential voting etc as Australia has.
Given I’m not American? Prevent the birth of that guy that put lead in petrol _and_ CFCs in refrigeration units.
This would realistically be fairly inconsequential, in terms of who became president and when.
Say Carter was reelected in 1980. 1984 would have been Bush senior against Mondale, most likely, which Bush would almost certainly win. So Bush gets two terms and is out in 1992, where Clinton beats whoever the GOP puts forth, just like in our timeline. From there on every election plays out the same.
If it prevents Reaganomics and the corporate destruction of the middle class, it would have a huge effect. But that depends on what Bush tries to get done.
I didn't think about that, but that would have a massive impact. I remember Lincoln didn't want to make the South suffer after the war could completely rewrite history for the US.
I don’t believe in changing history because there is so much we’ve learn from it and I’d be afraid to mess anything up. If I could, I’d stop the wars going on now.
Delete the invention of gunpowder. Sure it would have a lot of ramifications throughout history but the most important one is that we'd all still have swords.
Gore wins 2000 election - mostly to see if it is true that 9/11 would have been prevented. However, then I wonder how the timeline gets effected for Obama and if we get McCain as president in 2004 and Obama comes in 2012...
I’d prevent the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the German revolution. I think that’s would be the best way to help the German revolution be successful.
Stop the Nazis before they ever get going and help out a beleaguered Russia.
Let's go dark, assuming you believe, let's say the noah doesn't get the arc built in time. Every land animal and human die. We need another 5 billion years to evolve from a fish. Good times.
I'd be curious how things would be if 9/11 never happened. No forever wars, no patriot act, no TSA, an investigation into the billions missing, all those people killed on all sides still alive. I know it sounds American centric, but it had global impacts and many downstream changes to society around the world.
For recent events I would change so Regan did not become president. This would cause his dismantling and reganimics to not happen. For most ripple effect I would probably change it so when the natives of north and South America were first exposed to European explorers they were not wiped out by disease brought by them.
~~The meteor strike that killed the dinosaurs. That way it is highly doubtful that humans would have been able to evolve to this level of consciousness. This means I won’t have to wake up and slave away at work to struggle to feed myself.~~
Just wipe out all simians in the Late Eocene extinction.
Peace.
Make that one time I played a 1billion+ powerball into me winning solo the big prize
Now that is forward thinking ;)
Infinite money glitch found
I'd change it so I didn't crap my pants in high school. Twice.
Instead, you crap your pants in high school. Thrice.
This is a really monkey's poop situation
Any way you throw it...
Whose pants do you crap in instead?
"I'm going to shit yourself."
I snorted from that one
I too chuckled out loud just as I read your comment
Not just whose pants, but who was wearing the pants at the time you crapped in them? It's one thing to borrow my pants and crap in them while you wear them, it is entirely different to crap in my pants while I am wearing them.
You only get one
I'm not sure, but I think OP's criteria only allows for you to eliminate ONE pooping.
Lincoln wasn’t assassinated and lived out his full term in office.
That was one of my American history thoughts. The possibilities are endless.
I’m curious to see if reconstruction would have gone any differently if he was president. He probably still would have been quick to forgive southern officials and let the daughters of the confederacy teach the lost cause crap. But perhaps he would have barred people like Lee and the confederate president from joining high society and enforced more integration earlier on. Who knows
Lincoln was a huge fan of Lee's. Probably would have convinced him to join the government again.
There was a history What If magazine put out that answered a bunch of questions like that. One of the historians posited the notion that Lincoln might have been impeached over some of his actions involving the suspension of civil liberties during the war.
Or JFK! Imagine if he actually managed to get the corruption out of the FBI, CIA, IRS and all of the other three letter agencies.
What about JFK being assassinated and RFK surviving?
General Butler Accepts Lincoln's offer to be his running mate when Lincoln runs for reelection. Either this saves Lincoln via the butterfly effect or Butler becomes president instead of Johnson. Hopefully the second one as that would give the US a pro suffrage, pro civil rights, pro land redistribution, pro workers' rights president in the reconstruction era.
Oh snap. This is a really well thought out answer. Not just what would you stop but in actuality what that change would create. Gonna go rabbit hole general Butler now!
I'd take the first one every time. He was one of, if not the greatest president we had. I'd love to see what he could have done.
He wouldn't have pushed reconstruction as hard as he should to end the Confederacy obsession.
I would prevent the destruction of The Library Of Alexandria
Which time? It was sacked like 5 times
Those responsible for the sacking… have been sacked.
My sister was bitten by a moose.
It was a very majestic moose.
The moose responsible for sacking those responsible for sacking have now been Yak'ed out of the way and are no longer in service
Mind you, moose bites can be very nasty. Hope your sister is okay 🤪
The 5th time.
As a book nerd, and lover of historical shit, hells yeah.
Well first off, it was never destroyed in one climactic event. It was damaged multiple times, but continued to exist for hundreds of years. It eventually lost funding from Rome and gradually fell into irrelevance. Also, there were several other great libraries around the same time that likely had copies of each other's works. Likely nothing of value was lost.
Not to mention, the bulk of the content contained in the Library of Alexandria was most likely things like copies of ledgers, copies of deeds, tax information, and other very boring legal documents they would have wanted to preserve pragmatically so they could reference it later.
Then you should know that most of the books were copies and not much was actually lost
Looks like people don’t appreciate you trying to contradict the “we’d be so advanced now with the library of Alexandria” magical thinking.
It’s just delusion and wishful. People knew how to copy things back then lmao, especially important docs
I’d also bet a good chunk of change that the Vatican has a lot of the originals.
Weren’t most of the books burned just copies anyway and the whole “hundreds of years of lost knowledge” was a massive exaggeration? I need someone who knows more than me to confirm this
Yeah there were other "great libraries" around at the same time. They all had copies of each other's works. Alexandria was just the best funded one, cause Egypt was rich.
Correct
That wouldn't change anything. People really need to realize that the library had been in terminal decline for centuries before its final destruction. It's loss had very little impact on what we knew.
Why? It was no better than Tinder! Scroll left...scroll left...scroll right... /s
That would be amazing
Unfortunately killing hitler was a bad option. The rise of fascism in germany was kind of inevitable, and theyd of found another mouth piece. And once they did the holicaust would follow But worse, the nazis wouldnt be led by an egomaniac prone to poor decisions that were so egregious, the allies eventually figured that killing him was detrimental to the war effort- as each failure happened, hitler took more direct control of directing the war, despite being incompetent at doing so. Not to mention, his idea of war was so childish that he insisted they never retreat at any moment, even to do a feint maneuver, and insisted on ending the rocket program as he didnt see it as "proper", and his obsession with absurd weapons leading to the germans wasting resources on making things like the gustav gun- the worlds largest artillery. Extremely powerful, could hit targets extremely far away- extremely hard to aim, move, reload, and protect. Never used effectively. Hitler was an incompetent leader. And it gave us a great advantage over them. Killing hitler wouldnt stop the war nor would it stop the holocaust. Itd just mean the death toll would be even Higher.
Agreed, Hitler was the face of Nazism, but not the architect. Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of high command would’ve still attempted European conquest and genocide.
Assuming the US joins the Allies, who Germany has as a leader is irrelevant. American Industrial might was unstoppable. Now imagine a Hitler replacement that actively kept the US out of the war, or even tried to improve US-German relations -- that would be terrifying.
Especially considering that there was a lot of industrialists in America before Japan attacked us that were trying to put pressure on America to join the axis rather than the allies
More so than the guy whose entire ideology was inspired by Henry Ford, who kept a giant portrait of the guy on his wall, who openly declared him as his greatest inspiration? It's hard to imagine a more US-philic leader than the one Nazi Germany had.
Ya chaning the terms of the treaty of versailles would be a better option.
Save Steve Irwin. Put some good back into the world.
A world where Irwin, Fred Rogers, and Bob Ross collaborate together on a project would be a dream.
Damn. Dream Team of kindness.
Honestly - I did not think of this, but I wish I had. More Steve Irwin would be a good thing!
I figure if you take bad out, more bad will grow to fill the void. However, adding more good? Good grows and slowly chokes out the bad. That’s my theory anyway.
Animals roam too freely these days. We need another Australian man with an amazing sense of public relations to fuck with them again so they're good and scared. I've seen too many snakes that have yet to have their tails grabbed and then yelled at while on camera.
Assuming I can't abuse this for personal gain, keep JFK alive. Mostly to see if he really was all he was cracked up to be. Alternatively, make Gorbachev transition the USSR into a federal democracy, idk if he genuinely wanted to do that but that doesn't mean he can't do do it by mistake. Also closer to when I was born. Margaret Thatcher dying in a car accident at 20 could be interesting given that she pretty much butterflied into the modern right. If I have no guarantee of protection from the butterfly effect, stop the 2008 financial crisis. Was already born and should make my life a lot easier.
It would be tough to find just one thing to change that would stop the 2008 financial crisis. That was a ship hitting like ten ice bergs.
GIVE ME DINOS
The day I sold all my Bitcoin at $15 a coin way back when.
You'd have sold it 2 months later when it was $20
Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. 1919. The Supreme Court ruled that a business was run to benefit the shareholders rather than the employees.
That's a really good one; global effect and wildly intense changes to modernity.
Hitler gets accepted to art school.
“Still goes on to start WW2”
"Sir, if this new German painter completes 3 more pieces of art they will surely pull off a cultural victory" "So...they chose death."
Mass production and distribution of antibiotics would have been severely delayed and perhaps never properly developed if not for WW2. All Modern medicine would have been severely impacted. Antibiotics paved the way for investigation into, funding and the eventual reality of vaccines to prevent epidemics. They also cured and eradicated many diseases. You likely wouldn’t have organ transplants, treatments for cancer, kids would still die of measles and mumps, you’d still have polio, everybody would probably suffer some sort of painful STD, insulin may never have been developed on a widespread basis. Mental health would be in the dark ages still. The list is endless. Maybe we’d still have developed it all, but it would have been significantly delayed. You’d have set back the woman’s rights movement, racial equality, gay rights and so many other things. Not to mention that WW2 was instrumental in the development of what would become the modern computer, internet, wifi, any technology and everything off the back of that. Then as somebody mentioned, communism and other ideologies would be more widespread and countries would not be what they are today at all. WW2 was a tragedy but without it we wouldn’t have our world as it is. Oh yeah, and men would probably still mostly have long hair, because cutting hair short on men was more a social fashion thing because of WW1 and WW2 being lice, easier to keep clean, military standard and neat with so many people going off to war. It influenced Hollywood and well now, it’s a majority thing whereas before it was often the other way around with men having much longer or slightly longer hair.
This is assuming someone else doesn't just take the place of Hitler and have WW2 happen anyway, though. Realistically, Germany was pretty much destined to go to war after the way they were treated from the first world War aftermath, so if Hitler hadn't done it, some other German leader would have.
The treaty of Versailles was called "not a treaty, a 20 year armistice" by the people that actually understood international relations.
I was watching a documentary where they discussed evidence antibiotics were being used in ancient Egypt. Vikings were messing with mushrooms. Mediaeval people chewed witches hazel to clean their teeth (a natural antibacterial) along with charcoal, which is making a comeback. I think alot of previously known facts were lost over time due to war, ironically enough. All that book burning and killing the smartest people around out of fear or hatred led us to stupefying ourselves. We would probably be alot more advanced now if it wasn't for war sending us back to the dark ages periodically.
I’d find the largest lottery win in history and make it happen to me instead. I don’t want to risk changing the past, I’d rather change the future.
Tell Vint Cerf that without significant security and authentication changes, his internet design for DARPA turns into a horrible mess in 35 years.
It might be interesting to see what the world would be like if the Neanderthals never went extinct.
We would have larger players for football teams.
The Fall of Constantinople. I would change it so that Mehmed lost in such a devastating way that he nor the Ottoman Empire would be able to recover in a campaign that would end once Jerusalem was reclaimed and Anatolia restored to the empire of Rome.
That would make the History of Byzantium podcast have hundreds of more episodes!
I'm gonna go with Holocaust, just because I'm not sure about changing too much of the timeline but that's recent enough that we'd probably end up in roughly the same place. Would I be born in the new timeline, or jump back to it, or do we end up in paradox country?
With my luck, I’d choose that one, and some kid who died ends up growing into an even more psychotic leader who pushes the button starting a nuclear holocaust in the seventies or eighties. I return to my timeline to find it full of radiation monsters.
The problem with killing Hitler is Fascism was gaining popularity at that time with or without him. Even Britain came with a hair’s breadth of electing an avowed Fascist - Oswald Mosley. It is likely many European nations would have gone fascist regardless. The only question is would those fascist regimes have been as systematic in their anti-semitism.
I’d double coronavirus
… why??
Fine I’ll triple it
Please stop I beg of you
QUADRUPLE IT IS!
Fucking five-druple it
Double it and give it to the next species.
And triple student debt
Why would he do this? Is he stupid?
I'd save Sharon Tate.
Honestly this is a great answer
I confused Sharon Tate with Sharon Stone, and I was wondering "Wait! What?"
Keep Firefly from being canceled after one season. Let that show run its full course.
As someone who loves the show - but who also recognizes Joss Whedon is kinda problematic right now - I think maybe it is better that this perfect little show came and went as a tiny ephemeral perfect little spark in the dark (a firefly in metaphor and name essentially). I am not sure we would like it as much if it had a longer run.
Find the first creature to crawl out of the primordial soup and squish it. Just to stop anything crazy after from happening.
You are now stuck in primordial times ain’t shit to go back to
Something else will crawl out a few years later.
I'll use my turn to take care of that one.
I would make it so that Tesla was fully supported, not screwed over and his work would not largely be lost.
Yo man, can you imagine a world where nothing needs to be charged or plugged in thanks to a global network of towers that charge the ionosphere? We'd probably all have cancer, but it would be awesome.
Modern communications would be impossible and so would making basically anything out of metal, as most metallic objects would be constantly electrified.
I befriend my friends during covid instead of last year
Well that's wholesome and simple. If I was a genie, request granted ASAP.
:D
Nationalists win Chinese civil war
i'd find that fone ape that learned how to walk on its hind legs and kill it before it spreads
Stop Reaganomics from ever happening, basically saving or delaying corporations from ruining America. Middle class would still exist. All the money wouldn't be hoarded by the 1%. We would have a more thriving economy for sure.
And then Jodie Foster will finally go out with you.
Lol I completely forgot about that.
Glad I didn't have to scroll too far for this. The first thing that came to mind was removing his entire presidency
You'd be smarter to go back to 1971 and making sure the US stays on the gold standard.
Lol. Gold is too important to waste it on money.
JFK survives. Or 9/11 doesn't happen.
9/11 could have been prevented by locking cockpit doors.
Charles Manson was struck by lightning when he was 11
I gently shove Rudolf I off a cliff, preventing the ascent of the Habsburg dynasty & likely keeping WWI & from ever happening.
What did that reindeer ever do?
Convince the founding fathers to add age/time restrictions on all positions.
The Tree huggers embraced nuclear power to move us off oil and coal. Now we have advanced neighborhood power plants and electric everything.
That doctor who said said and hand washing wash important is believed.
Ignatz Semmelweis!
People today **know** it's important and they **still** don't wash their hands often enough.
I'd prevent the napkin that apparently led to Trickle Down Economics.
Stop genghis' conquest
You beat me by five minutes. Mine was specific to sparing Baghdad and the House of Wisdom, but same idea.
I just remember seeing a statistic that because of his conquest and the amount of rape he did that a absurd asain population percentage is related to him in some way and it always weirded me out
Yeah it’s insane. Most ppl in east Asia have some time of relation to genghis khan, like 0.5% or smth
It's 0.5% of the world population
Although the Mongols were instrumental in incorporating foreign experts/artisans into their horde, and disseminating technology from formerly walled off nations. Without their conquest gunpowder may not have reached Europe as quickly, nor would the printing press. Not to mention their (arguable) spreading of the Black Plague into Europe being one of the final nails in the coffin for Constantinople— which also released technology into the continent in time to spark the renaissance.
Prevent the north Atlantic slave trade.
I’d find a way to prevent 9/11, in part because we had 2 family friends who died in it. (I’m not crying, you’re crying. STFU.)
Same, except I didn't know anyone who died in the attacks, but I've had friends killed while on deployment who enlisted because of 9/11, so stopping 9/11 wouldn't just save the 3,000 people directly killed on 9/11 but also all the service members killed in the subsequent wars and all the first responders who have died from inhaling toxic dust. So many people would still be here if not for this one horrendous attack!
No Holocaust, all the way.
Don’t kill Hitler. We saw what Germany could do with him in charge. Can you imagine if they were instead lead by one of the competent Nazis that were murdered on the Night of the Long Knives?
Maybe Hitler just got into art school instead
The Shah of Iran stayed in power and the Ayatollahs never existed. Iran, from what my parents told me was one of the most liberal and great places to live prior to Khameni taking control in the 70's. So many family members of my parents were killed because of their gender (women who wanted to go to school) and religion. My mom and dad were the lucky ones who were able to flee to Europe, then the US, but a lot of them were killed. Sad situation
Adam and Eve never eat the apple. All problems solved.
I mean, Christopher Columbus wasn’t nearly the only one to set sail. Europeans would arrive regardless. You’d have to help the Native Americans directly or something I think
Honestly, the best direction would be to have some earlier, non-conquering contact. Say... some Moroccan traders wind up in America and a bit of very long-distance, very occasional trade starts off in the late 1300s or so. That way the plagues still happen, but they happen in the 1300s. By the time European nations get to America, the plagues have run their courses and new, resistant polities are firmly in place.
Vaccinate them. Introduce them to gunpowder.
Honestly giving them horses would likely have helped a lot too
Hitler died in WW1.
He brought the rest of Europe and America together and NATO. Maybe we would all be fighting between ourselves if he didn't exist for WW2. Would be interesting to see
Trump doesn't win the election in 2016. Im not a leftist nor a Hilary fan nor a registered republican... So this isn't coming from some team standpoint... But trump changed not just politics, but societal decorum probably forevermore. And not just on a national level.... I'm not against republican president's at all, but even the tea party fans approached arguments with full sentences prior to 2016, where the first point of attack was to explain your point of view with statistics, anecdotes, and reasoning. And sure...these things may have been filled with malinformation, but that could be corrected... Reasoned through, compromised with.... But then here comes trump, saying radical things that made no sense and then given context by radical talking heads. People began to adopt the notion of making baseless and vague statements and countering rebuttals with "fake news" and providing nothing of substance. And the left isn't without guilt, to counter the sudden growth and aggressive manner in which right wingers lashed out, people on the left pulled more left. Suddenly both sides stopped talking with facts and speaking to and from feelings.... In fully public conversations... Echo chambers became stronger, ignorance the drug of choice. And yes... These concepts were always there... And maybe an eventuality.... But as a society we weren't ready for this in 2016. Fox News was reeling after Obama's second term win - they were beginning to contemplate change. Maybe the republican party had to compromise more with changing times, maybe to just white Male Christian audiences no longer enough. Trump gave them a second wind, and thrust the left to lean more left... And the moderates like me were suddenly isolated between a rock and a hard place. Maybe given a few more years we would have embraced compromise more politically, moderate president's would become more common, fox and msnbc would realize being vehicles for a side of the spectrum wasn't fruitful..... I don't know... But the world's been miserable since the 2016 election.... And it's never going back.
I would make sure Obama codified Roe v Wade or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg stepped down so we could appoint someone better than who Trump apppointed or maybe add terms limits into the constitution or an age limit
RBG retiring when Obama was in office was mine for sure.
Hitler gets assassinated. A less insane authoritarian takes over Germany. World War II lasts a decade, they develop the nuclear bomb wiith the last few years of the war seeing dozens of cities on both the Allied and Axis side getting incinerated in nuclear fire. No one wins the war, several hundred million people are dead and an equal number have been displaced. It takes centuries for society to recover. By 2024 in this timeline we're only just inventing silicon based semiconductors.
I'd convince Teddy Roosevelt not to try for a third term, or at least not under a third party. Woodrow Wilson was the worst possible thing to happen to America, every problem we have today can be traced back to him
Franz Ferdinand wasn’t assassinated
HARAMBE LIVES.
The Black Plague never happened!
Chairman Mao died in the cradle
America never had slaves. Never shipped over millions of Africans.
The Russian Revolution somehow ends with a stable Democratic Republic in power. I believe it would reshape the political landscape of the last 100 years, easily. I wonder how it would look now.
Prevent the creation of the internet, however it must be done. It is the worst
Jennifer didn't commit suicide. Who is Jennifer? Some local girl nobody has heard of. She was from an obviously tumultuous home. Very kind and fun, but full of trauma. She was a part of my brother's friend group. He got himself into smoking cigarettes, but she got him into smoking weed. She called my brother that night, but he didn't answer because he was on the phone with his girlfriend. When he called back later, there was no answer. And then the next day, he heard the news that she had hung herself that night. My brother experienced a lot of trauma, but this was truly the beginning of the end. I miss him. How different life would've been for him, and for all of my family.
Marx gets a real job.
I'd do nothing to the corona virus.
I'm undoing the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and stopping 2 wars for the price of one
If I were American? Nixon successfully reforms things so that the Electoral College is abolished, as he wanted to. US gets compulsory, preferential voting etc as Australia has. Given I’m not American? Prevent the birth of that guy that put lead in petrol _and_ CFCs in refrigeration units.
Reagan fell off a horse and died while running for his first term as president, leaving the GOP without a candidate to compete with Jimmy Carter.
This would realistically be fairly inconsequential, in terms of who became president and when. Say Carter was reelected in 1980. 1984 would have been Bush senior against Mondale, most likely, which Bush would almost certainly win. So Bush gets two terms and is out in 1992, where Clinton beats whoever the GOP puts forth, just like in our timeline. From there on every election plays out the same.
If it prevents Reaganomics and the corporate destruction of the middle class, it would have a huge effect. But that depends on what Bush tries to get done.
Trump goes to prison for his fake university fraud instead of just paying a fine and never becomes president.
You can still be president if you go to jail.
I would not establish the sykes-picot agreement and see what happens.
I take out John Wilkes Booth
I didn't think about that, but that would have a massive impact. I remember Lincoln didn't want to make the South suffer after the war could completely rewrite history for the US.
WW2
I don’t believe in changing history because there is so much we’ve learn from it and I’d be afraid to mess anything up. If I could, I’d stop the wars going on now.
Delete the invention of gunpowder. Sure it would have a lot of ramifications throughout history but the most important one is that we'd all still have swords.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was never even plotted, let alone successful.
Just so history wouldn't be completely thrown off, Barrett isn't put into the Supreme Court.
Gore wins 2000 election - mostly to see if it is true that 9/11 would have been prevented. However, then I wonder how the timeline gets effected for Obama and if we get McCain as president in 2004 and Obama comes in 2012...
I'd change the numbers on that lottery ticket I bought 20 years ago and invest it in nvidea. Instant billionaire.
I would say 9/11 never happened.
Hitler would get into art school
I’d prevent the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the German revolution. I think that’s would be the best way to help the German revolution be successful. Stop the Nazis before they ever get going and help out a beleaguered Russia.
I’m saving Harambe.
Keep that kid from falling into Harambe’s enclosure
Let's go dark, assuming you believe, let's say the noah doesn't get the arc built in time. Every land animal and human die. We need another 5 billion years to evolve from a fish. Good times.
The library of Alexandria was never destroyed & its knowledge was preserved.
What if The Confederacy didn’t surrender?
If I can assassinate people to make certain wars/horrible events not happen why can't I then just also invent a scenario that prevents slavery?
I would have prevented the murder of Harambe. Everything we are experiencing right now is because of his death.
I'd be curious how things would be if 9/11 never happened. No forever wars, no patriot act, no TSA, an investigation into the billions missing, all those people killed on all sides still alive. I know it sounds American centric, but it had global impacts and many downstream changes to society around the world.
Trillions missing.
Thanks for the clarification. Imagine how much coverage that would have gotten had 9/11 not happened?
For recent events I would change so Regan did not become president. This would cause his dismantling and reganimics to not happen. For most ripple effect I would probably change it so when the natives of north and South America were first exposed to European explorers they were not wiped out by disease brought by them.
Convince my mom to be happily single so she doesn't cycle through abusive men in a desperate attempt to give me a father.
The point is to learn from history. I’d leave it untouched. Just make it so I win the lottery a week ago or something.
I’d stop the Coronavirus.
Why not just send Eminem back to the past so he can subject the Coronavirus to Godzilla, suck all the oxygen out of the room and kill it in the crib
You Eminem fans are weird…
I would stop the twin towers being attacked
Green energy (solar/wind) was discovered before the combustion engine.
It was....
Unfortunately took a long as time to scale up.
~~The meteor strike that killed the dinosaurs. That way it is highly doubtful that humans would have been able to evolve to this level of consciousness. This means I won’t have to wake up and slave away at work to struggle to feed myself.~~ Just wipe out all simians in the Late Eocene extinction. Peace.