If you could have witnessed any event in History

[Justin Q. Olmstead]

How about finding out who "deepthroat" really is? The one that helped Woodward and Bernstein crack watergate.

[Guest Les Albiston]

I thnk I would like to have witnessed Napoleon's retreat from Moscow or his last night on the Isle d'Aix.

The first performance of "Hamlet" or better still Shakespeare's last days in Stratford

John Keats touching land in Dorset having "left" England forever

The Bronte sisters at work on their novels

Charles Dickens giving the first ever reading of "A Christmas Carol" at Birmingham town hall.

Parts of my parents' childhood in inner-city Brum in the twenties and thirties

Julius Caesar's assassination

Villa winning the European cup (I could only listen to it on the radio at the time)

[Adam Wilkinson]

Why only witness? What historical event would want to stop from happening, or change in any way?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's easy Marco - the re-election of George W Bush

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hahaha, funny, good one Andy.

[Adam Wilkinson]

How about finding out who "deepthroat" really is?  The one that helped Woodward and Bernstein crack watergate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Your wish has come true, we now know who he is!

[Adam Wilkinson]

The events I would like to have witnessed or been in presence at is the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the assassination of JFK, signing of the emancipation proclamation and to have managed the Beatles before they became famous, might have made a few more dollars than I am currently earning now!

[Graham Davies]

I witnessed the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, arriving the day after the event was announced, and spending the remainder of the week in Berlin and Rostock (formerly East Germany). Here is the account of what I witnessed:

http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/berlin.htm

I was in South Africa in 1985 when a state of emergency was declared.

I was in the Shankill Road, Belfast, August 1969, visiting my parents-in-law, when Callaghan sent in the troops. Before the troops came in we were dodging bullets and putting up makeshift barricades in the streets in the area now occupied by the Peace Wall. It was scary! I just got back from a conference and a holiday in Northern Ireland. What amazing changes have taken place! Tourism is booming. Pub/club life in Belfast is just great, and the Bushmills Distillery was teeming with visitors from the USA, Japan and Germany. Don't let the miserable politicians kid you that it's all doom and gloom.

I was just three when World War II ended in 1945. I can recall the barrage balloons, sirens and searchlights, sleeping in an air-raid shelter, dog-fights over Kent where we lived at the time, and the victory bonfire at the end of our street. I clearly remember an effigy of Hitler being burned on the bonfire and running screaming to my parents because I thought it was a real man.

I think I've had enough excitement in my life, but I would have liked to have witnessed Goethe meeting Schiller.

[John Geraghty]

I like carolines one about the 1916 rising, wahay.

Dawns scenario of a spiderman averted 22/11/63.

I would have to say......

thin Lizzy live in concert, 78

In the sewer with the second gunman!

Hitlers bunker (have a look at the film 'downfall' if you want to see what it was like)

John

[Joel D. Gruhn]

I like turning points... any of...

An evening with the last Neanderthal clan.

The march of British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith from Boston to Lexington and the skirmish at North Bridge in Concord MA.

The charge of the 1st Minnesota Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg.

With Wilbur and Orville at Kitty Hawk.

/jdg

Edited January 22, 2007 by Joel D. Gruhn

[Kathleen Collins]

I used to have dreams constantly about preventing the following people from being killed. And I could never get there in time, so was left in the dark.

President Kennedy

Marilyn Monroe

Karyn Kupcinet

When I pass away, probably the first thing I'm going to ask God is:

Who killed Karyn Kupcinet?

Also, I'd like to have prevented 9-11, or else find out what happened to the real passengers.

I would love to relive Beatlemania, just as I did at ages 8-10. (BTW, I'm an American.)

And if I could come back as any person in history, I'd like to be Mick Jagger.

Kathy

Edited November 11, 2007 by Kathleen Collins

[John Dolva]

TSBD sixth floor 12.30, Harry Holmes' office Terminal Annexe, 10th and Patton (with a camera), the night in the cell next to Oswald

intercepted IBM execs as they are going to see Bill Gates to tell them he is playing golf but I just happen to have somethings that may interest them.

Edited February 2, 2007 by John Dolva

[Svjetlana Curcic]

I wish I could have witnessed the end of the WW II in any country. I wonder how people felt once that war was over (“happy” most likely does not cover it). I keep forgetting to ask my mother when I see once a year. I wish we were documenting people’s memories of that particular day (the very first day of thoughts would also be valuable) in the form of oral history. Having said that, I explored and found out the following piece of news:

November 8, 2007

House Passes Bipartisan Resolution to Establish "National Veterans History Project Week"

U.S. Representative Jon Porter (R-NV) has announced that the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 770, a bipartisan resolution designating the week of November 11 through November 17, 2007 as "National Veterans History Project Week." The special observance mobilizes America to record the oral history of its wartime veterans. Co-sponsors of the resolution include U. S. Representative Ron Kind (D-WI), original sponsor of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, and 23 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The resolution calls upon the people of the United States to interview at least one veteran from their family or community, following guidelines provided by the Veterans History Project. Local, state and national organizations along with federal, state and local governmental institutions are encouraged to document preserve and honor the service of American wartime

veterans.

More on: http://www.loc.gov/vets/

I still wish people were documenting ordinary people’s lives, not only vets. For example, there is a great digitized collection of interviews with former slaves (2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves

ON: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

This collection truly brings history to life.

Svjetlana Curcic

[Cigdem Göle]

- The Trojan War

- An Elvis concert

- Hitler's suicide

- To be in DP on 22 Nov 1963

- To be there while Poe was writing Annabell Lee

- To be on the set of one of Laurel&Hardy movies

- To meet Peter Sellers

[Guest Stephen Turner]

The Peterloo masacre, but only if I could take a machine gun back with me.

[Michael Clark]

I have an unshakeable Identificatiion with fighting guys in a lot of different scenarios throughout history. Foremost among those scenarios, for me, would be the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I would have liked to have been one of those sailors on a Task Force 77.4.3 destroyer. I identify with those guys who were called to the deck to witness the "retreat" of the massive Imperial Japanese Navy Center Force. I would have liked to experience that feeling of pride and joy slip to dread and fear as the realization that that Japanese formation was actually attacking, and that the protection, that you had thought was in between you and the enemy, had inexplicably disappeared. I would like to believe that the dread of that moment quickly turned to courage and determination as our pack of little destroyers headed off to face a fleet which included the largest Battleship ever, sporting the largest guns to ever be mounted on a ship. I want to be with those guys, even today.