I would change the decision of the 2000 Supreme Court to allow the winner to become President of the United States of America.

I don't know what kind of a President Al Gore would have been. I don't know if heeding the warning about "BinLadin determined to Attack the US" would have stopped the attacks on 911. I also don't know if the warnings about people learning to fly planes without caring about how to land them would have gotten the attention of a Gore administration.

I am damn sure that:

1. We would not have pre-emptively attacked a country that had nothing to do with 911.

2. Because #1 wouldn't have happened many thousands of people would be alive today who are dead, and many thousands who are maimed would be whole.

3. Many people who despise the US would probably not have an opinion one way or the other, or it would be vaguely positive.

4. We would be much farther along in renewable resource development.

5. Our country would not be associated with torture.

6. OK, honestly, Barack Obama might not be our current President, because we might not have needed such a hugely competent fixer.

Other ideas? I reserve the right to join back in!

Thanks for the link to the website. Great concept. Here's my first thought:

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand June 28, 1914. The whole world shifted that day and the chain of events it unleashed shaped the rest of the 20th century: the mass slaughter of WWI and the advent of modern warfare, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 that set up the Germany that would lead to Hitler's rise to power, plus the French, English and the US drew a line around the Mesopotamian oil fields and created Iraq.

If the Treaty of Versailles hadn't crushed the German economy, it's doubtful that Hitler and his National Socialist party would have come into existence. And if the same powers that carved up the Ottoman Empire and taken over those Mideast oil fileds, imagine how different the world would look today.

On a more personal/selfish note, I wish a bus had run over John Lennon's assassin earlier in the day back in December 1980.

I would have made JP Morgan an actual patron of Nikola Tesla instead of someone out to kill his ideas in the womb. Much of our current global chaos centers on the acquisition and protection of energy resources. Telsa would have solved the energy dilemma with proper funding and the ability to pursue the limits of his genius. It might have kept him (and us) from slipping into madness as well.

If we go back 200 years, Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason is as big of a success as Common Sense and has just as much influence on world religious practices as the latter had on the notion of democratic society to replace centuries of hereditary rule. His dismantling of the Old and New Testament could have given religion a much needed reality check before we started marching into the future we live today. I suspect he would have taken on Islam as well had the reception been better than a French prison for penning The Age of Reason.

If we go back 500 years, I would have made Da Vinci's brand of deism, science and vision be enough to transition us from the Dark Ages to a more modern society hundreds of years ahead of what we actually lived to achieve. That would have been five hundred years of science based on understanding creation vice dominating it and societal evolution that might not have included religious intolerance in such a pivotal position in our development.

Hell, go back 1700 years and Constantine never converts to Christianity and the Roman Empire figures out a way to evolve into modern society without actually collapsing into the Dark Ages and all that came afterward. The advanced nature of Roman society almost guarantees we'd have flying cars and settlements on Mars by now.

Seems to me, that our biggest challenge during the development of "modern civilization" has been a stubborn inability to truly transition beyond our caveman roots. We just have more sophisticated clubs today.

Alright Cville! My first thought was that I wouldn't change anything that had occurred too far back in the century, simply because the web of things that have followed is too wide - too many good things possibly destroyed, too many other bad possibilities that may have filled the vacuum. (Though erasing Hitler/Stalin sure seems a moral imperative.)

As I moved into more recent decades, I would have attempted to erase Reagan, simply because I believe he was so key to Bush and the nightmare we now see before us. But still, too far back in time.

If I kept it to the last decade, I'd do the move you suggested - Gore for Bush.

But if I had to keep it really recent - as in within the last 3 months - I would change Obama's economic appointments, especially Geithner and Summers. I suspect we had to go through this stage, where we attempt to salvage the old form of the system. But I don't see it as likely to work, and I believe the damage already rolling out worldwide, with millions more unemployed and millions to come, will - as it turns into obvious social and political consequences - be seen as a terrible error. A waste of time. When we really need to have people thinking out ahead. I don't even know their names, but at least people who scan the horizon and the margins of economic thinking, and who would have already begun to experiment.

Thanks for kicking this of Cville, and I really hope people will go scan that Edge site and just splash around a little. I found it really really useful for cracking open my brain, and piping in a little brain food!!

I would've stuck Steve Bartman in the upper deck that fateful October day a few years ago, and the Cubbies would have their World Series!

If only I had the magic. I would cancel the assassinations of JFK RFK and MLK.

Not sure if I could properly choose two out of the three, but for me the murder of Bobby was and still is taken personally. Ditto the murder of MLK. And JFK's murder has not been adequately solved, for me.

Since others have trespassed over the century line I'll admit that my first thought was canceling/preventing the assassination of Lincoln, who awakened on his last morning feeling good, and for such wonderful reason.

I would change my mother's decision not to go to the doctor for several months to check a lump she discovered in her breast. Her delay cost her, her life at the age of 53.