The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
If you could go back and witness any historical event, which one would you pick?

I’m having a hard time answering this one. Back in uni, I was a history geek (it was my minor). So why can’t I come up with a quick and pithy answer?

I know a lot of people are going to answer this based on their religious beliefs – seeing the Sermon on the Mount, the fall of Jericho, or the mountain coming to Mohammed (I don’t know the Hindu or Buddhist equivalents).

I’m not selecting one of those.

I’d also avoid more graphic events, like the assassination of JFK or the bombing of Hiroshima.

What about the signing of the Magna Carta (the beginning of divine right monarchy and thus the beginning of parliamentary democracy in the West)? Kind of a low key event with a payoff centuries afterwards.

Seeing the great pyramids of Giza in all their glory would be something. Imagine being there for the final capstone (then probably being sacrificed to the gods or a pharaoh ;-).

That’s an idea, seeing the completion of a great work, that puts me on the path to my answer. Perhaps seeing Van Gogh creating Starry Night*, Da Vinci do just about anything, or Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel or completing David.

Could you imagine being in the audience when Shakespeare introduced Romeo and Juliet? Purportedly, audiences shouted “No!” when Romeo killed Tybalt, as, according to the laws of the day, that meant that Romeo had to be dead by the end of the play – suddenly driving home that this wasn’t some teen romcom, but a tragedy, as the name states (the full name is The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet).

So this would be my pick, seeing a Shakespearean play on stage at the Globe theater while Shakespeare was present.

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*I was not a fan of Van Gogh until I got the opportunity to see his art in person. The posters that we all bought in uni and put on our dorm room walls do not in any way do justice to just how brilliant and vibrant the actual paintings are.