re: If you could experience one day from American history... what would it be?

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I've been there and it left me with an extremely uneasy feeling how JFK's assassination had been commercialized. Not so much with the museum, which was really well done, but the whole area around Delay Plaza. But I guess it's a way to commemorate history.

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The same thing can be said of Ford's Theatre in D.C. It probably would be a Five Guys Burgers now if Lincoln hadn't been shot there.

I'd like to be in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963, standing next to Amos Euins, the kid who saw a man fire a rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository and kill President Kennedy. I'd have a camera ready to capture the second and third shots from the window, thereby conclusively proving that Lee Oswald alone murdered the president.

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July 4 1776.

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That would be extremely boring

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We celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July every year. We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independenceand the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation.

But July 4, 1776 wasn't the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776).

It wasn’t the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775).

And it wasn't the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776). Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn't happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776).


So what did happen on July 4, 1776?

The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.

July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered.

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If I were to actually experience and not watch like a ghost id enjoy raiding Hitler's eagle nest. Namely raiding his liquor stores and popping the finest bottles from across Europe with the guys who fought every foot of the way getting there knowing the war was all but over would be some party

The day Bear Bryant died. I hear they rolled Toomer's Corner.

I would kind of like to be on the Ebola Gay, with Paul Tibbets. To see what his emotions were like before and after.

The Salem witch trials..or the lost colony of Roanoke to see, definitively, what happened and what "Croatoan" really meant.

Wouldn't mind hanging with my ancestor Stephen Hopkins for a day. Dude had an interesting life. I just wouldn't want to spend more than 24 hours in the 1600s.

Shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609. The Tempest by Shakespeare is thought to be inspired by it. Convicted of starting a mutiny and sentenced to death. The crew convinced the captain to pardon him. Was in Jamestown between 1610-1614. Came over in the Mayflower in 1620 as the only person on the ship with first hand knowledge of the New World and he wasn't one of the Pilgrims. He was one of the "Strangers". Signed the Mayflower Compact. The first formal meeting with the Indians was held at Hopkins’ house and he was called upon to participate in early Pilgrim visits with the Indian leader Massasoit. Lived a long time in Plymouth.

My GG Grandfather is buried at Little Big Horn. SSargeant Jeremiah Finley. The day before the battle, two of Custers scouts and EM stumbled upon a small family of Sioux and killed them. The scouts scalped the dead male. When Custers brother (Boston) found out, he confiscated the scalp and had Finley put it in his saddlebag. What happens after that is speculation but historians believe that when Finley was killed the natives found the scalp in his saddlebags. This earned Finley an extra gruesome finish.