Holocaust, Lincoln's assassination, fall of the Soviet Union, crucifixtion of Jesus, criminalization of weed.
Yes, I know a lot of people will say there are some pretty horrific killings I could have stopped, but in stopping these events I might have stopped many of those killings. I may have prevented Jesus from becoming a messianic figure and I definitely prevented him from becoming a martyr. I believe that stops a lot of blood from being shed in the name of god, and I can't even list all the religious acts of brutality that could possibly be wiped clean from changing this event.
Lincoln's assassination dramatically changed the landscape of post-war America. Who knows how dramatically, but we do know that he would have offered more help to the south and the whole economic structure could have been changed way back then so that today there isn't as dramatic a gap in wealth, and concurrently that there isn't such a large social gap between classes. As for the fall of the Soviet Union, obviously they fell for a reason, but if I could I would change the events that led up to that fall. I think if there were a socialist state that was just as prosperous and functioned just as well as the other industrialized nations at the time communism wouldn't be as misunderstood as it is. I was tempted to simply put McCarthyism, but I think I can cheat here and put that under the general banner of the fall of teh Soviet Union.
Weed. Legalization of cannabis is an afterthought here. Not to say I wouldn't keep cannabis legal, because I would, but the much more important issue to me here is a vibrant hemp industry. Hemp was all set to become THE industry of tomorrow. The wonder crop, the versatile commodity, the most important resource of the 20th century. Unfortunately, people like William Randolph Hearst and Henry Anslinger squelched it with their anti-cannabis campaign. If hemp could have lived up to its potential back then I believe it could have saved the environment, made the oil industry obsolete before it became the giant that it did, and possibly even have eliminated hunger and poverty world wide, and it could have at least helped a great deal in that regard. If not for the criminalization of cannabis and the effect it had on the hemp industry I think we could be looking at a world that we can only see today in sci-fi.
Lasltly, the Holocaust. I chose this killing specifically because it probably wouldn't be affected by my first change, and because it was so horrific and so without any silver lining. I mean, the nuclear bombings were horrific, but they have at least made sure that no other nuclear attack has been committed since. There are others that are not prevented by my changes, but I do think my changes work towards a better society rather than saving lives directly. I'd like to think that these changes save more lives than we can realize by creating a better society. Also, if I relegated myself to only saving lives directly my only choise would to be to stop the greatest tragedies in terms of the number killed. Just because I stop the five largest killings ever doesn't mean the rest of history's mass killings are any less significant.
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