1347, Genoa, to sink a ship before it entered the harbour.

 :confused1:Okay, the time is 1:10 am CST.  I can't sleep.  I look on CI and discover only one person has given my post a thumb-up.  So, who are you?  Do YOU know the answer?
Speak up!
 :dancing-banana:

I'd like to live sometime between, oh, say, 700-1500 somewhere in the UK.  Scotland, Wales or Northern England.  Not Ireland.  Be a peasant farmer.

Second place would probably be somewhere in the latter 1800's.

:surprised:
You CI folks show an appalling lack of curiosity!  I'm talking especially to those whose job it is to spend all day and night on this and other forums.

 :drillsergeant:
Since nobody asked, I'll ask!  Why would I want to return to 1347 to sink a ship before it reached the Genoa harbour?

Frances, you don't know what you ask!

If I had time, I'd write you a nice dystopian novel about what the year 2013 is like if the Black Death had never happened. It boggles the imagination.

Notice I said Dystopia. That's an alternate, "messed up" world. We puny-minded mortals have NO IDEA what Europe, the Church, and the world would look like if so many hadn't perished in the Black Death.

Let's just say that if I had a time machine, the first and only thing I'd do is smash it to little pieces and do everything in my power to make sure the plans for the machine got destroyed as well.

No Hitler assassination, no rescue of books from the Babylonian library before it was destroyed, no telegrams to Abraham Lincoln, no phone calls to JFK.

Heck, I wouldn't even want to tweak my own life, however tempting it might be. Undoing even "bad experiences" can remove the learning that went with them. Then I might learn a more painful lesson later. This is treated in the movie "The Butterfly Effect":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Effect

It's not a Catholic movie and I don't recommend that you watch it (typical Hollywood trash), but I think the premise is interesting. A boy has the ability to change things in his past, but each time he does, he messes more things up.

Not that I'd ever have to worry about any of that, because manipulating time would be a truly God-like power, despite how common it is in sci-fi movies.

As Fr. Wolfgang Goettler (SSPX) once taught us, "Time travel is the denial of being a creature."

He's right -- fundamentally, part of being a creature is being a slave to time, not the master of it. We are stuck IN time, totally passive to it.

While there's a number of time periods I wouldn't mind visiting, I am really only interested in living in today's era.  That is is where the good God saw fit to place me and quite frankly, while there are many aspects of today's times which are undeniably evil and depressing, terrible things were going on throughout the history of the mankind after the Fall.  

I have access to the true Mass and sacraments and validly ordained priests, despite a long distance, and we live in an age where we have the information and ability to make all sorts of discoveries in the scientific fields, a definite plus for someone with an inquiring mind.  I am content where I am.

It matters because the Black Death didn't enter via Genoa, but rather Messina in Sicily.  So you'd be a day late and a dollar short.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.

I would live now.  It's when God decided to put me here, after all.  He must know what He is doing.

Besides, the Internet is fun.