I think it might be a good idea to first differentiate between physical time travel involving a visitor possibly from the future interacting with the
past, from information that has somehow been passed from the present or future, either by transmission from the future or reception in the past
through particularly talented individuals (psychics, if you will).
A third alternative I think also bears serious consideration is what I suppose you could call a "shift in consciousness," where a personality from
the future inhabits or physically influences a person in the past without physical travel. Kind of like demonic possession, I suppose, except where a
coherent projected consciousness (not a demon) from one time shares a point of view with a consciousness in a body in another time. A remote viewing
inside somebody else's head, in another time.
In this last case, I always like to consider the assassination of Louisiana Governor Huey Long in 1935 a very likely contender for a bit of
extra-temporal interference. Long was a radical populist, isolationist, and dictator-in-training who was just on the verge of potentially gaining
enough widespread national popularity with his "Every Man a King" campaign to challenge Franklin D. Roosevelt for the U.S. Presidency in 1936. Had
he not been shot and killed by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss (or, it has been suggested, one of his own bodyguards), he might have either won the presidency,
or at least mobilized enough socialist isolationists to hinder the U.S. entry into World War II, with obviously disatrous consequences.
The thing that makes this such a strong contender for extra-temporal influence is the timing. It happens at a point in time just before Long could
develop a large campaign and just before a point of no return in the events leading up to WWII. It's a relatively small, pinpoint intervention --
only two people dead -- that could have been accomplished without a lot of investigation and possible discovery, yet could have created huge ripples
in that future, which we recognize as our accepted past history.
Weiss's motivation for the attack is unclear and hearsay, since Long's bodyguards shot him approximately 50 times. Weiss, being Jewish, may have
also been a prime candidate to have been inhabited or influenced by a consciousness in an alternate future if this kind of time travel utilized a kind
of genetic harmonic "tuning." That is, it might be easier for a Jewish scientist in the future to move their consciousness back along a Jewish
genetic line into the past. And there would obviously a stong motivation for a Jewish person to stop the Nazis in WWII, rather than have the Nazis
survive in some functional form.
It would be interesting to discover some records of Weiss's behavior before the attack, to see if there had been any obvious changes in his
personality. On the other hand, if it was one of Long's own bodyguards who fired the fatal shot, one of them could have been influenced. It would
only take a few seconds of contact, then BOOM, history changes.
Just a notion I like to kick around once in a while.
[edit on 3-5-2008 by Nohup]