If you could eliminate one person from history...who would it be?

[coalition_unwilling]

257. I'd like to go out on a limb and say the Austro Hungarian Archduke Ferdinand. Without his

assassination in Sarajevo by Serbian nationalists in June 1914, there is no World War I. Without World War I, there is no World War II, no Holocaust and the world might thus have had several more Einsteins, Freuds and (Karl) Marxes. For who among us can say what genius perished in the Holocaust?

OTOH, without a World War I, Ho Chi Minh would not have been able to approach President Wilson at Versailles with a petition calling for independence for Vietnam. Wilson's refusal to meet with Ho set in motion events that would make a stirring narrative of national liberation that lasted for 3/4 of a century. So not too sure about eliminating World War I.

I started by picking the war criminal Kissinger, then backed up to Robert McNamara, then to Allen Dulles, thence to Hitler. It was my consideration of Hitler that led me to Archduke Ferdinand.

Then I started to think about my other love, music. If only I could have removed the composer of that annoying State Farm ditty ("Like a good neighbor . . . "

Great thread. I tip my hat to you.