Just for Fun -- Historic Person You'd Like to Be for a Year

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I just though of a fun topic (hopefully fun for some of you) that I thought I would try out.

If you could spend one year (or maybe a month, etc.) being some person from history, who would you like to be? Why? Oh gee, I sound like the English teacher that I am in thinking up a classroom essay -- lol. The person you pick should now be deceased, but their years of prominence would be at least a century ago.

I will begin with a choice of mine, though there are several people I think it would have been fun to have been for a moment in time.

Andrew Stuertz, the Tattooed Boy


1907 worked as Tattooed Boy for T.E. Caffrey's Imperial Dog and Vaudeville Show. (age 13 to 14)

1908 worked as Youngest Tattooed Person with the Gollmer Brothers Sideshow. (age 14 to 15)

1909-1912 worked as Tattooed Boy with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Shows. (age 15 to 19)

1913-1917 worked as Tattooed Man with the Barnum & Bailey Circus. (age 19 to 24)

Andrew then left the sideshow life to become a tattoo artist. He died on May 15, 1962 at age 68.

I think it would have been pure a delight to have traveled the United States by railroad as a member of a famous circus, such as when at the age of 14, young Andrew hopped on board the Gollmer Brothers circus train to begin his tour of America as a sideshow attraction. While not an individual born with physical challenges, he was a self-made attraction having been tattooed by the famous Charles Wagner of the Bowery back in (I assume) 1907 at the age of 13. At such a young age, he got to be in the spotlight while seeing America. The liveliness of the circus atmosphere (during this golden age of circuses) had to be exciting and full of magic (if you like the idea of being in a circus). While most sideshow attractions didn't have to focus on the daredevil feats of tightrope walkers and trapeze artists, they still got to create little mini-shows during their moments before the curious crowds. While the sideshow played "second fiddle" to the circus Big Top, it still held its share of glory. I think it would have been fun at this young age, a young teenager, to have been extensively tattooed (when tattoos were far from mainstream) and showed them off before awed, shocked, and curious spectators.

Like many of us here at Wrong Planet, we have gravitated toward a social comradery within our online community while being misunderstood my many people in the neurotypical community. And Andrew Stuertz, like the others he worked with, enjoyed the comradery of his fellow attractions where he was understood and championed for his uniqueness.

I dunno. Can I be a pirate or someone from the wild west

I don't know enough about history

Absolutely. Anyone from history is fair game.

Anne Lister (1791-1840)















https://youtu.be/HWMMdnz0jbY?si=GF4LawwC0Ku_5OzI


The Anne Lister Story by Helena Whitbread ^



She was a powerful, outspoken, countercultural, non-binary landowner who wrote millions of words of secretly-encoded, sexually-illicit diary entries.

Cryptographers have been interpreting them for decades.

Living in Shibden Hall when Emily Brontë was teaching at Law Hill would have been good too.


*See also Gentleman Jack.

No idea, maybe Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or anyone of the sort.

James Whitaker Wright please.



Whitaker Wright was a mining prospector, company promotor and swindler responsible for the greatest financial scandal of his time.

In the 1890s he rose to the very highest strata of Victorian society. Everyone would have known his name then, but he's not remembered much.

He created an insane estate near Godalming in Surrey, which is where my real interest lies. The mansion he built there and the landscaped gardens are interesting enough but he also filled the grounds with bizarre follies. The mansion burned down in the 50s but the parklands remain and some of the follies, including an underwater glasshouse on the floor of the lake. I've always wanted to explore it but it is never opened to the public.

I'd like to be him for a year, when the estate was almost complete and before his business empire started to collapse.

Thank you to all who have responded so far. I must be honest, I've learned of a couple interesting individuals I was not familiar with from you. I think this can be most fascinating. I'm excited to see who else will be chosen.

When I was a gradeschool kid I wanted to be Sir Francis Drake. Both a legit navy admiral AND a pirate (actually he was a privateer...allowed by the crown to do piracy on enemy shipping) and an explorer...he had adventures pillaging and plundering Spanish treasure ships on the Pacific side of the Spanish Empire in the New World- stealing gold and silver in the zillions of dollars. But then back in home waters defended Britain from the Spanish Armada.How cool is that?

Hmmmm...

Would like to have conversed with historic figures.

Woulda told Lincoln not to go to Ford's Theater.

Woulda told Hitler "you need to relax. Take a cruise. Or an air trip. Why not book a seat on that new blimp called the "Hindenburg"?

Tell Newton to stop messing with alchemy..."its a dead end" and showed him a modern Periodic Table of Elements.

Told the librarians at the Great Library of Alexandria to "install a sprinkler system", and also teach them how use movable type and printing presses so they could make more than a few copies of each book.

I've always wanted to see what it's like to live as a woman, but I'd rather be a woman in power who could command respect.


Let's see.

Boudica the Celtic Warrior Queen who kicked Rome's arse with the help of the tribes she united.

Or China's only ruling female emperor Wu Zetian known for her callousness and cruelty but was also a very successful ruler who made many contributions to the growth of the Chinese Empire.


As much as history was sadly anti-women, I greatly admire the exceptions who pushed back against the pariarchy.

John Logie Baird, the man who invented television in the Mid-1920s.

Marie Antoinette

Just so long as that year is obviously before the French Revolution.