What historical event fascinates you the most?

No, the post title isn’t a typo. I just thought it would be an interesting representation of my mental reaction to reading today’s question.

There are so many historical events, great and small, that I could probably talk about. But I won’t, because as much as I might find one event or another “fascinating”, I’m always drawn toward thinking about the future.

I’ve heard the phrasing “the past informs the future” before and to be clear I completely agree with it, even when I talk about not finding past historical events as fascinating as the future potential of our world. But I’m not a history buff. If there is something important going on in the here and now, I’ll dig up the history of it so I can make sure I know how things got to this point. Then I lose that focus and daydream about what COULD be coming next.

All that being said, to properly answer the question I would say I find World War II to be the most fascinating (followed distantly by the Moon landing,) because so much of what happened back then is still relevant to today’s society, and there are all those strange experiments and government programs that have surfaced over the years.