Most likely historical figure to have been a time traveller

[merithyn]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

[Malthus]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

... imprisoned by her husband for 16 years? 

[Ed Anger]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

... imprisoned by her husband for 16 years? 

She wrecked her time machine and needed a man to fix it.

[Viking]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

Trying to get her favorite son to kill and depose her husband? Certainly she had more in common with Lucretia Borgia than Maggie Thatcher.

[Valmy]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

An aristocratic woman's role in running things?  I think she was hardly alone in that.  One should not confuse the remarkable achievements and power of those sorts of women with them having modern ideas about a woman's place.  Aelia Pulcheria and Galla Placidia pretty much ran the Roman Empire but neither were modern people in any respect.

[Malthus]

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus - he's the ultimate answer to the 21st century gay marriage debate. 

[Valmy]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

Trying to get her favorite son to kill and depose her husband? Certainly she had more in common with Lucretia Borgia than Maggie Thatcher.

Lucretia?  That is a rather bad comparison, she was a political pawn who died young.

[Valmy]

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus - he's the ultimate answer to the 21st century gay marriage debate. 

Have the Praetorian Guard kill all gays?

[Malthus]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

Trying to get her favorite son to kill and depose her husband? Certainly she had more in common with Lucretia Borgia than Maggie Thatcher.

Lucretia?  That is a rather bad choice, she was a political pawn who died young.

Lucretia has a bad rep, undeserved. She never went around killing people. The rest of her family, now ... 

[Viking]

Eleanor of Acquitaine.

She seemed to have a very modern idea of a woman's place, and she was adept at manipulating people to get where she wanted to be.

Trying to get her favorite son to kill and depose her husband? Certainly she had more in common with Lucretia Borgia than Maggie Thatcher.

Lucretia?  That is a rather bad choice, she was a political pawn who died young.

I'd say being locked up in a castle makes you a political pawn. Lucretia died at age 39 in childbirth - which was not young for that time.

[Malthus]

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus - he's the ultimate answer to the 21st century gay marriage debate. 

Have the Praetorian Guard kill all gays?

Well, that would be *a* solution ... 

But they didn't kill him for gayness, but because, well, at that time being killed by Praetorians was the usual and expected retirement plan for emperors of every sexual orientation. 

[Viking]

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus - he's the ultimate answer to the 21st century gay marriage debate. 

Also the ultimate answer to the 21st century clingy semitic mother figure debate.

[OttoVonBismarck]

He was 6'4". That's not exactly "freakishly tall". George Washington was 6'2". And we've had a number of guys who were "great at presidenting" (damn, that was hard to type), and progressive.

Yeah, it's not gigantism tall or anything, but probably akin to being 6'7 or so relative to today's average height.

Historical height has always interested me and a lot of people have weird misconceptions about it. For example there is an assumption that Middle Age and earlier Europeans were "tiny." But the reality is their average height (based on our best available evidence) might have been as high as 5'8" or 5'7", which is fairly close to the average adult male height of American men today at 5'9". Where the misconception comes from is people born in the 19th century (many of whom lived into the 20th, obviously) were much shorter than the modern average, parts of Europe men averaged 5'4" in height. This is because there was actually a collapse in nutritional values people received during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so while they were better off in terms of wage earning they were actually eating worse than Middle Age peasants. North America was also by far the tallest region, with North American males averaging 3-4" taller than European males in the 19th century.

So Lincoln would have been tall anywhere (and even tall today at 6'4"), but in America 6'4" wasn't as tall as it would have been in England at the time, relative to his peers.

[Valmy]

I'd say being locked up in a castle makes you a political pawn.

Meh most scheming Nobles ended up locked up in some castle or another for a few years.

[merithyn]

He was 6'4". That's not exactly "freakishly tall". George Washington was 6'2". And we've had a number of guys who were "great at presidenting" (damn, that was hard to type), and progressive.

Yeah, it's not gigantism tall or anything, but probably akin to being 6'7 or so relative to today's average height.

Historical height has always interested me and a lot of people have weird misconceptions about it. For example there is an assumption that Middle Age and earlier Europeans were "tiny." But the reality is their average height (based on our best available evidence) might have been as high as 5'8" or 5'7", which is fairly close to the average adult male height of American men today at 5'9". Where the misconception comes from is people born in the 19th century (many of whom lived into the 20th, obviously) were much shorter than the modern average, parts of Europe men averaged 5'4" in height. This is because there was actually a collapse in nutritional values people received during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so while they were better off in terms of wage earning they were actually eating worse than Middle Age peasants. North America was also by far the tallest region, with North American males averaging 3-4" taller than European males in the 19th century.

So Lincoln would have been tall anywhere (and even tall today at 6'4"), but in America 6'4" wasn't as tall as it would have been in England at the time, relative to his peers.

He was only a few inches taller than his predecessor, James Buchanon. He was by no means "freakishly tall". In fact, Winfield Scott would have been our tallest president in 1852 at 6'5" if he had won.