Gone with the Wind was a huge smash hit in 1939. Adjusting for inflation, it's still the biggest blockbuster of all time — by 200 million dollars! Isn't it ironic that a movie sympathetic to the antebellum South would be the catalyst for the first African-American to win an Academy Award on February 29, 1940?

Back then, the Academy Awards still tended to reward movies that people had actually seen in theaters. The financial success of Gone with the Wind carried over into eight Oscar wins, including Best Supporting Actress for Hattie McDaniel, the movie's delightful "Mammy."

There's a long-standing, unsubstantiated rumor that Mexican actor Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez was the model for the now-familiar Oscar award first introduced in 1929. However, you can't help but notice the similarity between the famous golden statuette and a certain, golden time-traveler ("The Greatest Model You've Never Heard Of").

Given how much attention has been given lately to the Academy's preference for lily-white talent, ask yourself which is more far-fetched: that the Academy Award of Merit was modeled on a white time-traveler or that it was based on a Mexican? You be the judge.

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My occasional alternate history posts never generate any feedback, so I'm amazed that the second most visited post on the year was this one from August 25.

It was on this day in 1875 that Captain Matthew Webb became the first person recorded to successfully swim the English Channel unaided.

Webb's feat was a carefully crafted bit of public showmanship. That the crossing had never been done and was thought impossible fueled the public's interest. The accomplishment made Webb famous and rich.

Hmm. Bold athletic achievements motivated by gambling? Instant and eternal fame? It sounds like this is just the sort of event that would inspire a certain time-traveling tourist we know.

I'm guessing Matt Webb has a big family who like to Google his name.

The top post of 2015 will be revealed Tomorrow.

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Booster Gold selected August 21, 1985, to make his public debut because he knew that was the day an assassin would make an attempt on the life of United States President Ronald Reagan. But what if Booster had chosen another red-letter day in American presidential history to make his debut?

Before election day, November 2, 1948, incumbent president Harry Truman was polling far behind his challenger, Thomas Dewey. No one outside of Truman's camp thought the President could pull out a second term. So remote were Truman's chances, that the Chicago Daily Tribune printed a headline declaring Dewey champion before the results were in.

Booster Gold could have earned a friend in high office and the general public alike if he'd arrived from the future and publicly thrown his support behind Truman, whose campaign against a "Do Nothing Congress" resonated with voters.

Of course, Truman's second term saw the Soviets get the Bomb, the war in Korean, McCarthy's Red Scare, and the Kefauver Committee against organized crime in America. Worse, 1948 saw the emergence of Fredric Wertham's campaign against super heroes. Maybe Booster decided that was all just too much trouble for one hero.

Or maybe a history student like Booster Gold preferred to make his debut closer to the dawn of the 90s, when technology would begin an unprecedented leap forward. It would be awfully hard for a guy with a robot sidekick to live in an era of vacuum tubes.

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It was on this day in 1875 that Captain Matthew Webb became the first person recorded to successfully swim the English Channel unaided.

Webb's feat was a carefully crafted bit of public showmanship. That the crossing had never been done and was thought impossible fueled the public's interest. The accomplishment made Webb famous and rich.

Hmm. Bold athletic achievements motivated by gambling? Instant and eternal fame? It sounds like this is just the sort of event that would inspire a certain time-traveling tourist we know.

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In the summer of 1984, Hollywood box offices were doing boffo business with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins drawing wide audiences. Those wide audiences happened to include many, many children under the age of 13 whose parents worried these films were too violent for their precious darlings. The Motion Picture Association of America responded swiftly. Thus, on this day in 1984, the PG-13 rating was born.

Since 1984, the PG-13 rating has become a necessity for summer movies seeking to draw in the most affluent and impressionable movie-goers (read: teenagers). Consequently, it has also become the go-to rating for super hero movies. If Booster Gold: The Movie had ever gotten off the ground in the 1980s, it would certainly have been rated PG-13.

Obviously, the emergence of the PG-13 rating was no accident. Steven Spielberg claims he originally suggested it. But which is really more likely: that a major media mogul who made millions on PG movies would want to shake things up, or that a self-centered time-traveler out to make his own big-budget bio-pic would be willing to manipulate the MPAA to introduce himself to the biggest audience?

(Say, doesn't that sound like it would make a great movie?)

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