Changing History

Last week, on CBS's Sunday Morning program, the announcer said that Harvey Milk's tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was a year that changed history. It's common to say that something changed history. I'll say it was surely a year that made history, but you really can't change history. Saying that something changed history is technically impossible. History is the past and you can't change the past. To quote, Omar Khayyam, as adapted by Edward Fitzgerald's in the Rubaiyat:

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on:
nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.