Another very clever instance of irony occurred to me in reading another thread.
Recall that the eruptions of Orodruin were connected to Sauron's power, and that for most of the Third Age, it was dormant, until Sauron reoccupied Mordor some 60 years before the LOTR time frame.
Say, for the sake of argument, that immediately upon Bilbo finding the Ring, Gandalf had recognized what it was, and resolved then and there to destroy it immediately. Well, it wouldn't have been possible, and not just due to the problem of whether anyone could possess the will to destroy it, the intervention of Fate, etc...
Sauron wasn't yet back in Mordor, he returned when the White Council moved against Dol Guldor at the same time as Bilbo and the Dwarves were at the Lonely Mountain. Mt. Doom was still dormant, so if the Ring had been thrown into the Cracks of Doom at that moment it just would have ended up lying on a bed of solidified lava!
It was only because Sauron felt the need to impress/scare everybody (or to impress himself?) by firing up the ol' volcano that the opportunity to destroy the Ring existed at all. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
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