"Most people think that, if you are struck by lightning, it'll kill you. If you read science fiction, you know that a far more likely result will be that you will be flung into some period of the past. Which period depends on three factors: your weight, measured in pounds; the voltage in the lightning; which period the author has been mugging up on."
We know of time travel as an accidental freak of nature in works by Mark Twain, L. Sprague de Camp and Poul Anderson.
HG Wells introduced technological time travel and was followed by many, preeminently by Anderson.
A few fictional beings time travel without technological assistance. Superman used to do it by flying faster than light while rotating either clockwise or anticlockwise. The mutants in Anderson's There Will Be Time time travel by an act of will while remaining on the Earth's surface.
The T machine idea combines time travelling with space travelling: Anderson's The Avatar.
As ever, Poul Anderson is in every category.
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