We live in a highly technological world, where nobody knows what astonishing scientific breakthrough or advancement in technology is coming up. That doesn’t stop people from making assumptions and predictions of the future.
In the advanced world we live in, it doesn’t take a genius to predict things because most of what we can think of is already either in the works or has even been partially introduced. That’s why these predictions made by people of the past seem amazing.
We were shown a glimpse of the future either through the minds of renowned scientists, or just the imagination of movie and TV show creators. In a time when they had no information other than their vision and creative thinking, they made assumptions about the future that turned out to be true!
Here are 8 creepily accurate predictions made in the past that came true.
1. Moon Landing
In 1865, author Jules Verne published a novel called “From Earth to the Moon”, in which two men are rocketed to the moon using a cannon. The site of the launch was even supposedly set in Florida, the current location of the Kennedy Space Center.
This prediction became a reality more than a century later when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and declared it “one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”
2. Wi-Fi
Nikola Tesla is known to be one of the smartest people to live ever, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone that it was he who made the prediction about of modern technology’s biggest advancements.
He told New York Times, “It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world so simply that any individual can carry and operate his own apparatus.”
Keeping in mind that this was 90 years before the invention of Wi-Fi, and 60 years before the cell phone came to be, that’s pretty incredible!
3. Donald Trump’s Presidency
The Simpsons have proven to have a track record in making ridiculous assumptions that came true down the years. One of those is the prediction that Donald Trump will become the president of the United States. This was shown in an episode in the year 2000 called “Bart to the Future”. And what do you know, 16 years later, and it’s an actuality!
4. John Elfreth Watkins’ Predictions
In 1900, American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins made a series of predictions about the world a 100 years later that were alarmingly accurate.
Among his predictions were the invention of the television, mobile phones and wireless technology, instant color photography, ready-to-eat meals, artificially grown vegetables, express trains and more. Here are a few quotes of his assumptions:
“Vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth.”
“Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries of today.”
“Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later…. photographs will reproduce all of nature’s colours.”
5. Global Warming
Given that even today many deny the effects of global warming, including the aforementioned POTUS, it’s quite astonishing that a congressman in Vermont was able to understand and articulate that global warming was happening and being accelerated by human intervention in the year 1847!
George Perkins Marsh, known to be the first person to talk about the effects of humans on this planet, said: “It is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action.”
6. Entertainment-On-Demand
In 1987, famed movie critic Roger Ebert was asked where he saw the future of TV and movies going. Hi answer was insanely dead-on. He said:
“We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You’ll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology… With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see.”
Now it might seem like that wasn’t too far in the past, but at that time, on-demand movies and cable TV were basically just being developed and the rest would take years to even be thought up.
7. The iPad
In 1968, author Arthur C. Clarke published his futuristic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. In it, he speaks about his character using a device that bears a striking resemblance to the current day’s iPad.
He writes: “[Floyd] would plug his foolscap-size Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. The postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.”
8. Mark Twain’s Death
Perhaps the creepiest of foretelling discussed so far is the death of Mark Twain… by Mark Twain himself!
He said: “I came in with Halley’s comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t. The Almighty said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”
He made this prediction in 1909; and sure enough, he died on April 21, 1910, a day after the comet returned!
