1. Morgan Robertson predicted the sinking of the Titanic
In 1898, the writer Morgan Robertson published a novella titled Futility, or the Death of the Titan. In it, he told the story of the fictional ocean liner Titan, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg. Sounds familiar? No wonder … Fourteen years later, the events in Robertson's book came true. In 1912 the cruise ship Titanic sank; the tragedy claimed the lives of 1,500 people. In fact, the list of similarities between the fictional "Titan" and the real "Titanic" is very long. The Titan was similar to the Titanic in size and speed, both ships sank in April, killing more than half of the passengers and crew, and both had disastrously few rescue boats. But most intriguingly, Robertson wrote the book long before Titanic was even invented. How could he have predicted the crash so accurately? Robertson denied accusations of clairvoyance, and argued that the similarities were only the result of his extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and nautical trends.
2. Herbert George Wells predicted the creation of the atomic bomb
In 1914, the author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds predicted atrocities that, even at the height of World War II, most people could not have imagined: the destruction of cities with the atomic bomb. In his novel World Set Free, he described a uranium-based hand grenade that "continues to explode indefinitely." In fairness, it should be noted that Wells was fond of studying atomic physics. However, he could not have known that nuclear energy could be used for military purposes. The Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb, was launched 28 years after Wells's book was published. It was this project that led to the creation of "Kid" and "Fat Man", nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and claimed an estimated 226,000 lives.
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3. Nikola Tesla predicted the creation of Wi-Fi in 1901
Serbian-American engineer Nikola Tesla is best known for his contribution to the development of a modern power supply system.
In a 1909 interview for The New York Times, Tesla shared his thoughts on future technology. He said: "It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages around the world, and anyone can get their own apparatus for transmitting such messages." This was just an incredible statement at the time, since the first mobile phone was not created until 1973, and Wi-Fi only appeared in 1991. It can also be argued that Tesla foresaw the invention of "Skype" and video calling. In 1926, he declared that "thanks to television and telephony, we will be able to see and hear each other well … despite a distance of thousands of miles." In 2013, Tesla was commemorated with a statue in San Francisco that hands out free Wi-Fi to visitors.
4. Robert Boyle predicted organ transplants in the 1660s
Robert Boyle was an immensely influential scientist, often referred to as the "father of modern chemistry." He is best known for his discovery of the Boyle-Mariotte law - about the behavior of gases - and his habit of setting up experiments to confirm his hypotheses. However, he is also known for always being ahead of his time. In the 1660s, he drew up a "wish list" for the future of science, noting in his journal that in the future, medicine would "cure disease through transplantation." In 1954 - more than 300 years after Boyle's prediction - Dr. Joseph Murray and Dr. David Hume performed the very first successful organ transplant, transplanting a kidney into a patient. Today, this procedure is used to save lives around the world - in 2014, 17,107 kidney transplants were performed in the United States alone. And that's not it,what the scientist foresaw. In his mysterious "wish list", he mentioned submarines, genetically modified crops, and hallucinogens.
5. Edgar Cayce predicted the 1929 stock market crash
Edgar Cayce was an immensely popular mystic of the early 1920s. In a trance, he answered all kinds of questions, from personal problems to national politics, and boasted a large number of eminent clients, including Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Edison. In 1925, Cayce began to talk about a catastrophic economic depression in America four years later. Some clients heeded Casey's warnings and took their savings from banks. As the mystic had predicted, the New York Stock Exchange crashed in 1929. 13 million people were unemployed, and stocks did not return to normal until 1954. Cayce's prophecies did not end there. In 1938 he predictedthat in 1968 or 1969 archaeologists would make a discovery "under the perennial silt and seawater under Bimini" in the Bahamas, and that would be the "return of Atlantis." In 1968, a mysterious underwater rock formation was discovered on Bimini Road that some people believe is part of the legendary lost city of Atlantis. He also accurately predicted the date of his own death - January 3rd, 1945.
6. Mark Twain predicted his own death
In his 1909 autobiography, American literary icon Mark Twain made an ominous prediction: the time of his own death. Twain was born on November 30, 1835, shortly after Halley's comet entered view from Earth - as it does every 75 to 76 years. At the age of 74, Twain wrote: “I came with Halley's comet in 1835. It will happen again next year, and I will leave with her. And Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet reappeared.
And this is not the only time that Twain accurately predicted the future. In 1898, he wrote a short science fiction story called From The London Times, 1904, which predicted future events. In it, he described a device called the Telelectroscope, which was “connected to the telephone systems of the world” and allowed “everyone to observe the events taking place anywhere in the world on a daily basis”. And we can confidently say that Twain predicted the Internet 90 years before Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web.
7. Jules Verne predicted the moon landing
Another writer who has proven to be frighteningly accurate is Jules Verne, a 19th century French novelist who wrote the classic adventure novel Around the World in 80 Days. In 1865, he published a short science fiction story called From Earth to the Moon, in which he described the very first manned flight to the Moon. And on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong made "a huge leap forward in human history" by stepping on the lunar surface almost a century after Jules Verne foresaw it.
But Verne's suggestion that a trip to the moon would one day be possible is not the only thing that made his prediction famous. There were similarities between the real Apollo mission and the journey from Earth to the Moon, such as the number of astronauts on board and the fact that both rockets were launched from Florida. However, the most eerie coincidence is that Verne described the feeling of weightlessness that the astronauts experienced. At the time when he was creating his story, scientists did not know that gravity behaves differently in space, so it is completely incomprehensible how he described what he did not know about at all.
8. Alexis de Tocqueville predicted the Cold War in 1840
In the 1840s, America was independent from Britain for just over 60 years, and the Civil War practically divided the country in half. In addition, Russia was still under the despotic and hierarchical leadership of the tsarist regime. And no one would have thought that these two countries would become the two main superpowers fighting for world supremacy a little over a century later. Therefore, the prediction of the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, which he made in his 1840 publication Democracy in America, seems rather strange. He wrote: "There are two great nations in the world who, starting from different ends, are moving towards the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans … each of them wants to be the first and holds in his hands the fate of half the world."The last half of the twentieth century was characterized by increasingly strained relations between America and the Soviet Union, which tried to surpass each other in nuclear weapons development, astronautics and international influence.
9. Nostradamus predicted the Great Fire of London
The 16th century prophecies of the French pharmacist and visionary Michel de Nostrdam are legendary. He was credited with predicting a huge number of major world events, even those that occurred more than four centuries after his death. One of the most famous predictions of Nostradamus is the Great Fire of London, which hit the city in 1666 and destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants. In his 1555 book The Centuries, he wrote: "The blood of justice will be poured on London, ablaze in fire. 66" Scary, isn't it?
In addition, it can be argued that Nostradamus predicted the 1789 French Revolution. He declared: "The enslaved population will sing, chant and demand, while princes and lords will be held captive in prisons." This is very similar to how the trampled peasant majority rose up and arrested the French aristocracy during the revolution. Nostradamus also talked about “headless idiots,” which could refer to the thousands of people executed by the guillotine, including King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. However, the predictions of Nostradamus must be treated with a grain of salt. His notes were so extensive that a diligent translator could find predictions for almost anything he wanted within the framework of his job.
10. Predictions by Leonardo da Vinci
Scientist, artist, mathematician, musician … there are many fields in which Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci was an expert. But was he a prophet? Da Vinci's notebooks, where he wrote down his thoughts from the mid-1480s until his death in 1519, are littered with designs for inventions and technologies that are completely out of step with his time. It is incorrect to credit da Vinci with the invention of these things, since his drawings were not detailed plans of how these things would work, but you can call them predictions of inventions that may have existed. For example, he drew up a project for a huge armored military vehicle - more than 400 years before it became a reality.
In addition, da Vinci once drew a diagram of an early parachute, three centuries before André Jacques Garnerin's first jump in 1797. In 2000, skydiver Adrian Nicholas tested a parachute designed by da Vinci, using it to safely jump off a hot air balloon at an altitude of 3,000 meters. He described the flight as softer than a modern parachute, but the structure weighed 9 times more than modern parachutes and did increase the risk of injury on landing.