They saw the future

Incredible Prophecies: He predicted the Titanic 14 years before it sank

What if we told you someone described the Titanic disaster 14 years before it happened? Or that a famous American writer predicted the exact day of his own death? And decades before the first iPad or smartphone existed, some people had already imagined them with astonishing precision. Coincidence? Genius? Or something else entirely? From the sinking of the Titanic to the Moon landing and the rise of social media, here are 10 predictions so accurate that they'll make you wonder whether the future can sometimes be seen before it happens.

We all know the story of the RMS Titanic, the "unsinkable" ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912, claiming the lives of more than 1,500 people. But here's a lesser-known and shocking fact: 14 years before the disaster, someone had already written an incredibly similar story.

In 1898, American author Morgan Robertson published the novella Futility (later retitled The Wreck of the Titan). It tells the story of the Titan, a gigantic, supposedly "unsinkable" luxury liner that strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks. 14 years later, the Titanic met almost the same fate. The parallels are so striking that Robertson's novel is still regarded as one of history's most astonishing coincidences.

The Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla didn't just revolutionize electricity; he also made one of the most amazing technological predictions in history.

In 1926, 68 years before the first smartphone, Tesla gave an interview to Collier's magazine in which he described what sounds remarkably like today's connected world. He predicted that wireless technology would eliminate distance, saying the Earth would one day be "converted into a huge brain." Then he added an even more startling prediction: "The instruments with which we shall be able to do this will be incredibly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

Today, finding an answer takes just a few seconds. But before Google, before Wikipedia, and even before the internet reached most homes, someone had already described almost exactly how we would search for information.

That someone was Isaac Asimov, the American science fiction writer and professor. In a 1988 interview on PBS's A World of Ideas with Bill Moyers, Asimov predicted that every home would one day have a computer connected to "enormous libraries," where anyone could ask a question and instantly receive an answer. He also described an "interconnected encyclopedia" that many people now compare to Wikipedia.

More than five decades later, the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing remains one of the greatest feats in human history. But as if the incredible achievement of reaching the moon wasn't enough, there's something that makes it even more spectacular: Someone described key parts of the lunar mission more than 100 years before it happened.

In 1865, French writer Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon, a science fiction classic that turned out to be prophetic. In it, Verne placed the launch in Florida, the same state NASA would later use for its missions. He also chose aluminum for his spacecraft because it was lightweight and durable, decades before it became the backbone of the aerospace industry. And, just like Apollo 11, his spacecraft carried three crew members. For a novel written more than a century before, the similarities are hard to ignore.

Today, video calls are such a normal part of life that we take them for granted. But not long ago, the only option was a landline, and seeing the person you were talking to sounded like something out of a science fiction movie.

But some writers didn't just imagine the future; they came incredibly close to predicting it. One of them was Hugo Gernsback, the Luxembourgish-American inventor, writer, and publisher often called the "Father of Science Fiction." In his 1911 novel Ralph 124C 41+, Gernsback described a device called the "Telephot," a combination telephone and television that let callers see both the face and surroundings of the person on the other end of the line. More than a century later, it's hard not to compare that with FaceTime, Zoom, or Skype.

Love it or hate it, social media has become one of the biggest forces in modern life. Today, we use it to get news, find jobs, stay in touch with family, and organize our lives. But just a few decades ago, the idea that billions of people would do all of that online seemed almost impossible.

Bill Gates, however, imagined it perfectly. In 1999, just a year after Google launched, Gates published Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy, where he made a series of predictions that would later come true. He wrote that "private websites for your friends and family will be common, allowing you to chat and plan events," an unsettlingly accurate description of Facebook, which wouldn't launch until 2004. He also predicted that people would find jobs online by sharing their interests, skills, and qualifications, a couple of years before LinkedIn debuted in 2002.

For millions of people in the world, one of the first things to do each morning is check the news on their phones or tablets. Today, that's completely normal; in the 1960s, however, it seemed unimaginable.

While it’s hard to believe, that's exactly what Arthur C. Clarke described in his 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this story, the English author introduced a device called the "Newspad," on which astronauts read news from Earth. But Clarke didn't just predict a tablet-like device; he also described how users would tap headlines to expand articles and read them comfortably on a screen. In other words, he was able to envision much of today’s experience more than 40 years before the iPad debuted in 2010.

We've already seen predictions that came true years, and even decades later. But this next one was written about 300 years before the technology it described existed.

Who did it? Robert Boyle, the Irish chemist known as the father of modern chemistry and the scientist behind Boyle's Law. In the 1660s, Boyle wrote a private scientific wish list that has been preserved by the Royal Society for its importance. Among its 24 visionary goals was "The Art of Flying," based on his belief that air obeyed physical laws humans could eventually master, something accomplished with the airplane more than two centuries later. He also described "a practicable and certain way of determining longitudes," a problem that wouldn't truly be solved worldwide until the age of satellite navigation and GPS, almost three centuries after Boyle first imagined it.

For more than 2,000 years, astronomers have tracked Halley's Comet, and thanks to that work, today we know it returns about every 75 to 76 years. The last time it appeared was in 1986, and it's expected back in 2061. Predicting a comet's return is science, but predicting your own death is something else.

And that's exactly what Mark Twain, the "father of American literature," did. Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, the year when Halley's Comet lit up our sky. 74 years later, in 1909, he famously said, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." On April 21, 1910, the day after the comet reached its brightest point, Mark Twain died.

The Cold War lasted more than 44 years, pitting the United States and the Soviet Union against each other in a global struggle for power. But astonishingly, one thinker foresaw this rivalry more than a century before it began.

While traveling through the United States, French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville published an impressive prediction in Democracy in America (1835–1840): "There are at the present time two great nations in the world... I allude to the Russians and the Americans... Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world." More than 100 years later, those two nations would fight to dominate the second half of the 20th century almost exactly as he had anticipated.

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8 Festive Words You Must Know

Image: Ray Hennessy

Humans are social creatures and, as such, most of us enjoy an excuse to gather with our friends and family every once in a while. Whether it's because of a nationwide holiday or some small, private celebration, spending quality time around others is a fundamental part of the human experience.

Here, we've listed a few festive terms and delve into their history and meaning. Who knows? Maybe an item on this list will give you something to talk about at your next kaffeeklatsch!

Image: Jeremy Bishop

Originally, the word lū'au referred to the leaves of the taro plant and, by extension, to a traditional Hawaiian dish prepared with them. The dish is a staple food of Hawaiian feasts and it proved so popular that, eventually, the word came to be synonymous with the feasts themselves. A lū'au is typically celebrated outdoors and it consists of local dishes served on mats and eaten without utensils. Of course, to complete the picture, the feast is usually accompanied by festive music and hula dance.

Image: Christin Hume

Nowadays, the word "ale" refers to a few specific types of beer brewed by warm fermentation, as opposed to lighter varieties such as lager. However, both the word and the beverage have been around for a very long time. Up until medieval times, ale was a major source of nutrition for people from every walk of life, be it workers, monks, or nobles. Even children used to get most of their grain intake in the form of small beer, a highly nutritious but less alcoholic ale variety.

Going further back, some records attest that workers in Ancient Egypt were paid in beer, and runic amulets inscribed with the word alu, thought to refer to both the beverage and its intoxicating effects, have been found all over northern Europe.

Image: Clem Onojeghuo

This loan word from German translates to something like "coffee gossip," or "coffee chatter." If you spend any time as a regular in your local cafe, there is a high chance that you've been part of one of these, even unwittingly. Politics, sports, or the latest piece of news are just some of the topics that may arise when groups of coffee enjoyers find themselves in the same place, at the same time.

Image: Toa Heftiba

The earliest registered use of the phrasal verb "to hang out" as slang for spending time relaxing and socializing dates back only to the 1840s. As a noun, "hangout" can refer to both a place for hanging out or, quite often, to the gathering itself.

For a time, the term was so popular that Google borrowed it to name its videoconferencing platform, Google Hangouts. However, by 2022, the product was discontinued and largely replaced by Google Meet.

Image: Nicki Eliza Schinow

The Japanese word matsuri is most often translated simply as "festival." However, culturally, it's much more than that: the term is deeply connected to the Shinto religion, and it refers to a wide array of civil and religious ceremonies that often include both times of solemn worship and upbeat celebration.

You might have heard of Washington DC's Sakura Matsuri, a festival that coincides with the blossoming of the cherry blossoms (sakura in Japanese) and celebrates Japanese culture in the United States.

Image: Debashis RC Biswas

Known all over the world as the Festival of Colors, this Hindu festival celebrates the arrival of spring after winter and, symbolically, the triumph of good over evil. According to the Hindu religion, Holi commemorates the victory of Vishnu over the antagonistic Hiranyakashipu.

Holi is a time for merriment, and young and old people alike smear their faces with colored powders, sing, and dance as they let go of their troubles and embrace the coming of spring.

Image: Samuel Dixon

If you've ever been to New Orleans, Louisiana, during February or March, you are probably familiar with the city's massive Mardi Gras Carnival celebrations. An important event with Christian roots, Mardi Gras festivities often include feasts and parades that culminate the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season of Lent. It's from these feasts that Mardi Gras got its name: In French, it literally means "Fat Tuesday."

Image: Josephine Baran

If, for whatever reason, you ever dreamed of participating in a massive tomato fight with strangers purely for entertainment value, you should head toward the Spanish region of Valencia during August. That's exactly what La Tomatina is.

This festival was spontaneously started in 1945 by the population of the town of Buñol, and it's been celebrated on the last Wednesday of August ever since, despite having once been banned for its lack of religious significance. In 2002, La Tomatina was declared of International Tourist Interest by the Spanish Secretary of State for Tourism.