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.

Bazinga!

10 Made-Up Words That Made It

Image: Clark Young

Popularized by movies, TV shows, celebrities, cultural phenomena, word of mouth, or any other way, some made-up words that didn't exist up until very recently made their way into our everyday lexicon.

Sidestepping the argument that "every word is made up," here are some terms –like meme, boredom, and even robot– that are of common usage today but haven't been around for a very long time. Or, at least, not in their modern sense.

Image: Andy Kelly

Some made-up words have had such a successful run that it is almost impossible to imagine a proper synonym for them. Such is the case of "robot", a term used to describe a device capable of carrying out tasks autonomously.

Borrowed from the Czech word robota, meaning indentured labor, "robot" was originally coined by Karel Capek in the 1920 play R.U.R. Since then, the term has evolved to encompass an enormous amount of machines, from industrial devices to the most sophisticated artificial intelligence.

Image: Tran Mau Tri Tam

It is currently used as a term to describe pictures of cute kitties, angry babies, captioned paintings, and a plethora of images shared online. However, it turns out that meme is a shortening of mimeme which is an ancient Greek word meaning "imitated thing".

The current shortened word, meme, was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene as a way of explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

Image: Samuel Regal-Asante

Ok, so maybe you have never heard the term "Chairdrobe". But you probably have left clothes sitting in a chair, as if it was an impromptu wardrobe. Hence, the word at hand.

A fusion of "chair" and "wardrobe," a chairdrobe is the perfect destination for clothes that are too dirty for the wardrobe, but too clean for the washing machine. An almost universal experience, it is a visual representation of the urgencies of our daily lives.

Image: The wub

At some point or another, we all experience boredom. It’s a common word for a common experience. But, apparently, before Charles Dickens, people either didn’t get bored or couldn't express it with such an exact word.

The author of A Christmas Tale was the first one to ever write the word "boredom" officially in his 1852 novel, Bleak House. The emotional state of boredom, however, is pretty timeless. The Roman philosopher Seneca described boredom as a kind of nausea, while Greek historian Plutarch noted that King Phyrrus was particularly bored in his retirement (albeit, using another word).

Image: All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA

Grammarian Bill Walsh expressed it nicely in his book Lapsing Into a Comma: "We, word nerds, have known since second grade that alright is not all right." While it is frequently used and seen, "alright" is technically not a single word but, rather, a shortened version of the hyphenated use of the words "all" and "right," which should stay apart.

And as for Matthew McConaughey, he didn’t come up with this expression but certainly helped popularize it with his catchphrase "alright, alright, alright."

Image: GabboT

Used as an interjection to rub a particularly good joke on someone’s face or cheer yourself on after a small victory, Bazinga! is the catchphrase of Sheldon Cooper, one of the main characters in the popular TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

In the TV series, Sheldon uses the phrase to congratulate himself after a prank or a joke that ended in a good way for himself, or as a general expression of joy.

Image: Alexandre Lecocq

Since smartphones took over our lives in the early and mid-2000s, the act of taking a picture of oneself has become as ubiquitous as the device itself.

Originally performed by solo tourists who couldn’t or wouldn’t ask someone else to take their picture, taking a "selfie" and sharing it online has become one of the most common activities in the whole world.

Image: Perry Merrity II

The origin of some made-up words is quite self-evident, as it happens with "spork". In the world of dining, the spork stands as a testament to functional ingenuity. A fusion of "spoon" and "fork," this hybrid utensil effortlessly combines the best of both worlds. With its spoon-like bowl and fork-like tines, the spork is a versatile tool, adept at handling a variety of dishes.

Widely used as a children's utensil, the spork is also used for salads, pasta, and desserts, becoming a staple in fast-food joints, schools, and outdoor events.

Image: Chris Liverani

A paradox in itself, the term "frenemy" is a portmanteau of the words "friend" and "enemy," combining them in a single, powerful concept. It encapsulates the delicate balance between friendship and rivalry. A frenemy is someone with whom you share an amicable facade but harbor underlying tensions. Maybe a coworker, a circumstantial ally, or a business partner can all be frenemies who might often lend us a hand but must also be carefully watched.

Image: Ryan Franco

A quick marriage of the words "hungry" and "angry", to be hangry is to be in that irritable mood that arises when one is running on an empty stomach. It playfully acknowledges the impact of hunger on emotions.

The term "hangry" has quickly become a linguistic staple, capturing the universal experience of being both hungry and irritable. It's more than just a passing annoyance; it's a state of being that transforms the most composed individuals into impatient, easily frustrated versions of themselves. Have you ever been "hangry" yourself?