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.

NICKNAMES ARE FOREVER

10 Nicknames That Stuck

Image: Tim Mossholder

Anyone can cope with the common garden variety of nicknames; you probably know plenty of Jimmies, Betties, or Freddies. But try going through life being known as Hairy Pants, The Sluggard, or maybe even Turd Blossom. While a few are endearing and kind, some of these nicknames are appalling enough to become the stuff of legends and transcend the very individuals who endured them in their lifetimes. Suddenly, being called just Bob doesn’t sound so bad, right?

Image: Frances P. Burke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Probably the most famous nickname in baseball history, George Ruth’s "Babe" was a consequence of his young age when he began playing. Over the years he was given many other bynames, like Bambino, The Sultan of Swat, The Big Bam, and Jidge, among others. But none stuck quite like Babe. And the fact that his name is inscribed in golden lettering in the history of baseball almost like none other helps perpetuate the legend.

Image: Illinois State University, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Although most people know him by that name, Buffalo Bill wasn't always named like that. In fact, his real name was William Frederick Cody and he was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman.

The nickname Buffalo Bill was received by William after the American Civil War when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo (American bison) meat. Cody himself is supposed to have killed 4,282 bison in eighteen months in 1867 and 1868. More than enough to earn him his nickname.

Image: Steinar Engeland

Ragnar Lodbrok —yes, the same one from the TV show **Vikings**— was a Danish King of the 9th Century. He was known as Ragnar Hairy Breeches (or Pants), allegedly because of the pair he wore when slaying a mythological dragon.

While the aforementioned dragon bit might not be quite real, Ragnar was indeed quite a hairy character, terrorizing England and France with raids that even reached Paris. Eventually, he met his end in Northumbria, where he was thrown into a pit of snakes.

Image: Wolfgang Hansemann

Known in his native French as Louis Le Faineant, King Louis V was, to put it mildly, a very slow-paced and ineffective individual. Raised by his father to become king from an early age, Louis was married at fifteen to the forty-year-old Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou for dynastic purposes but was left by his wife two years later without having consummated the marriage.

He died at the tender age of twenty in a hunting accident, effectively ending the Carolingian dynasty.

Image: Arno Smit

As nasty as it sounds, a "turd blossom" is a flower that grows from dung, which could be interpreted as a kind of compliment —albeit a very strange one— when given to someone as a nickname.

Karl Rove was George W. Bush’s political advisor, and perhaps he was good at coming up with valuable ideas in dire situations because his moniker was given to him by Bush himself, for reasons we dare not ask. His time in the White House was longer than the life span of his namesake flower because he also worked as an advisor under President Donald Trump.

Image: Valentin Balan

As far as Bulgarian emperors go, Ivaylo wasn’t a very impressive one. He was toppled and replaced quickly, but not before being mocked by the local nobles with a less-than-savory epithet for a king, in the form of "The Cabbage".

His origins as a humble pig farmer might have had something to do with Yvaylo’s nickname, which ungratefully stuck despite his success battling the Byzantines and the Mongols in favor of his country. Tough times for a king, indeed.

Image: Engin Akyurt

Cases of politicians failing to meet the expectations are nothing new. Such was the case for John-George, an Elector of Saxony who chose to spend a big chunk of the Thirty-Year War in the local pub drinking beer instead of fighting for his country. His neighbors, less than impressed by his deeds, named him Beer-Jug. Apparently, there was consensus on the matter, because the name stuck.

Image: Poro amara, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When discussing Napoleon Bonaparte, his stature is one of the first things to be brought up. While the French Emperor was known for his many feats, being a tall individual was not one of them. However, Napoleon was 5′ 6″, making him of average height.

Napoleon was affectionately known as Le Petit Caporal by his soldiers, because of his down-to-earth and educated manners toward his troops. When translated into English, the nickname became The Little Corporal, which gave birth to the myth of his short stature.

Image: Lennart Edling, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

American President and military officer Dwight D. Eisenhower was known as "Ike" throughout his life. His nickname was intended as an abbreviation of his last name and he shared it with all his six brothers, who were known as "Big Ike", "Little Ike" (this was Dwight), etc.

The nickname followed the President-to-be up to the West Point Military Academy, where the "Little" part of his nickname was dropped in favor of simply "Ike".

Image: Ricardo Gomez Angel

Sometimes, a nickname is intended to fit the surname with amusing results. Such is the case of the UFC fighter, Kevin "The Fire" Burns.

While his exploits in the sport are not particularly impressive and his six-year MMA run was quite short, ending his career with a 12-7 record, one has to agree that the man has a funny byname. Maybe not as menacing as it was meant to be in the first place, but still memorable. May the fire burn long in the gloves of Mr. Burns!