Who knew?

Was the sinking of the Titanic foretold? Writers who predicted the future

Image: Michael Dziedzic

Do modern inventions ever remind you of things you’ve read in old books? Do you ever find yourself pointing and saying, "Just like The Jetsons!" or "The Simpsons predicted this!"? Sometimes, real life ends up imitating art, even centuries later. Let’s explore 11 cases where writers anticipated the future, ranging from logical to downright eerie.

Image: K. Mitch Hodge

Did you know that a novel from 1898 predicted the Titanic disaster with an eerie degree of precision? Fourteen years before the real event, there was... the Titan.

Morgan Robertson published Futility, later retitled The Wreck of the Titan. It told the story of a massive British ocean liner called the Titan, described as unsinkable. The ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, carried too few lifeboats, and sank in April, all details that mirror the Titanic tragedy.

Image: Arthur Lambillotte

Isaac Asimov imagined the iPad, more or less, back in 1964. In an essay for The New York Times, the sci-fi legend described what life might look like in 2014. Among his predictions was that people would use a "compact screen" to read books, watch videos, and communicate with others, all without ever leaving their homes.

Asimov essentially foresaw smart electronic tablets and even hinted at remote work and distance learning decades before they became reality.

Image: Steve DiMatteo

In a 1998 episode of The Simpsons ("When You Dish Upon a Star"), Homer crashes into a Hollywood meeting and we briefly see a sign that reads: "20th Century Fox — a division of Walt Disney Co."

At the time, this was a playful nod to Disney’s ever-growing empire. But in 2019, it became real: Disney acquired 21st Century Fox for $71.3 billion.

Image: SpaceX

In his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne got more than one detail right, including which U.S. state would one day launch spaceships.

Verne imagined a three-man crew in a projectile fired from Florida (near modern-day Cape Canaveral) that splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Yes, just like Apollo 11, more than a hundred years later. That’s a remarkably accurate prediction for a piece of fiction written during the Civil War era!

Image: Gabriel Benois

Do you remember seeing people communicate through large flat screens in The Jetsons and laughing at it as an exaggerated gag about the future? Well, who’s laughing now?

In Hanna-Barbera’s 1962 show, the characters used "televiewers" to chat across long distances, surprisingly similar to how we use Zoom or FaceTime today. Other works, like E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909), had predicted remote video communication even earlier, but The Jetsons cemented the concept visually in pop culture.

Image: bady abbas

IVF was predicted as far back as 1924, 54 years before the first "test-tube baby" was born.

British biologist J.B.S. Haldane imagined a world of artificial reproduction. In his essay Daedalus; or, Science and the Future, he coined the term "ectogenesis" to describe babies being grown outside the womb.

Image: Emiliano Vittoriosi

In Steel Beach (1992), sci-fi author John Varley envisioned a future where artificial intelligence provided therapy. In his story, the Central Computer actively counsels people, offers psychological evaluations, and responds to emotional needs.

At a time when AI was still seen as a cold, mechanical concept, Varley’s story offered a surprisingly human twist. Today, studies show that many people using AI chatbots turn to them for emotional support and counseling.

Image: Possessed Photography

The word "robot" entered the English language in 1920 through a Czech play titled R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek. These "robots" weren’t mechanical machines but biological workers created to serve humans. The name came from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." A century later, the term has clearly stuck.

Image: Mateo Avila Chinchilla

In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Arthur C. Clarke introduced HAL 9000, an AI so advanced it could carry out conversations, read lips, and make decisions. But Clarke’s futuristic vision also included video calls, flat-screen tablets, and casual digital multitasking, all decades before such technology existed.

HAL’s breakdown was fiction, but Clarke accurately foresaw how machines would gradually take over our attention.

Image: Olivier Amyot

In 1880, Mary E. Bradley published her book Mizora: A Prophecy. Maybe not all of the details in her all-female utopia were prophetic, but she did get one thing right: artificially grown meat. In her world, food wasn’t farmed but created through chemical processes in laboratories.

It sounded outlandish at the time, but today some food companies are doing exactly that. Bradley’s vision came long before environmentalism or animal rights were mainstream. Somehow, in a story about feminism and science, she also imagined what we might now call the vegan burger.

Image: Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk

Credit cards might seem like a very modern invention, but they were anticipated in an 1888 novel. Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, imagined a future in the year 2000 where everyone received a card loaded with "credit" from the government. People used this card to access goods from massive communal warehouses—similar to what we today would call department stores.

Twisting your perception of time

Strange links: What do a fax machine and the US Civil War have in common?

Image: Icons8 Team

Did you know that Cleopatra, Egypt's most famous queen, lived closer to our time than to the construction of the powerful pyramids of Giza? When we map out different historical events on a timeline, we frequently discover that moments we thought were galaxies apart actually happened at the same time or were separated by far fewer years than we imagined. Join us as we put history into perspective! One thing's for sure: you're in for some surprises.

Image: Alessandro Zanini

We often tend to associate the marvelous pyramids of Giza with Cleopatra VII. And it's easy to see why, as she's Egypt's most famous Queen. But here's the surprising truth: about 2,500 years separated the construction of the pyramids (2580–2560 BC) from Cleopatra's life (69–30 BC). That means that the Queen of the Nile was roughly 500 years closer to our own time than she was to the pyramid builders!

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If you've worked in an office at any point over the past 35 years, chances are you've used or at least seen a fax machine. And while it might seem like a relatively recent invention, the truth is that the first fax machine was invented well before the American Civil War. That's right! In 1843, 18 years before the war broke out, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain created the first electromechanical facsimile machine, the ancestor of the modern fax.

Image: Somesh Kesarla Suresh

The Salem witch trials are remembered as an infamous event from long ago. These trials took place mainly between 1692 and 1693, decades before the US even existed as a nation. Surprisingly, the prestigious Harvard University had already been founded 56 years earlier! And here's the most impressive part: both events occurred in what is now Massachusetts.

Image: K. Mitch Hodge

The sinking of the Titanic happened over a century ago. This tragic event, which captured the world's attention, occurred in 1912, but at the very same time, other events were also happening around the globe. Surprisingly, that same year also saw the debut of one of America’s most beloved cookies: the Oreo!

Image: Nvdu

Did you know that the iconic Marilyn Monroe was born in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II? It might seem surprising, since popular imagination links these two women to very different eras. But it's true: Marilyn was born in June 1926, just two months after the future queen, who would go on to rule the UK for 70 years. They actually met once, at the Royal Film Performance held at the Empire Theatre in London on October 29, 1956. Queen Elizabeth II passed away in 2022, 60 years after the actress's death.

Image: Sean Foster

Pyramids take center stage again in this comparison. You probably link woolly mammoths with the Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere, right? While that connection is accurate, it may surprise you to learn that some of these massive mammals were still roaming the Earth long after the Egyptian pyramids were built.

Image: Ryunosuke Kikuno

The Samurai were a privileged warrior class that inhabited pre-modern Japan, arising around the 12th century. Their influence lasted for centuries, which is why some samurai were still alive when Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call in 1876. It was precisely in that same year of the 19th century that marked the official abolition of the samurai class in Japan.

Image: Luis Aceves

The Aztecs were a powerful civilization that primarily ruled what is now Mexico between the 14th and 16th centuries. Among its many achievements was the construction of Tenochtitlán, which began around the year 1325. But did you know that Oxford University was already teaching students nearly three centuries before the Aztecs began building their empire? While the exact dates are uncertain, scholars estimate that instruction at Oxford was already underway by 1096!

Image: SnapSaga

When discussing ancient civilizations, we can’t forget the Incas, whose empire was centered in what is now Peru. The thing is, when the Incas were building the impressive structures of Machu Picchu around 1450, there were just over 30 years left before the incredible Sistine Chapel was completed on the other side of the world. Just three decades separate these two monumental and majestic human creations, built with very different technologies, tools, and techniques.

Image: Jose Mizrahi

The Ottoman Empire was founded around 1299, an amazing seven centuries ago. That's why it feels so incredible that it still existed when Walt Disney was creating his first cartoons. Indeed, Disney released his first animated shorts, the Alice Comedies, in 1923, just a year after the Ottoman Empire was officially dissolved.