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Top 10 Times People Correctly Predicted the Future

Top 10 Times People Correctly Predicted the Future
VOICE OVER: Peter DeGiglio WRITTEN BY: Don Ekama
These people must have had a crystal ball! For this list, we'll be looking at instances where people foresaw future events that ultimately became a reality. Our countdown includes Ronald Reagan's Presidency & the Fall of the Berlin Wall, “The Blair Witch Project” (& the Found Footage Horror Genre), The Moon Landing, and more!

Top 10 Times People Predicted the Future


Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Times People Predicted the Future.

For this list, we’ll be looking at instances where people foresaw future events that ultimately became a reality. We’ll be excluding predictions from “The Simpsons,” as the fortune-telling series already has a list of its own. We also won’t be including ambiguous predictions, as those are open to interpretation. Yes, we’re looking at you, Nostradamus.

What future predictions of yours do you wish would come true? Communicate them to us through a crystal ball… in the comments below.

#10: Ronald Reagan’s Presidency & the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Dan Rowan & Dick Martin
Dan Rowan and Dick Martin’s hugely successful sketch comedy show “Laugh-In” was notable for its political commentary and racy humor. The show featured a recurring segment called “News of the Future,” where the comedians often made ridiculous predictions about the future to mock current political events. During one of those segments in 1969, Rowan predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall twenty years later and that Ronald Reagan would be POTUS when it did. At the time, Reagan was still the relatively new Governor of California, and Rowan even pauses to laugh at the idea for a moment. Of course, Reagan went on to win the presidency and the Berlin Wall fell in the exact years they had predicted. How fortuitous!

#9: The Start & End of the Great Depression

Edgar Cayce
Also known as the Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce was an American psychic that allegedly foretold future events while asleep in a hypnotic trance. Although not all of his predictions came to pass, quite a number of them did, most notably his 1924 prediction that the stock market would crash five years later and trigger the Great Depression. Cayce spent the next few years teaching people how to prepare for the impending doom but his warnings fell on deaf ears. When the market did, in fact, crash in 1929, those deaf ears turned to empty bank accounts. Not only did Cayce foresee the start of the Depression, but he also predicted its end would begin in the spring of 1933, which eventually happened.

#8: His Own Death

Mark Twain
A key figure in the emergence of American literature, Mark Twain was born on November 30th 1835, just two weeks after Halley’s Comet passed by Earth. Based on the comet’s appearance, the famed writer made an eerie prediction about his death that eventually came true. Speaking to Albert Paine, his biographer, just a year before his death, Twain is quoted as saying, “I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” True to his words, the author died of a heart attack on April 21st 1910, just one day after the comet came closest to Earth.

#7: “The Blair Witch Project” (& the Found Footage Horror Genre)

Bruce Willis
The use of the found-footage horror technique has existed for at least four decades, with its origins dating back to the 1980 cult horror film “Cannibal Holocaust.” This technique was largely popularized, decades later, by the hit movie “The Blair Witch Project.” While it was released in 1999, the movie’s success was predicted by Bruce Willis on the set of “Pulp Fiction” six years earlier. In a behind-the-scenes clip shot by director Quentin Tarantino, Willis remarked that in the next five years, a group of young people would make a successful feature film with inexpensive handheld cameras. Even stranger, the actor predicted the film’s budget to be $60,000, which turned out to be the original budget of “The Blair Witch Project.”

#6: The Atomic Bomb

H. G. Wells
In his 1914 science-fiction novel “The World Set Free,” prolific English writer H. G. Wells first detailed the possibility of creating a powerful bomb from radioactive elements. In the book, Wells describes hand grenades made from uranium being dropped from planes and causing a level of devastation that would recur in real life decades later. Although scientists had already begun to discover the potentially destructive effects of radioactive elements, Wells’s book was published at least thirty years before the first atomic bomb was actually created. As he was friends with a number of prominent world leaders and scientists, we can only wonder if his fictional bomb inspired the creation of those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

#5: James Dean’s Death

Alec Guinness
Sometimes a chance encounter can be life-changing in the greatest way possible; other times, it could be the moment you learn about your own demise. At least, that was the case for “Rebel Without a Cause” star James Dean. After meeting Alec Guinness outside a Los Angeles restaurant in 1955, Dean showed off his new Porsche Spyder to the future Oscar-winning actor, bragging about the great speeds it could reach. According to Guinness, he warned Dean not to get into the car or else he’d be dead within the week. Dean initially laughed off the comment, but just like Guinness predicted, he was involved in a ghastly accident the next Friday that claimed his life at the very young age of twenty-four.

#4: The Sinking of the Titanic

Morgan Robertson
“Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan” is an 1898 novella written by American author Morgan Robertson that details the sinking of an enormous fictional ship called the SS Titan which was deemed unsinkable. Fourteen years later, the RMS Titanic - an equally enormous, “unsinkable” British ship - would meet its own equally ill-fated end. The details in Robertson’s story and that of the real-life sinking are eerily similar. Not only was the “unsinkable” ship in “Futility” called the Titan, it also had a shortage of lifeboats and hit an iceberg on an April night in the North Atlantic, all similarities shared with the Titanic. Although undoubtedly creepy, Robertson’s prediction could be attributed to his experience as a seaman and maritime writer.

#3: Greenhouse Effect

Alexander Graham Bell
Although he’s well-known for his brilliant inventions, Alexander Graham Bell not only created solutions to the immediate problems of his time, but he also foresaw future ones. In a 1917 article written for the “National Geographic” magazine, the famed inventor went against other scientists of the era by predicting that our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels would turn the Earth into a hothouse. Bell questioned the continued use of coal and oil, as they both have a limited supply, and even proffered solutions in the form of solar power and alcohol as alternative energy sources. While the world has gone on to use alcohol as a solution for quite different problems, we can’t deny just how spot-on Bell’s predictions were.

#2: The Moon Landing

Jules Verne
Before we eventually walked on the moon, there had been several predictions about humans landing on the lunar surface, but none came as close as that of French novelist Jules Verne. In his 1865 novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” Verne wrote about man’s first voyage to the celestial body and, for an author in the mid-19th century, he was surprisingly accurate. Verne’s fictional mission saw a three-man crew launching to the moon from Florida and experiencing weightlessness as they left the Earth’s atmosphere. These details featured a great deal of similarity to the real-life Apollo 11 mission that occurred more than a century later, proving just how shrewd Verne was as a storyteller.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

The iPad & e-Newspapers, Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke’s Visions of Tablet-Like Devices Providing the News Appear in the 1968 Film ”2001: A Space Odyssey”

The 2013 Golden Globe Winners, Elena Sheppard
An Editor for a Culture Website, Sheppard Predicted All Winners That Year With 100% Accuracy

Cell Phones, Nikola Tesla
The Famed Inventor Suggested That Individuals Would One Day Carry Around Their Own Communication Devices

The Chicago Cubs Winning the World Series, Michael Lee
A Die-Hard Cubs Fan, Lee Predicted Their 2016 World Series Win in His 1993 High School Yearbook

World War II, Ferdinand Foch
The French General Predicted the Start of the Second World War and Germany’s Involvement in It In 1918

#1: The Internet

Arthur C. Clarke
British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was well-known for co-writing the screenplay to the classic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and for his technological predictions, many of which came to pass. One of his most notable forecasts was given in a BBC documentary in 1964, where the acclaimed writer painted a picture of a medium that would connect everyone around the world without need for physical contact. Sound familiar, anyone? He also accurately predicted the advent of remote work, with people rendering their services and skills over such a medium. Clarke’s wildly innovative sci-fi writings and incredible foresight earned him the befitting nickname “Prophet of the Space Age.”
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