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The outlandish ideas of one era can eventually become predictions that come true at a later date. Something that was seen as unfathomable, implausible, or even ludicrous at one point can end up as a part of everyday life over the years. Inventors, scientists, and writers of yesterday have weirdly predicted things that people laughed at in their time - only for their predictions to become standard, if not indispensable, for later generations.
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Throughout history, many ideas that were once considered outlandish or even impossible have
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eventually been proven correct. Never say never is a cliche for a reason, and not just because Sean Connery retired
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from playing James Bond and then changed his mind, although that is also a good reason
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So today we're looking back at a few of the weirdest ideas in history that somehow came true
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All right, sharks, let's hop in the tank. Wi-Fi, likely the way you're watching this very video, feels very modern indeed
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But in 1901, the brilliant inventor and David Bowie lookalike, Nikola Tesla, secured $150,000 in seed money from financier J.P. Morgan to develop a station on Long Island, New York, capable of sending wireless messages as far away as London
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Specifically, Tesla told Morgan that an inexpensive instrument, no larger than a watch, would be able to send songs, political speeches, scientific lectures, religious sermons, and more all around the world in an instant
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He further predicted that millions of these devices could be in use at any given time
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Basically, it was a simplistic version of wireless internet, proposed around a century before we all had it in our homes
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Unfortunately, Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower project was in direct competition with another system
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being developed by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who looked nothing like David Bowie
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Marconi's system, which used radio waves to transmit messages around the world
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came together faster than Tesla's more elaborate concept, and soon gained widespread adoption as the wireless telegraph
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Tesla, in turn, pitched Morgan on a new, even more innovative twist to his idea
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Now, he wanted to not just send messages through the air, but harvest electricity from the
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environment so it could be provided directly to consumers without cables or wires
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Morgan reportedly balked at this suggestion, concerned that there would be no way to monitor
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and charge customers pulling power directly from the atmosphere. The conflict ended the collaboration between the investor and the inventor, causing the
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entire project to fall apart. In the early days of motorized vehicles, a lot of inventors toyed around with ideas for
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electric cars. Some electric taxi cabs were even in commercial use at the very end of the 19th
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century in London and New York. Nonetheless, after the development of the more reliable gas-powered
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internal combustion engine electric automobiles fell out of favor So when author John Brunner published his sci novel Stand on Zanzibar in 1969 describing an America in the year 2010 when electric vehicles had become the norm
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the concept was still fairly outlandish, as was the notion that these futuristic machines
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would be sold by traditional automakers like Honda. But automakers like Honda started playing around
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with electric vehicle concepts in the 1990s, largely in response to the growing environmental movement
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and increased concerns about fuel emissions. Work on the first all-electric Tesla Roadster started in 2004
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just six years ahead of Brunner's prediction. Electric cars weren't even the only stand-on Zanzibar plot point that has aged well
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Brunner also described an America in the grips of rampant inflation, facing terror attacks on U.S. soil
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but with a more open culture regarding sexual orientation. His future U.S. even had a president named Obomi
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Eh, close enough. French novelist and playwright Savignon de Cyrano de Bergerac is most famous as the inspiration for
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Edmund Rosten's 1897 play. You know, the one about the guy with the big nose who helps another guy
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seduce his crush. But the actual Cyrano was a noted writer in his own time, with a fairly normal nose
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who was an important part of the libertine movement of the 17th century. In his satirical
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1657 science fiction novel, The Other World, Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon
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Cyrano described a lunar civilization that looks down on the Earth, considering us to be their moon
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The book includes what fellow sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke cited as the first descriptions of
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rocket-powered spaceflight, along with an early concept for what we'd call an audiobook. According
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to The Other World, moon dwellers wear a small device in their ears that not only reads the
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contents of the books to them, but fills in the background with music and sound effects
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Eh, wonder if they need any narrators. Speaking of space, in his satirical 1726 novel
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Gulliver's Travels, writer Jonathan Swift described two heavenly bodies orbiting the planet Mars
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Textually, he credited this discovery to insane scientists living in isolation on his fictional
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island. But as it turns out, those insane scientists were spot on. Around 150 years later
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in 1877, American astronomer Asaph Hall observed two moons orbiting the planet Mars. Scholars
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ultimately named the moons Deimos and Phobos, after a pair of ancient Greek gods who served
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Mars, the god of war. They were also the setting of some totally g doom levels. Swift's
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unlikely prediction earned him the honor of his very own crater on the surface of Deimos
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now labeled as Swift Crater It one of only two identified features on the moon surface The other is named after French writer Voltaire who also suggested Mars might have two moons in his 1752 short story Micromagas
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Where were these Enlightenment authors getting their astronomical intelligence from? We're not saying it was aliens, but it was probably aliens
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In a 1987 interview, film critic and TV personality Roger Ebert identified a number of new trends
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that would come to define media consumption over the next few generations. In the piece, Ebert predicted that laser discs
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a higher-definition home video format introduced in 1978, would give way to CD-sized discs
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If you're thinking, hey, that sounds like DVDs, give yourself a big thumbs up from Roger
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He also suggested American homes would soon have high-definition widescreen television sets with video-on-demand systems
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allowing viewers to dial up the movie you want at the time you want without going to a video store
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His ghost presumably earns royalties every time we say Netflix and chill
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Similarly, rocker Frank Zappa understood the public's desire to control their own listening habits years before apps like Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music made this an everyday reality
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In his 1989 autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, the guitar legend says he actually went to record label executives
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and pitched a concept for a central processing location, which would make music available directly to consumers
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in the style of phone services or cable TV. Zappa's idea sounds a lot like early file-sharing services
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such as Napster, which led to the online music streaming revolution a few decades later
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17th century scientist Robert Boyle is widely considered the father of modern chemistry
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He actually has a very famous principle named after him, Boyle's Law, which describes the
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relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas. But this was far from
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Boyle's only breakthrough idea. Around the 1660s, Boyle jotted down a private list of predictions
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many of which would be realized long after his death in 1691
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The list was discovered among his papers and published posthumously, and it foresees later developments including organ transplants
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scuba diving equipment, airplanes, and even scratch-and-sniff paper, although his probably wouldn't have smelled very good
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He was obsessed with gas. But Boyle's most forward-thinking notes concerned body armor
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which he described as both light and extremely hard, like a muscular bug
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Boyle description pretty closely matches modern Kevlar the synthetic superfiber developed by Stephanie Kowlek at DuPont in the 1960s So the next time you pick up some armor and call of duty pay your respects to Boyle Law
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Scientists and writers like Boyle and Swift made their predictions by simply extrapolating
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from what was going on in the present day and making educated guesses. But alleged prophets like Michel de Nostredame have developed a supernatural reputation
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predicting future events through the use of extrasensory perception. In other words, this French guy can see the future
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Well, allegedly. In his 1555 book, Prophecies, Nostradamus wrote, The blood of the just will commit a fault at London, burnt through lightning of 23's the 6
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The ancient lady will fall from her high place. Several of the same sect will be killed
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This has been widely interpreted as an accurate prediction of the Great Fire of London
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which ripped through the city nearly 100 years later in 1666. Oh, hey, that's Iron Manian's favorite number
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The mayor of London at the time was Thomas Bloodworth, widely blamed for not working harder to extinguish the blaze before it got out of hand
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So that could be the blood of the just committing a fault part. The threes and six in the second line is commonly connected to the year of the fire, 1666
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though it could also presage the six casualties blamed on the blaze
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As for the final line, predicting casualties within a single sect, London's Catholic residents were largely blamed for the fires at the time
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and were the trigger for riots that broke out across the city. Catholicism is indeed a single sect of Christianity
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The prophecy is legitimately kind of creepy. Another eerie future prediction is credited to Kikuyu tribal prophet Mugo Wakibiru
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who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in present-day Kenya
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Before Europeans arrived in this section of Africa, Mugo predicted that men with colorful clothing and light skin would come to their land carrying
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sticks of fire. In what's assumed to be a prophecy about railroads, Mugo added that their homeland
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would be divided by a giant iron snake. The prophet also predicted that one day
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his people would be free from their colonizers, but only after a giant fig tree outside the city
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of Nairobi withered and died. Stories about Mugo passed into legend, and Kenyans cared for the fig
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tree, coming to consider it as an important historical landmark. Shortly before Kenyans
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declare their independence, the tree was struck by lightning, triggering a rapid process of
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withering and decay. It was believed to have died prior to December 12, 1963, when Kenya
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officially declared itself an independent nation. Prophecy fulfilled