Prophetic hits

Was Nostradamus right? The Great Fire of London & 9 more crazy prophecies

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No one can know what the future holds, but there’s no harm in trying to guess! Throughout history, some people have had a knack for making predictions that, no matter how impossible they seemed at the time, turned out to be true. From robotic assistants to the tragedy of the Titanic, there’s no shortage of eerie predictions that became reality. Here, we’ve gathered 10 of the craziest for your enjoyment!

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Twain famously predicted his own death. He stated that he would die with Halley’s Comet, which was visible in the sky in 1910. He said, "I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." Remarkably, Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, just one day after Halley’s Comet made its closest approach to Earth, making his death one of the most uncanny and accurate personal predictions in history.

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Nikola Tesla envisioned a wireless, global communication system that would allow people to transmit voice, images, and information anywhere in the world. In a 1926 interview, he speculated about the future of mobile technology, saying, "When wireless is fully applied, the Earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of solving the problems of humanity." This prediction is strikingly close to modern smartphones, though the "huge brain" part is a bit more questionable.

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Nostradamus’s quatrains are often cited as predictions of major events, and one of his verses is believed to foresee the Great Fire of London in 1666. The quatrain reads: "The blood of the just will be demanded of London, burnt by fire in the year ‘66." In fact, the historically infamous Great Fire of London did break out in 1666, devastating much of the city. Though Nostradamus' cryptic style leaves much room for interpretation, this one is as accurate as predictions can get!

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Jules Verne’s 19th-century novel From the Earth to the Moon imagined a moon landing, complete with remarkable details such as launching from Florida and returning via splashdown in the ocean. His fictional spacecraft even bore a resemblance to the Apollo command module. To make this even more impressive, in Verne’s time, the idea of actually reaching the Moon was as alien and impossible as it gets! Space travel was purely the stuff of fantasy, and no one had yet conceived of the technology needed to make it a reality.

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In Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella Futility, a ship called the Titan strikes an iceberg and sinks—all of this obviously sounds eerily familiar, but surprisingly it was written 14 years before the actual Titanic disaster! The many similarities are striking: both ships were deemed "unsinkable" and carried insufficient lifeboats.

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In his 1914 novel The World Set Free, H.G. Wells described a future with "atomic bombs" many decades before their invention. His fictional weapons used radioactive decay to unleash destructive power, in an eerily similar fashion to nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, when the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, physicists referenced Wells’ work, acknowledging its role in sparking public imagination about the potential and dangers of atomic energy.

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Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel Looking Backward envisioned a utopian future in which citizens used a card to access funds from a central bank—a concept that closely resembles modern credit or debit cards, which didn’t emerge until the mid-20th century. While Bellamy’s vision was rooted in fiction, it’s clear he had a very good understanding of how emerging economic trends could shape the distant future.

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Mark Twain certainly had a knack for predicting the future. Not content with foreseeing the date of his own death, he also described a global "telectroscope" network that connected people instantly across the world—a concept we now easily recognize as an early imagining of the internet.

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The silent 1927 film Metropolis featured a video phone, many years before such technology was even considered possible. This futuristic device envisioned real-time, face-to-face communication, remarkably similar to how video calls work today. The film captured early 20th-century optimism about technological progress, highlighting how fiction can inspire real-world innovation.

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In Asimov’s I, Robot (1950), he envisioned a world where robots worked alongside humans, governed by ethical guidelines such as the famous "Three Laws of Robotics." While we aren’t quite there yet, the issues and concepts Asimov introduced continue to resonate today. His work not only anticipated the potential of artificial intelligence but also sparked ongoing ethical debates about AI development and the complexities of integrating advanced technology into society.

Roll the dice!

Relive the countless hours of fun these 10 board games gave us!

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If there’s one thing these 10 entertaining board games have taught us, it’s that even rainy days can be fun! We can almost picture the countless hours of enjoyment these games have provided, whether we were hanging out with friends or spending quality time with family. With that in mind, consider this article a small yet heartfelt tribute to these 10 masterpieces of entertainment—games so good they make us want to grab the dice and set up the game board for a cozy night in. Enjoy!

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We’ll start with a modern classic. Can you think of a single person who hasn’t played at least one round of Monopoly? After all, this game has been around since 1935—nearly 90 years as a beloved favorite.

As you probably know, the objective of the game is admittedly a bit ruthless: your main mission is to financially outlast your opponents by buying properties and raising their value through development. But don’t let that scare you off—Monopoly offers hours of incomparable fun for players of all ages.

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Whoever told you to take life more seriously clearly never played this game. The Game of Life is one of the oldest modern board games, originally created in 1860 by none other than Milton Bradley himself. However, that early version was vastly different from the one we know and love today, which was released in 1960.

The Game of Life places each player in a tiny plastic car, which they guide along a winding board filled with diverging paths and life-altering decisions. Every choice the player makes helps shape their ideal life: they might get married, start a family, or even land the job of their dreams.

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Who knew that solving a murder could be this fun? Created in the land of Sherlock Holmes himself, this British game pits players against one another in a race to solve the mysterious murder of a certain Mr. Boddy. While the game is known to North American audiences as Clue, the original name, Cluedo, is a blend of "Clue" and "Ludo," the latter being Latin for "I play" and also the name of another classic board game—emphasizing its nature as a game of strategy and deduction.

What’s perhaps most memorable about Clue is its colorful cast of characters. For instance, any player who chose the yellow token was playing as Colonel Mustard.

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If only our grammar teachers could see us having so much fun spelling words! Created in 1948, Scrabble is a game in which players form words by placing letter tiles onto a board made up of small, square spaces. Each word earns a certain number of points, which can be doubled or even tripled if placed on special tiles.

What’s perhaps most fun about Scrabble is how it makes us rack our brains trying to come up with long or unexpected words. If there’s ever a good time to remember that "krill" is a small crustacean eaten by whales—and worth a nifty 13 points—it’s during a particularly heated game of Scrabble.

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Did you know that Jenga comes from the Swahili word kujenga, which means "to build or construct"? While the name might seem ironic—after all, the goal is to force your opponents to bring the tower crashing down—each game of Jenga creates a brand-new structure that likely has never existed before.

Created in Britain in 1983, Jenga challenges players to take turns removing one wooden block at a time from a tower built from 54 blocks. After removing a block, players must carefully place it on top of the tower. With every piece taken, the tower becomes increasingly unstable, and the game ends when a block is removed that causes the entire structure to collapse.

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Remember how we said that The Game of Life was one of the oldest modern games around? Well, Life can’t hold a candle to the more than 5,000 years of history behind checkers. The British Museum in London houses checkerboards that date back to ancient Egypt, discovered in several burial chambers.

The modern English name comes from the checkered pattern on the board. Players place their pieces on the dark squares and try to capture their opponent’s pieces by "jumping" over them.

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While the modern version of the game, known as Ludo, dates back to the late 19th century, its origins go much further. It is based on the ancient Indian game Pachisi, which can be traced back to the 6th century. Regardless of the name, this classic game has brought joy to people around the world for centuries.

A game of Ludo begins with up to four players choosing a colored set of four pieces, which they place in their respective starting areas. The objective is to move all four pieces to the "home" area at the center of the board. However, this task is easier said than done: players must roll the exact number needed to reach home, and their pieces can be sent back to the starting area if another player lands on the same space. Interestingly, this frustrating element of the game inspired the German name for Ludo: Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, which translates to "Man, don’t get annoyed."

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Like Clue, the board game Risk takes an unpleasant subject—war—and turns it into an entertaining (albeit sometimes tense) experience. Risk places up to six players in the role of generals, challenging them to strategize and deploy their troops across a world map.

A game of Risk involves attacking, defending, and maneuvering troops through 42 different territories. Alliances may be formed—and just as easily broken—with some versions even introducing secret objectives that lead to unexpected betrayals.

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While Settlers of Catan (or simply Catan) is the newest game on this list, that doesn’t make it any less of a classic. Created in 1995 by German game designer Klaus Teuber, Catan casts players as settlers arriving on a newly discovered island, which they must develop and expand.

Throughout the game, players use the island’s natural resources to build roads, settlements, and cities. A major part of the gameplay involves trading and negotiation: players must frequently engage with one another in diplomacy, exchanging resources that will help grow their respective civilizations.

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We’ll end this article with the only board game on this list that has transcended its status as a game to become a recognized mind sport. The game of chess has remained largely unchanged since the 15th century, but what’s even more fascinating is that its origins can be traced back at least 900 years before that time.

Despite its seemingly simple rules, chess has inspired an incredibly detailed body of theory, touching on fields such as mathematics, psychology, and computer science. Chess has even surpassed human limits: after the computer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, artificial intelligence has continued to outmatch the best players worldwide.