12 Events that Will Change Everything is an interactive article from Scientific American that offers rich information on potential major discoveries or cataclysms that could change the world, as well as their chances of happening. The list is a surprisingly sane look at future discontinuities as these sorts of lists go: it includes human cloning, artificial life, asteroid collisions, ice caps melting, and room temperature superconductors. For less sanity, see fifty or so ways the world could end at
Exit Mundi.
posted by blahblahblah
on Aug 13, 2010 -
50 comments
Prophetic Pictures from Menominie, Wisconsin. In 1905, high school senior Albert Hansen took photogaphs of his graduating classmates at Menominie HS. Not as they were -- but as they believed, or hoped, or feared they would be in the decades to come.
Dorothy M. Jesse was going to be a mathematician, and
Fred Quilling a pharmacist.
Alice M. Tilleson would be a prominent socialite, whose "eccentric ideas with reference to danger, force her to cling to that old fashioned vehicle, the automobile, instead of the new wheel-less aerial motor car." William C. Klatt, a future physician,
would operate on disembodied heads. And Hansen himself
was destined for the hobo's life. The Wisconsin Historical Society has
the whole collection available online, together with the text from the yearbook and the truth, as best the Society could learn, of how the graduates' actual future compared with prophecy. (Spoiler: Fred Quilling really did become a pharmacist.) Just one of the many remarkable collections at
Wisconsin Historical Images.
posted by escabeche
on Feb 7, 2010 -
25 comments
Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog' (BBC)
"While it is unclear how this could have happened, the [Iranian] paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal....Medical history recounts stories of people who believed they had frogs - or even lizards or snakes - living and growing in their bodies....One of the most famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina Geisslerin, known as "the toad-vomiting woman" of Germany. " Could this be connected to that 20 pound
carp's apocalyptic warnings spouted in Hebrew, last year, as a fish cutter tried to club it to death with a rubber hammer to make it into gefilte fish? Or, maybe it was those new
tomatoes? Or an
Old Testament thing, maybe a
prophecy?
posted by troutfishing
on Jul 1, 2004 -
16 comments
Astounding Discovery. Anybody else been waiting with breathless anticipation for March 8th, 2003? It's too late
to debate whether or not this is a hoax (although that particular horse was pretty well beaten
here). Our mystery man
is on the run again, but the
photos are going up tomorrow. Stay tight. The government is closing in. Even with everything else going on in the world, if they can't prevent this information from going public, all I can say is "biblical proportions."
posted by RKB
on Mar 7, 2003 -
72 comments
When U.S. Foreign Policy Meets Biblical Prophecy "Does the Bible foretell regime change in Iraq? Did God establish Israel's boundaries millennia ago? Is the United Nations a forerunner of a satanic world order?
For millions of Americans, the answer to all those questions is a resounding yes"
"Leaders have always invoked God's blessing on their wars, and, in this respect, the Bush administration is simply carrying on a familiar tradition."
posted by thedailygrowl
on Feb 21, 2003 -
10 comments
Reading the 9th Prophecy of the American Hopi Indians has sent a chill in my spine! Some interpretations I have read say that this prophecy is an interpretation of Nasa's Skylab falling back to Earth circa 1979. However when I read this prophecy a few months ago the crash of the World Trade Center immediately popped into my mind! The Hopi's 9th prophecy states "You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash! It will appear as a blue star." "These are the Signs that great destruction is here: The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle people in other lands - those who possessed the first light of wisdom. " Is this not our time?
posted by thedailygrowl
on Nov 10, 2002 -
42 comments
Prophets of doom In June 2000, Lynne Palmer, a 69-year-old Las Vegas resident, published her
Astrological Almanac for 2001... On page 95 of the book, buried among advice on the best days to go to the movies and worst days to lend people money, Palmer had written, in an odd combination of the obvious and the prophetic: "Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."
posted by raaka
on Dec 31, 2001 -
23 comments
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb", "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"
- Nostradamus, 1654
posted by Nick Finck
on Sep 11, 2001 -
44 comments
It t'was foretold by the ancients! "Come the millennium, month twelve,
In the home of the greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader."
- Nostradamus [1555]
I consider myself someone with mental fortitude. I consider myself not given to listen to foolish ramblings of portents. But in this case I must concede!
posted by thacker
on Feb 2, 2001 -
24 comments
Predictions from an Icelandic prophet for 2001: Total war in the Middle East, a worldwide natural disaster, money market instability, the spread of mad cow disease, and oh yeah - an Oscar for Bjork.
I'm not sure what to comment on; what safe bets these are, or the interesting addition of Oscar picks in the predictions.
posted by jragon
on Jan 2, 2001 -
6 comments
