Who would have thunk'it

[Kent]

Ever wonder how close the folks are that predict things to come are, or how far off they were?
Here are some predictions made in 1900 that would come to pass by the year 2000, so we can see how they went.........

Prediction
There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and
its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for
admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be
next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the
South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own
people.”



Prediction
The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of
stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine,
sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five
as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will
practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from
suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the
fare.
How it went? Sure, many are taller but science has proven it's really a genetic thing along with a cycle, and fares for a penny? Guess that one got shot to hell.




Prediction
There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All
hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city
limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels,
well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk”
stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will
teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned
wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains.
Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.
How it went? Wow, were they smokin dope?



Prediction
Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more.
Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers.
The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today. Ya think?
There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as
deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods.
Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the
earth.
Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying
whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or
sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships,
hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they
move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will
surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial
war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates
over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across
open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are
now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges.
Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off
the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of
one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.
Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought
within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of
circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theaters
will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or
the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant
scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone
apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the
guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the
lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen
to move.
No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to
air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be
arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air
refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

[Peggy]

There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as
deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods.
Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the
earth.
This, among other things above, leads me to believe that somebuddy was smokin some of that wacky weed, even way back then.... ;)

[Hazguy]

Actually. some of these are amazingly correct.

And really, Peggy, the quote you have there is actually correct as well ... to a point. Air-ship war vessels ... bombers and fighter Jets.

There are planes in use today for studying geology and the weather .... what about those planes that fly into hurricanes????

[Peggy]

hey hey - I'm glad to see someone, anyone, posting here. :yes:

[Kent]

And you thought Ohio was only known for corn, soy beans and those damn orange road barrels ..........

The legend of a Lake Erie Monster has been around for over 100 years. Reported to be a greenish or blackish serpent anywhere between 30 to 50 feet long and has been sighted on various shores along the northwest edge of ohio all the way over to the eastern edges.

In Blanchester, Ohio, you can find the worlds largest Horseshoe Crab. Is it real or mocked up? That's not answered but it is there and has been used to hold parties, weddings an other events inside the belly of the crab, which can hold up to 65 people.

The worlds shortest street and oldest concrete street can both be found in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Piqua, Ohio was once known as the Underwear Capital of America. It had 16 underwear-manufacturing companies and a peculiar heritage celebration known as the Great Outdoor Underwear Festival. The strange event featured bizarre activities like the Undy 500 or Drop Seat Trot. You just can't make this stuff up!

The Longaberger Basket Building in Newark isn't an illusion, it's a five story building that looks just like a giant basket!

Are you searching for Jesus? Look no father than along the east side of I-75 between Dayton and Cincinnati just north of the Monroe-Lebanon exit. The Concrete figure is 62 feet high and has been gaining some odd and weird comments on many internet sites.

Traveling along State Route 49 between Arcanum and Greenville Ohio can be interesting. It's been reported that an older man dressed in worn bib overalls and a dirty white shirt can be seen standing in the middle of the road at a slight rise looking around as if lost. The spot used to be where a railroad crossing was which had been taken up many years ago. The odd thing is, there is no figure there at all, at least not alive. It seems that years ago an old farmer was crossing the tracks on a foggy morning and was struck and killed by a passing train, and has been stuck there since. He's not there all the time but should he be there you won't be sure what it is till you're upon it and have "hit" the ghostly figure yourself.

Look! Up in the sky, it's a bird, no a plane, no it's superman! No it's not silly, it's a pumpkin! That's right, A huge orange pumpkin. Located in Circleville, Ohio, the town has a water tower that resembles a pumpkin.

The Whirligig was invented by folks from the Cincinnati area. Don't know what a Whirligig is? Today it's called a yo-yo.

The hat band was patented by a man from Ravenna, Ohio.

Are you glad you don't have to hand crank your car to start it? Thank Charles Kettering for inventing and having the patent on it from around 1911.

[Kent]

Two British traffic patrol officers from North Berwick, east of Edinburgh, were involved in an unusual incident while checking for speeding motorist on the A1 Great North Road.
One of the officers was using a hand-held radar device the check the speed of the approaching vehicles over the crest of a hill and was surprised when the speed was recorded at over 300 MPH, which was the top limit for that particular device. The machine locked up and neither officer was able to get it to reset itself as it continued to send out the Doppler radar signal on whatever it was that locked the device up, which as it turned out was a NATO Tornado Fighter jet over the North Sea that was engaged in a low-flying exercise over the Borders district.
Back at police HQ's, the chief constable fired off a heated complaint to the RAF Liaison office, and soon had what some would say was a true laconic RAF style answer. "Thank you for your message which allows us to complete the file on this incident. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had done its job and had automatically locked on to your 'hostile radar equipment' and sent a jamming signal back to it. Furthermore, the sidewinder air-to-ground missiles aboard the fully-armed and war readied aircraft had also locked on to the target, in this case the target was your officers. Fortunately, the pilot flying the Tornado responded to the missile status alert intelligently, and was able to override the auto protection system before the missile was launched."


It's unclear if a reply back to the RAF was made, but last anyone heard of the two officers, they had requested not to be put or radar patrol ever again, and both had developed IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) which was triggered when either heard a jet from then on.

[Kent]

1663 Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope.
1828 Karl von Baer discovers the eggs of mammals
1837 Theodor Schwann shows that heating air will prevent it from causing putrefaction
1876 Oskar Hertwig and Hermann Fol show that fertilized eggs possess both male and female nuclei.
1898 Martinus Beijerinck uses filtering experiments to show that tobacco mosaic disease is caused by something smaller than a bacteria which he names a virus.
1935 Wendell Stanley crystallizes the tobacco mosaic virus.
1938 A living coelacanth is found off the coast of southern Africa.
1967 John Gurden uses nuclear transplantation to clone a clawed frog; first cloning of a vertebrate.

420 Hippocrates begins the scientific study of medicine by maintaining that diseases have natural causes.
1249 Roger Bacon writes about convex lens eyeglasses for treating farsightedness.
1747 James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.
1881 Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine.
1882 Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine.
1952 Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine.

1794 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin.

3500 BC Wheeled carts are invented.
3500 BC River boats are invented.
2000 BC Horses are tamed and used for transport.
770 Iron horseshoes come into common use.


Don'cha feel smarter now? :rofl:

[Peggy]

Is that a trick question........... ? :frog:

[Kent]

wud I dew dat?


hmmmmm, don't answer that