Historical predictions for 2024 you may or may not want to come true

3-4 minute read

By Ellie Ayton | January 11, 2024

What did our forebears think our future would look like? We delved into our newspaper collection to discover what the experts of 1924 and beyond predicted life would look like in 2024. The results are spooky, shocking and funny…

Have you ever stopped to think about what life might be like a century from now? Will we have a colony on the Moon? Will we have solved world hunger? From alien contact and technological advances, to what we might do for work or how we live, many of us have thought about it.

The War of the Worlds, 1906, by Henrique Alvim Corrêa, based on H.G. Wells’ science-fiction novel of the same name, Wikimedia Commons.

And you’re not alone. Experts from times gone by have been making their predictions for the future for centuries. And some were more serious than others.

Using our historical newspaper collection, we spotted predictions from 1924 and beyond for what life would be like in the not-so-distant future of 2024…

Snowball fights with Martians, honesty serums, and whisky pipes

A writer only known as ‘Incubus’ dreamt several predictions for the year 2024 following their apparent reading of The March of Science by Sir Loliver Odge (perhaps a parody on Oliver Lodge). These include:

Kettles boiling in a minute
We’d be in touch with Mars by wireless and have snowball fights with Martians
Different kinds of fruit trees that produce two kinds of fruit, but no leaves
A new serum would be discovered, making all those compulsorily inoculated honest
Boys would no longer cheat at marbles
Politicians would say what they mean, and governments would act and not talk so much. As a result, houses would ‘spring up like mushrooms’ and work would be ‘abundant for all’
Homes would have pipes for water, but also for beer and whisky

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Sheerness Times Guardian, 3 January 1924.

Though we suspect most of these were made in jest, there are certainly some we can get on board with. A snowball fight with a Martian sounds brilliant, and we’d be first in line for an at-home whisky tap.

Warfare will go wireless

Professor A.M. Low made several predictions for the advancement of warfare. His comments came after the horrors of World War 1, and it’s spooky how correct he was with some of these:

Camouflage will become a fine art
Aeroplanes with silent engines will be ‘practically invisible’
Cavalry will become obsolete through the use of electricity as a weapon
The introduction of germs into warfare means inoculation and vaccination will be important
A ‘wireless’ war, where torpedoes, tanks, and periscopes will be controlled by wireless

Halifax Evening Courier, 29 August 1923.

If we could make any wish for 2124, it would be for no more war.

Your 2024 weather forecast (from 1268)

An article from 1909 reported on the Prophecies of Thomas-Joseph Moult. He was a native of Naples writing in 1268, describing himself as an astronomer and philosopher. Others describe him as a ‘Calchas’, someone who knew the past, present and future.

His meteorological observations found that seasons resemble one another every 28 years, and he made predictions for the years 1797, 1825, 1853, 1882, 1909, 1937, 1965, 1993 and 2024.

The article stated that 1909, and thus 2024, was in store for:

A cold spring
A stormy, rainy June, even until the middle of August
Sunny until 15 November
A damp and baneful autumn
A temperate winter with no great frost

Guernsey Evening Press and Star, 25 August 1909.

Moult also predicted in these years the marriage of a great King and a terrible global battle. For the latter, he was only two years out for the Second World War, and five years out for World War 1.

Does someone want to tell the Met Office...?

Meanwhile, in Canada...

In October 1923, Lord Birkenhead suggested that the population of Canada will equal the United States by 2024, and that the Empire’s capital will be ‘across the Atlantic’.

The Lancashire Daily Post, 6 October 1923.

He even suggested that Washington would be abandoned for some city in the Middle West.

But, as the journalist perhaps scathingly reported,

"Things do not work that way. Nor would most Canadians wish they would."

Have you made any predictions for 2124? What do you think life will look like in a century?

The past informs what we know about the present, and even our future. Whether you’re working towards new years' resolutions or perhaps even pondering what the world will look like in another century, delve into the stories of the past with our History Hub.