Newspapers in 1924 predicted what life would be like in 2024. Here’s what they got right, and terribly wrong

In a viral post, Paul Fairie - a research associate at the University of Calgary in Canada - shared photos of a 1924 newspaper clipping which predicted how life would be in 100 years from the date of the article being published.

Way back, a century ago, it was a popular trend for newspapers to predict what life would be like in 100 years – i.e. TODAY! Going by some of the predictions, one must agree that some of the predictions are surprisingly not too far from today’s reality, while some predictions went horribly wrong.

In a viral post, Paul Fairie – a research associate at the University of Calgary in Canada – shared photos of some 1924 newspaper clippings which predicted how life would be in 100 years from the date of the articles being published.

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Here’s a look at what they got right and what they got very, very wrong.

In some semi-right to right predictions, the newspaper article foresaw construction of apartment building that would go about 100 stories tall. Although there are just over 20 such buildings which meet the predicted height, they aren’t really everywhere as predicted by the newspaper article which read: “We’ll climb to a hundred stories in air. And we’ll burrow below to pay homeward fare. Our city a hive, with a huge population, will swallow the farms of a fifth of the nation.

In another prediction, it said that that automobiles will multiply in 2024, which turned out to be perfect prediction. However, in the same line the newspaper article predicted that horses would go extinct due the increase in the number of automobiles.

Podcasts would gain popularity in 2023, predicted the newspaper. Today, they really have become crowd favourites.

In a prediction that has gone horribly wrong, the newspaper wrote that movies would bring world peace and help eliminate conflict worldwide. Another prediction on movies, that people would spend more time watching them at the comfort of their homes, turned out to be true as OTTs bring them in living rooms across the world today.

A prediction that definitely hit the mark is of family albums being made of videos instead of photographs.

In some bizarre predictions, it was written that in 2024 there would be beds that would fling children out of their beds in the mornings and that people would be conveniently hopping from one planet to another.

Take a look at some clippings: