25 Weird Old Predictions Made About the 21st Century

Nikola Tesla may have been a brilliant inventor/engineer and one of the world's most famous futurists, but he got one prognostication seriously wrong when he predicted that people would no longer be drinking coffee in the 21st century.

In a 1935 article, Tesla wrote that 21st-century humans would know better than to pollute their bodies with harmful substances like caffeine and nicotine. As for alcohol? Well, let's just say that Tesla had a much more generous view on imbibing.

Join Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy as she digs up 25 bold predictions from the past—some of them bizarre, some of them ridiculously funny, and some of them just plain wrong—in this edition of "The List Show."

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