Since its discovery by William Herschel in 1781, Uranus had finished orbiting the Sun by 1847 and astronomers who observed its orbit found irregularities that couldn’t be satisfactorily explained by Newton’s law of gravitation. These irregularities could, however, be explained if there was another, farther planet disturbing the path of Uranus around the Sun. In 1845, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier who specialized in celestial mechanics, and British mathematician and astronomer John Couch Adams separately began to calculate the details of such a planet.
Unable to convince any French astronomers, Le Verrier sent his calculations to the Berlin Observatory. On September 23, 1846, the planet was observed after searching for less than an hour and at less than one degree from the position Le Verrier predicted. Two more nights of observation confirmed its position and movement earning him the Copley medal from the Royal Society.(source)
7 In 1754, the French mathematician Abraham de Moivre predicted the date of his own death by noticing that he slept an extra 15 minutes each day.
Abraham de Moivre is well-known for the de Moivre’s formula which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on normal distribution and probability theory. Though he was successful as a mathematician, he was unable to get an appointment as a chair of mathematics, a position that could have alleviated his financial situation. Despite that, he continued to study probability and mathematics until his death. As he grew older, he started needing more sleep, and it is believed that he noted he was sleeping an extra 15 minutes at night. Using that, he was able to calculate the date of his death as the day that sleeping time would reach 24 hours which was November 27, 1754. Though some are skeptical about the story, he did, in fact, die on the very day he predicted he would.(source)
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8 In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella in which a ship named Titan, deemed unsinkable, sinks in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. Fourteen years later, RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
Robertson’s novel The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility is the story of a disgraced former US Navy officer who becomes an alcoholic and works as a deckhand on the Titan. Written years ago, similarities between the book’s Titan and RMS Titanic are considered quite uncanny. Just like the Titanic, the fictional ship sank on a night in the month of April. Titanic was 800 feet (244 meters) long and carried 2,200 passengers, and Titan was 882 feet (269 meters) long and carried 2,500 passengers. Both the ships were claimed unsinkable and did not carry enough lifeboats; 24 on Titan and 16 on Titanic. Both struck the iceberg on the starboard side. When that happened, Titan was traveling at 25 knots and Titanic at 22.5 knots.(source)
9 On June 19, 1941, when three Soviet anthropologists exhumed the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur’s body, they found an inscription saying, “Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.” Three days later the Soviet Union was invaded by Hitler.
Timur, also known as Tamerlane and Amir Timur, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who became the first ruler of Timurid Dynasty and founded the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia in late 14th century. He died on February 19, 1405, and was buried in Gur-e-Amir in his tomb in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Five centuries later in 1941, the Soviet anthropologists Mikhail M. Gerasimov, Lev V. Oshanin and V. Ia. Zezenkova dug up his tomb to examine his remains.
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In the tomb, they allegedly found an inscription that said, “When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble.” After exhuming the body, Gerasimov found another inscription that warned of the invasion that would be unleashed upon whoever opens his tomb. Three days later, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa considered the largest military invasion upon the USSR. In November 1942, his remains were buried again with full Islamic rites, a time that also happens to be just before the Soviet’s victory in the Battle of Stalingrad.(source)
10 In 2001, one of the Johnny Bravo episodes depicted a poster in the background with one of the twin towers burning and the words “COMING SOON” written on it.
In the episode “Chain Gang Johnny” aired on April 27, 2001, Johnny wants to join the Brotherhood of Gnu, a fraternity that Pops and Carl are members of. For the initiation, he is taken to a black-and-white, Danish movie by Carl that he finds boring. The poster can be seen after they finish arguing about the symbolism in the movie posted on the cinema’s wall behind them.(source)
