The two tragic crashes of Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max planes increasingly look to be caused in part by a malfunctioning automated system—and the pilots’ lack of training around how to deal with it—that was designed to keep the aircraft from stalling out. The final reports aren’t in yet, but the similarities between…
It’s no secret that the 1980 comedy movie Airplane! is a parody. But for some reason, I’ve spent my entire life believing that Airplane! was a broad parody of 1970s disaster movies. And while the movie clearly took inspiration from some of those films, it’s actually a very specific parody of a movie from 1957 called …
Richard Erdman, a character actor whose amazing career dates back to the 1940s and includes over 170 acting credits, has died at an assisted living home in Los Angeles, California. He was 93.
What musicians that you enjoy today will still be around in 20 years? It’s tough to say. But the good people of 1999 tried to predict just that in an article that might raise a few eyebrows here in the year 2019.
During the Apollo missions, NASA smartly set aside some lunar materials knowing future scientists would likely be better equipped to analyze them. Now, nearly 50 years later, the space agency is giving a select group of researchers the extraordinary opportunity to study these unopened and untarnished samples.
Want to feel old? The year 2009 was 10 years ago. No, really. And if you want to feel really old, here’s a video where fourth-grade kids explain what jobs they think will exist in the future.
You wear it once and throw it away. At least that was the idea.
Jerry Merryman, one of three people at Texas Instruments credited with inventing the world’s first handheld electronic calculator in the 1960s, died at a Dallas hospital on February 27. Merryman was 86 years old.
Two videophones from the early 1970s that were produced by AT&T/Bell Labs and the now-defunct Western Electric will go up for auction this month. And while they might not seem very special to kids of the 21st century, these videophones were the most futuristic things around for people who grew up watching movies like …
Today, the grocery delivery battle is being waged between companies like Amazon, Walmart, Target, FreshDirect, and Instacart. But there once was a time when the most futuristic thing in food shopping was the car. Specifically, drive-in shopping like these stores from the 1920s.
Fox News has refused to air an ad for the short documentary film A Night at the Garden, according to a new report from the Hollywood Reporter.
What did people of the past think sports would look like in the 21st century? They imagined humans powerlifting an entire ton, hurdles that pop up taller as you move along the track, and swimming relay races with “dolphin style” moves against wave machines. At least that was the idea in this 1996 TV commercial for the…
Some of the most interesting predictions for the future don’t come from expert futurists or well-financed think tanks, they come from average kids. Today, we have video from the 1960s that features kids talking about their own vision for tomorrow. And it’s depressing as hell.
Last week, there was an interesting but subtle change in the way that Americans talk about the future. And it’s probably a sign of bad things ahead for technology.
A viral tweet about the 1960s TV show The Jetsons recently brought up a troubling question. Was Jane Jetson a child bride? The answer: Not quite. But it’s easy to see why people might be outraged.
The Disney nerd community recognized a sad anniversary yesterday. It’s been 20 years since the ride Horizons closed at the Epcot theme park in Walt Disney World. But there was one bright spot. People were able to share home videos of the beloved “extinct attraction” on YouTube.
Science fiction writers are professional future-dreamers, imagining worlds far beyond their own. With technology advancing at astronomical rates, real life feels more and more like sci-fi every day (for better or worse). So it’s fun to look back at those writers who, decades and even centuries ago, imagined what life…
The world is filled with amazing technologies, many that are so old we don’t even think of them as technologies at all.
Lawrence “Larry” Roberts, one of a small handful of people who can truly be called the grandparents of the internet, died of a heart attack on December 26 at his home in Redwood City, California. He was 81 years old.
Earlier this month we looked at predictions from kids at the turn of the 20th century. But what about more recently? Say, from the 1980s? Well, you’re in luck, because today we have predictions about the future from kids in 1984. And some of them are as dark and terrifying as you might guess for kids who were…
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