The Top 10: Most Impressive Predictions

‘London will be attacked and I shall be ... in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster’: Winston Churchill, aged 16, in 1891

Sense of destiny: Young Winston, pictured without his crystal ball (Getty)

I did terrible technology predictions a while ago. Here we are doing uncannily accurate predictions. What is surprising, given how many predictions humans make, is how few good ones there are. Thanks to Steven Panthera for the idea. Here we are, in chronological order.

1. “In that young man I see many Mariuses”: dictator Sulla of Julius Caesar, circa 82BC (Plutarch). “A traditionalist, Sulla meant Caesar would be as destructive to aristocratic interests as Marius, his populist rival. Caesar’s victory over Pompey ended the rule of the aristocracy and paved the way for the autocracy of Octavian/Augustus,” said Graham Kirby.

2. “There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans … Each seems called by some secret design of Providence to one day hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.” Alexis de Tocqueville predicting the cold war in Democracy in America, 1840, has always been a favourite of Jack Tindale’s.

3. “Starting from unlimited freedom I have arrived at unlimited despotism... divide humanity into two unequal parts. One tenth is to be granted absolute freedom and unrestricted powers over the remaining nine tenths. Those must give up their individuality and be turned into something like a herd.” Shigalyov, a revolutionary, describes the “society of the future”, in The Demons, by Fyodor ​Dostoevsky, 1871. “He wrote that in the year Lenin was born,” said Andy McSmith.

4. “One day the great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans”: Otto von Bismarck, 1888. Nominated by Simon Cook.

5. “London will be attacked and I shall be ... in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster.” Winston Churchill, aged 16, at school in 1891. Steven Panthera.

6. “This is not a peace treaty; it is an armistice for 20 years” (Ce n’est pas une paix, c’est un armistice de vingt ans): Marshal Ferdinand Foch on the Versailles Treaty, 1919. “More or less spot on,” said Darren Sugg and Simon Cook.

7. “If there is going to be war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war prime minister”: a reverse-Churchill from Stanley Baldwin, on refusing him a cabinet place in 1935. From Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny), via Peter Warner.

8. “These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other wherever we may be, with our friends anywhere on Earth even if we don’t know their actual physical location”: Arthur C Clarke, “the king of prediction utterers”, on transistors and communications satellites, predicting mobile phones in 1964. Thanks to Tim O’Kane. “He seems to have predicted much of modern science,” said Elliot Kane.

9. “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg. The potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. We are on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. Is there life on Mars? Yes, it’s just landed here.” David Bowie, interview with Jeremy Paxman, 1999.

10. “We’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump”: Lisa as president, in a March 2000 episode of The Simpsons, a series with a reputation for “any number of oddball and accurate foreknowings”, said David May.

Close, but not impressive enough: a 2015 EU referendum (“Out” led by Michael Gove, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith) with a 52:48 result (albeit the other way) and huge controversy over foreign interference and vote-rigging – The Aachen Memorandum by Andrew Roberts, 1995, a Eurosceptic conspiracy thriller nominated by Pat Roberts.

Next week: Fictional bands, such as Mouse Rat in Parks and Recreation.

Coming soon: Songs that mention other songs, such as “Fairy Tale of New York” by the Pogues: “The boys from the NYPD Choir still singing ‘Galway Bay’.”

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk