Ugly people, food shortage, life up to 150 years &more: Here’s what great thinkers predicted for 2025, 100 years ago

Several thinkers imagined what 2025 will look nearly 100 years ago. Some predictions suggested that by 2025, humans might live to 150 years, only superpowers will thrive, and a global government with a single language could emerge. However, some had concerns over food shortages due to population growth and synthetic food.

Here are some predictions from 1925, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

1. Ugly people: According to Albert E Wiggam there will more ugly people by 2025 as “homely” and “dull” people will have more children than intelligent and beautiful people.

“If we keep progressing in the wrong direction, as we have been doing, American beauty is bound to decline and there won’t be a good-looking girl to be found 100 years from now,” the journal quoted Wiggam.

2. Living up to 150 years: By 2025, people will live up to 150 years due to progress in science. Sir Ronald Ross, who received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1902 for studies on malaria, said that life expectancy would increase in future.

“That miraculous progress will not stop….A great scientist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris has said that in 100 years time, man should live to the age of 150. Why not?” Ross said.

“A famous American doctor has suggested to me that we should all be immortal. Who can tell what scientific investigation may bring? No one can say how long we may live when we are free from the ravages of germs,” he added.

3. Only superpowers will survive: Renowned author H G Wells known for his works such as “The Time Machine,” “The War of the Worlds” and “The Invisible Man,” believed that in a 100 years, only superpowers such as US, China and Europe will survive.

He said that global power will lie with such superpowers isntead of independent nations.

“In a hundred years, there will not be numerous nations, but only three great masses of people — the United States of America, the United States of Europe and China,” Wells was quoted while speaking at a dinner gathering at the Hotel Cecil in London.

4. One government, one language: Irish physicist and chemist EE Fournier d’Albe expected that there would be a global government by 2025. He mentioned a few examples in his 1925 book “Quo Vadimus? Some Glimpses of the Future.”

“The earth will be under one government, and one language will be written and understood, or even spoken, all over the globe. There will still be different races and perhaps allied nations, but travel and commerce will be free and unfettered, and calamities will be alleviated, and dangers met by the united forces of all mankind,” E E Fournier d’Albe said.

According to him, “The advances of medicine and surgery will have been such that most of the ailments and limitations of old age will have been eliminated. Life will be prolonged at its maximum of efficiency until death comes like sunset, and is met without pain and without reluctance. There will be no death from disease, and almost any sort of injury will be curable.”

“New fabrics will no doubt be invented, combining the warmth of fur with the softness and flexibility of silk and the strength of linen. Dress will be light, so that half a dozen changes of costume can be carried in a handbag, and will be so designed that each change will involve no more inconvenience than does the removal of a raincoat,” E E Fournier d’Albe said.

5. Food shortage: Professor Lowell J. Reed frommJohns Hopkins University predicted that US will face foof shortage in the next 100 eyars. According tto him, the US population would reach 200 million by 2025 comapred to 115 million 1925. The government will have to look for new sources of food to feed such a large population.

“This new food supply must be either found in the tropics or provided by processes for making artificial food from organic substances,” Reed told a conference in Williamstown, Massachusetts. “The latter would not be practical unless the cost of chemical processes were rendered much cheaper than they are at present,” Reed said.

6. New innovations: According to Dr. A.R. Wentz, a professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by 2025 a substitute for sleep would be found through sodium phosphate. Synthetic food will be produced using nitrogen from the atmosphere.

7. Books on Nickel leaves and rise of electrical devices: According to the Weekly Scotsman, a newspaper in Edinburgh, made this is how 2025 will look like:

“The books of A.D. 2025 will probably be printed on nickel leaves, so light and thin that a single volume will contain 30,000 pages, and the pages will be more flexible and durable than paper,” it said.

“The work of the house will be reduced to a negligible quantity by a hundred electrical devices, not a few of which are in use today, from opening the door or removing a meal to cleaning the boots, and the automatic cooking of a six-course dinner,” Weekly Scotsman added.