From the Smithsonian’s Paleofuture Blog:

The bubble burst on that day and though things would level off a bit on Friday, the market again went into free fall when it opened on Monday, October 28. The next day would become known as Black Tuesday when the market lost 11 percent of its value immediately upon opening. The rest is Great Depression history.

It’s curious then to note an article in the December 30, 1928 issue of the Ogden Standard-Examiner from Ogden, Utah which foresaw a different vision for 1929.

With the headline “Prosperity Paramount in 1929 Astrologers Forecast” the newspaper printed the predictions of astrologers from the year 1928 who insist that, though 1929 might start out a bit rocky — continuing the normal run of disasters, fears and everyday awfulness which have plagued humanity since the dawn of time, I suppose — it will be remembered as a year of prosperity for all.

Whoops!  [Maxwell Smart] Missed it by that much! [/MS] 

I love paleofuture, BTW. Great site.

When i was in High school I used to make a point of buying the end of the year edition of the national enquirer, the one where they have the predictions for the upcoming year. Then I would put it away and save it for the following year when i would take it out and we would read the predictions for the year that had just passed at our new years eve party. I actually stole the idea from Johnny Carson but it was always good for a lot of laughs reading the bold predictions of things that never happened.

It was even funnier to read about the claims the psychics had about their past successes because I had the previous years Inquirer and usually the things they claimed to have predicted correctly the previous year were suspiciously absent from the previous years list of predictions or required a very liberal interpretation of what they had actually said in order to consider the prediction “correct”.  Of course they conveniently forgot to mention all the things they had gotten wrong.

I miss those old rags! I used them to teach my sons critical thinking. We would discuss the outlandish claims on the cover while standing in line at the supermarket. I would encourage them to work out for themselves why the claims were not possibly true. The game started after one son noticed a cover where it said something about a woman giving birth to a monkey and asked me questions. I think he was about 8 or 10 at the time. Some of the claims were actually true, and I let them figure those out too!

asanta - 15 April 2012 02:52 PM

I miss those old rags! I used them to teach my sons critical thinking. We would discuss the outlandish claims on the cover while standing in line at the supermarket. I would encourage them to work out for themselves why the claims were not possibly true. The game started after one son noticed a cover where it said something about a woman giving birth to a monkey and asked me questions. I think he was about 8 or 10 at the time. Some of the claims were actually true, and I let them figure those out too!

I always found the Enquirer type rags entertaining.  My favorite headline from an article, that I recall was “Crazed Cannibal Plans to Cook Nixon”.  I showed it to a friend and he said “Hmm… I’d like to get that recipe.”