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🔗 Lists 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Transhumanism 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Futures studies 🔗 Science 🔗 Popular Culture

This is a list of fictional stories that, when written, were set in the future, but the future they predicted is now present or past. The list excludes works that were alternate histories, which were composed after the dates they depict, alternative futures, as depicted in time travel fiction, as well as any works that make no predictions of the future, such as those focusing solely on the future lives of specific fictional characters, or works which, despite their claimed dates, are contemporary in all but name. Entries referencing the current year may be added if their month and day were not specified or have already occurred.

🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Afghanistan 🔗 Asia

Kangina (Dari: کنگینه, lit. 'treasure'), also called Gangina, is the traditional Afghan technique of preserving fresh fruit, particularly grapes, in airtight discs formed from mud and straw. The centuries-old technique is indigenous to Afghanistan's rural center and north, where remote communities that cannot import fresh fruit eat kangina-preserved fresh grapes throughout the winter, and merchants use kangina to safely store and transport grapes for sale at market. Grapes preserved using kangina in modern Afghanistan are typically of the thick-skinned Taifi or Kishmishi varieties, which are harvested later in the season and remain fresh in the mud vessels for up to six months.

The method, a form of passive controlled-atmosphere storage, works by sealing fruit in the clay-rich mud, restricting flow of air, moisture and microbes, much as a plastic bag would. Discs are formed from two bowl-shaped pieces, which are sculpted from mud and straw, and baked in the sun before being filled with up to 1–2 kilograms (2.2–4.4 lb) of un-bruised fruit and sealed with more mud. They are kept dry and cool, away from direct sunlight. Gradual permeation of gas through the clay barrier allows oxygen to enter the container, keeping the grapes alive, while the elevated concentration of carbon dioxide inside the package inhibits the grapes' metabolism and prevents the growth of fungus. The grapes are prevented from drying out, and the mud absorbs liquid which would otherwise lead to bacterial and fungal growth.

The practice of storing grapes in mud and straw has been recorded as far back as the 12th century: in his Book of Agriculture, Sevillan agronomist Ibn al-'Awwam noted layering grapes with straw in mud-sealed glass containers or "cowpat bowls" as an extant technique of preservation in Andalusia.

Kangina are inexpensive, eco-friendly, and effective vessels for the preservation of fresh fruit. A 2023 study found kangina and polystyrene foam boxes to be the most effective vessels for preserving grapes. The containers are, however, heavy, unwieldy, and prone to absorbing moisture.

🔗 United States 🔗 Organized Labour 🔗 Record Labels 🔗 United States/American music

On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians, at the instigation of union president James C. Petrillo, began a strike against the major American record companies because of disagreements over royalty payments. Beginning at midnight, July 31, 1942, no union musician could make commercial recordings for any commercial record company. That meant that a union musician was allowed to participate on radio programs and other kinds of musical entertainment, but not in a recording session. The 1942–1944 musicians' strike remains the longest strike in entertainment history.

The strike did not affect musicians performing on live radio shows, in concerts, or, after October 27, 1943, on special recordings made by the record companies for V-Discs for distribution to the armed forces fighting World War II, because V-Discs were not available to the general public. However, the union did frequently threaten to withdraw musicians from the radio networks to punish individual network affiliates who were deemed "unfair" for violating the union's policy on recording network shows for repeat broadcasts.

The strike had a major impact on the American musical scene. At the time, union bands dominated popular music; after the strike, and partly as a result of it, the big bands began to decline and vocalists began to dominate popular music.

🔗 Religion 🔗 Christianity 🔗 Christianity/theology 🔗 Christianity/Catholicism

The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation.

The Council issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism, and also issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, and the veneration of saints. The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, oversaw the first eight sessions (1545–47), while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions (1551–52) were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions (1562–63) by Pope Pius IV.

The consequences of the Council were also significant with regard to the Church's liturgy and practices. In its decrees, the Council made the Latin Vulgate the official biblical text of the Roman Church (without prejudice to the original texts in Hebrew and Greek, nor to other traditional translations of the Church, but favoring the Latin language over vernacular translations, such as the controversial English-language Tyndale Bible). In doing so, they commissioned the creation of a revised and standardized Vulgate in light of textual criticism, although this was not achieved until the 1590s. The Council also officially affirmed (for the second time at an ecumenical council) the traditional Catholic Canon of biblical books in response to the increasing Protestant exclusion of the deuterocanonical books. The former dogmatic affirmation of the Canonical books was at the Council of Florence in the 1441 bull Cantate Domino, as affirmed by Pope Leo XIII in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus (#20). In 1565, a year after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed (after Tridentum, Trent's Latin name) and his successor Pius V then issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in, respectively, 1566, 1568 and 1570. These, in turn, led to the codification of the Tridentine Mass, which remained the Church's primary form of the Mass for the next four hundred years.

More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869.

🔗 Alternative Views

The God helmet is an experimental apparatus originally called the Koren helmet (or Koren octopus) after its inventor Stanley Koren. It was developed by Koren and neuroscientist Michael Persinger to study creativity, religious experience and the effects of subtle stimulation of the temporal lobes. Reports by participants of a "sensed presence" while wearing the God helmet brought public attention and resulted in several TV documentaries. The device has been used in Persinger's research in the field of neurotheology, the study of the purported neural correlations of religion and spirituality. The apparatus, placed on the head of an experimental subject, generates very weak magnetic fields, that Persinger refers to as "complex". Like other neural stimulation with low-intensity magnetic fields, these fields are approximately as strong as those generated by a land line telephone handset or an ordinary hair dryer, but far weaker than that of an ordinary refrigerator magnet and approximately a million times weaker than transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Persinger reports that many subjects have reported "mystical experiences and altered states" while wearing the God Helmet. The foundations of his theory have been criticized in the scientific press. Anecdotal reports by journalists, academics and documentarists have been mixed and several effects reported by Persinger have not yet been independently replicated. One attempt at replication published in the scientific literature reported a failure to reproduce Persinger's effects and the authors proposed that the suggestibility of participants, improper blinding of participants or idiosyncratic methodology could explain Persinger's results. Persinger argues that the replication was technically flawed, but the researchers have stood by their replication. Only one group has published a direct replication of one God Helmet experiment. Other groups have reported no effects at all or have generated similar experiences by using sham helmets, or helmets that are not turned on, and have concluded that personality differences in the participants explain these unusual experiences.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Systems 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment

John Gall (September 18, 1925 – December 15, 2014) was an American author and retired pediatrician. Gall is known for his 1975 book General systemantics: an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., a critique of systems theory. One of the statements from this book has become known as Gall's law.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Anime and manga

The Tamagotchi Connection, known as Tamagotchi Plus in Japan and Tamagotchi Connexion in the UK, is a virtual pet in the Tamagotchi line of digital toys from Bandai. The Tamagotchi Connection is unique from prior models in that it uses infrared technology to connect and interact with other devices and was first released in 2004, 8 years after the first Tamagotchi toy. Using the device's infrared port, the virtual pet (referred to as a Tamagotchi) can make friends with other Tamagotchis, in addition to playing games, giving and receiving presents and having a baby.

Versions 1 to 4 of Tamagotchi Connection have 6 levels of friendship that can be viewed in the Friends List:

• Acquaintance (one smiley-face)
• Buddy (two smiley-faces)
• Friend (three smiley-faces)
• Good friend (four smiley-faces)
• Best friend (two love-hearts, two smiley-faces, during connection they may kiss)
• Partner (four love-hearts, during connection they will kiss and may have babies)

Versions 5 and 6 have different levels.

If the Tamagotchi cannot find a partner from another device to have babies with, a matchmaker will come, allowing the Tamagotchi to have a baby with a computer-controlled Tamagotchi character. This applies to versions 1 to 4 and 6 only. Version 5 introduces a Dating Show game in which the user must play to gain a CPU partner.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Literature 🔗 Russia/performing arts in Russia 🔗 Russia/language and literature of Russia

Chekhov's gun (Russian: Чеховское ружьё) is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. The statement is recorded in letters by Anton Chekhov several times, with some variation:

• "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
• "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889. Here the "gun" is a monologue that Chekhov deemed superfluous and unrelated to the rest of the play.
• "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." From Gurlyand's Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.

Ernest Hemingway mocked the interpretation given by English instructors to the principle. He gives in his essay "The Art of the Short Story" an example of two characters that are introduced and then never again mentioned in his short story "Fifty Grand". Hemingway valued inconsequential details, but conceded that readers will inevitably seek symbolism and significance in these inconsequential details.

🔗 Classical Greece and Rome

The wine-dark sea is a traditional English translation of οἶνοψ πόντος (oînops póntos, IPA: /ôi̯.nops pón.tos/), from οἶνος (oînos, “wine”) + ὄψ (óps, “eye; face”). It is an epithet in Homer of uncertain meaning: a literal translation is "wine-face sea" (wine-faced, wine-eyed). It is attested five times in the Iliad and twelve times in the Odyssey, often to describe rough, stormy sea.

The only other use of oînops in the works of Homer is for oxen (once in both his epic poems), where it seems to describe a reddish color, which has given rise to various speculations about what it could mean about either the state of Aegean Sea during antiquity or the color perception of Ancient Greeks.

🔗 Physics 🔗 History of Science

The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was the prediction of late 19th century to early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium would emit an unbounded quantity of energy as wavelength decreased into the ultraviolet range.^: 6–7 The term "ultraviolet catastrophe" was first used in 1911 by Paul Ehrenfest, but the concept originated with the 1900 statistical derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law.

The phrase refers to the fact that the empirically derived Rayleigh–Jeans law, which accurately predicted experimental results at large wavelengths, failed to do so for short wavelengths. (See the image for further elaboration.) As the theory diverged from empirical observations when these frequencies reached the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, there was a problem. This problem was later found to be due to a property of quanta as proposed by Max Planck: There could be no fraction of a discrete energy package already carrying minimal energy.

Since the first use of this term, it has also been used for other predictions of a similar nature, as in quantum electrodynamics and such cases as ultraviolet divergence.