In 1888 New York journalist David Goodman Croly published Glimpses of the Future, a collection of predictions “to be read now and judged in the year 2000.” Excerpts:

• “The accumulation of wealth in a few hands, which is steadily going on, will unquestionably lead to a grave agitation which may have vital consequences on the future of the country. I am quite sure that the American of the twentieth century will not consent to live under a merely selfish plutocracy.”
• “Exclusive lawyer rule will yet create violent disturbance. Our whole machinery of justice is out of gear, for it is becoming more costly and inefficient. … The legal machinery grows yearly more inefficient and wasteful of time and money. Vigilance committees will exist in every part of the country if this state of things continues.”
• “Marriage is no longer a religious rite even in Catholic countries, but a civil contract, and the logical result would seem to be a state of public opinion which would justify a change of partners whenever the contracting couple mutually agreed to separate.”
• “If the aërostat should become as cheap for travellers as the sailing vessel, why may not man become migratory, like the birds, occupying the more mountainous regions and sea-coast in summer and more tropical climes in winter? Of course all this seems very wild, but we live in an age of scientific marvels, and the navigation of the air, if accomplished, would be the most momentous event of all the ages.”
• “There will be a sub-city [in New York] under the surface of the ground for conveying people, not only from the Battery to the City Hall Park, but also from the East to the North River.”
• “True, the [chromolithograph] of to-day is looked upon as crude and inartistic; but I venture to predict that it will be so far perfected as to allow any well-to-do family to have art galleries of their own, in which will be found reproductions of all the great paintings of the ancient and modern world. The crowning glory of our age will be when the highest art is brought within the reach of the poorest purse.”
• “[In the novel of the future,] Robert Elsmere, Catherine Langham, and the other individuals, would all be reproduced pictorially. This would dispense with a great deal of description, and much of the verbiage could be cut out. Then the reader’s conception of the characters would necessarily be much more vivid. Nor is this all. Why should not a number of graphophones be made use of, giving the words of the various conversations in the tones they would naturally use? An author then would employ a number of men and women of various ages to personate his characters. They would be like the models of an artist.”

“I have no notion of being able to tell what the future has in store for us,” he wrote. “I propose simply to take up such matters as are of everyday importance, and try to think out the future with regard to them.”

“In the year 1500 Europe knew less than Archimedes, who died in the year 212 B.C.” — Alfred North Whitehead

In February 1864, Missouri slave Spotswood Rice enlisted as a private in the Union Army. In September, as the war neared its close, he prepared to return to Howard County with a force of 1600 soldiers. He sent this letter to slaveowner Kittey Diggs, who still held his two children:

I received a leteter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal to plunder my child away from you now I want you to understand that mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own and you may hold on to hear as long as you can but I want you to remembor this one thing that the longor you keep my Child from me the longor you will have to burn in hell and the qwicer youll get their for we are now makeing up a bout one thoughsand blacke troops to Come up tharough and wont to come through Glasgow and when we come wo be to Copperhood rabbels and to the Slaveholding rebbels for we dont expect to leave them there root neor branch but we thinke how ever that we that have Children in the hands of you devels we will trie your vertues the day that we enter Glasgow I want you to understand kittey diggs that where ever you and I meets we are enmays to each orthere I offered once to pay you forty dollers for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you you never in you life befor I came down hear did you give Children any thing not eny thing whatever not even a dollers worth of expencs now you call my children your property not so with me my Children is my own and I expect to get them and when I get ready to come after mary I will have bout a powrer and autherity to bring hear away and to exacute vengencens on them that holds my Child you will then know how to talke to me I will assure that and you will know how to talk rite too I want you now to just hold on to hear if you want to iff your conchosence tells thats the road go that road and what it will brig you to kittey diggs I have no fears about geting mary out of your hands this whole Government gives chear to me and you cannot help your self

He was reunited with his family several months later. It’s unknown whether this required a showdown with Diggs, but he was certainly ready for one. “I’ll let her know that god never intended for man to steal his own flesh and blood,” he had written to his children. “And as for her cristianantty I expect the Devil has Such in hell.” Mary, the daughter mentioned in the letter, was interviewed as part of the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937.

(Thanks, Stitch.)

John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, has two living grandchildren.

Tyler (1790-1862) was 63 when he fathered his seventh son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in 1853. And Lyon was in his 70s when he fathered two boys, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924 and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928. (Harrison, now 84, owns Sherwood Forest, the Virginia plantation that his grandfather purchased in 1842.)

This makes Tyler the oldest U.S. president with living grandchildren. Second place belongs to James Garfield, who was 41 years younger than Tyler.

(Thanks, Arnold.)

The Duke of Wellington contemplates a wax model of the dead Napoleon at Madame Tussaud’s in London. Wellington was one of the exhibition’s first visitors, and this was one of his favorite figures.

Napoleon and Wellington were both born in 1769, and each had four brothers and three sisters. Each was educated at a French military academy, speaking French as a second language, and each lost his father during adolescence. In 1796 Napoleon changed his surname from Buonaparte to Bonaparte; in 1798 Wellington changed his surname from Wesley to Wellesley. Both admired Hannibal above all other military heroes and gave special attention to topography in making war. Both took Caesar’s Commentaries on campaign. Napoleon saw his first action at Toulon in 1793, Wellington in Holland almost precisely a year later. They shared two mistresses, and Wellington’s brother married Napoleon’s brother’s ex-wife’s sister-in-law. Each man received a great early opportunity through the intercession of his brother, and each came to prominence fighting on a peninsula.

“But there the similarities cease,” writes Andrew Roberts in Napoleon and Wellington (2001). “For by the time Wellington gained his first European command of any great note, in Portugal in 1808, Napoleon was already master of the continent.”

When Wellington died in 1852, Tussaud’s successor created a wax figure intended to reflect his visits to the collection. So visitors to Tussaud’s saw the wax figure of a real man who was viewing the wax figure of a real man.