Silicon Valley Bank, the 20th largest bank in the U.S., has been put into receivership. The bank’s failure was reportedly started by a run on the bank spearheaded by Peter Thiel. And while it’ll take some time to figure out precisely why the bank failed so quickly, it does provide us with yet another opportunity to look at how dumb Jim Cramer is.

Back in 1927, home movies were a new technology thanks to the invention of 16 millimeter film. And this ad was all about how exciting the entire process could be.

Former president Donald Trump has a new video out about his plan to build cities from scratch on federal land. And if that didn’t sound outrageous enough, given Trump’s well-documented history of embracing white supremacy and implementing discriminatory housing policy, Trump also promises these cities will have flying cars.

We’ve looked at plenty of proposed monuments that never came into being here at Paleofuture, from the enormous monument to electricity proposed in 1922 to the gigantic telephone that would’ve been a monument to Alexander Graham Bell. But there’s another memorial imagined in the 1920s that never came to fruition: A national “mammy” memorial, a stereotype of Black women that would’ve tried to romanticize slavery.

After the devastation of World War I, many writers spent the 1920s and 30s imagining how the world could avoid major wars in the future. And one idea keeps popping up again and again when I read through newspapers of the era: Just make robots fight for each side and declare a winner without any bloodshed.

Years ago, the entire run of the TV show Computer Chronicles, which aired from 1982 until 2002, was put online at the Internet Archive. But it was incredibly difficult to parse the videos without watching them in their entirety. But now, the GDELT Project has added new functionality that allows user to essentially skim through the episodes based on topic with a new thumbnail interface.

The early 1980s was a rough time for a lot of Americans. The recession of 1981-1982 saw unemployment peaking at 10.8% and GDP falling 2.8%. And it’s with that in mind that a columnist from the year 1983 wondered: Will people of the future—specifically 40 years into the future—think of the early 1980s fondly?

Light-up advertising signs that can be seen in the dark are extremely commonplace here in the 21st century. But back in the 1930s, they were still a bit of a novelty, especially because the cost of maintaining them with bulbs and electricity was relatively high.

AeroMobil, the European company that’s been promising humanity a flying car since 2014, will be closing down, according to a new report from the Slovak Spectator. AeroMobil was unable to secure enough money in its latest round of fundraising and will declare bankruptcy, according to the Spectator.

Today, digital records allow doctors to search the latest research and assist in coming up with a diagnosis without the need to crack the spine on some dusty old books. But something as simple as searching a database with medical information from anywhere in the world was just a futuristic dream in 1959. And experts of the time were promising that it was coming.

Gladys Bevans wrote a column in the August 12, 1942 edition of the New York Daily News, opening with an anecdote about a woman who let her kids go to the movies. And it was going to ruin their lives.

Back in 1935, sci-fi publisher Hugo Gernsback wrote an article about the future of 3D movies. And it’s incredible how much his predictions seem relevant to the current crop of virtual reality headsets, especially as large social media platforms like Facebook are struggling to get people excited about the metaverse.

I’ve been seeing this image circulating on Twitter and Reddit in recent weeks, declaring that the “last baby” was going to be born in 2012. But what’s going on here?

In a letter to the editor published in 1973, one man predicted that 50 years into the future, President Richard Nixon would be remembered as the greatest president in history.

When newspaper readers opened the Sunday funnies on December 7, 1958, many saw a glimpse of a futuristic kitchen. The housewife of the future, they were told, would sit in a circular kitchen with a chair that would bring her to everything without the need to stand up. It looks like something out of a spaceship design. But, believe it or not, the idea is much older and seemed to take some inspiration from the 1940s.

When would you guess the heated steering wheel was invented? The 1980s? 1960s? Try at least 1920, and maybe as early as 1912.

What will the world look like two decades from now? That was the question that the Richfield Reaper newspaper in Richfield, Utah asked its community back in 1999. And one of the answers from a high school student is chilling when you look back at how school shootings have become normalized.

NASA is tremendously proud of the benefits that Americans see when space tech becomes commercialized for civilian use. But did you know NASA has an entire magazine devoted to showing off those spinoffs, published every year? The new edition is out today, and it’s a great excuse to take a look through Spinoff’s archives from the 1970s.

Do you ever admire your friend’s tie so much that you absolutely must buy it that second? That seemed to be the problem that needed solving in this 2002 concept video by Accenture for shopping in the future.

Today, the U.S. military is experimenting with robotic tanks to destroy an enemy without risking the lives of U.S. service members. And while these high-tech machines can conjure up memories of the 1991 movie Terminator 2 for many people who were alive to see that horrific vision for humanity’s future on the big screen, the remote-controlled tank actually has a much longer history in the popular imagination.

Humanoid robots are really hard to build. They require a lot of intricate mechanical engineering to do something as simple as opening a door or walking just a few steps without falling down. But computer nerds of the 1970s understood the difficulties of creating human-like robots, while speculating there was an area where robots would be much easier to build: Pets.

Have you seen that viral video from 1956 that explains how to avoid the plagues of the future? It seems to predict social media, America’s obesity problem, and even the covid-19 pandemic. But it’s completely fake.

In the early 1920s, fans of science and technology were certain that a world of frequent air travel was just over the horizon. People would be zipping from place to place like it was nothing. But there was just one problem for both dense urban areas and isolated mountaintops: How do you give planes enough space to take off and land?

Paleofuture+ has just added a new benefit for subscribers. Members can now read every single comic strip from Closer Than We Think, one of the most inspirational examples of retro-futurism.

What if all the futuristic inventions promised during the 1950s and 60s actually became real during that era? Not only does everyone have robotic vacuums and hovercars, they can even buy a timeshare on the moon. That’s the premise of the upcoming Apple TV show Hello Tomorrow!, starring Billy Crudup and Alison Pill, which premieres on February 17. And it looks pretty damn cool.

The February 7, 1971 edition of the Billings Gazette in Montana ran an article about how kids viewed the Apollo program. And the feedback from girls at the time was particularly disheartening.

I just stumbled upon this ad for the newspaper comic Our New Age in the September 17, 1958 issue of the Des Moines Tribune in Iowa. And I find it unintentionally hilarious. I mean, what’s he pointing at? The future? Is that where the future lies? Right over by that rocket?

Artificial intelligence that’s been trained to create answers in natural language or even works of visual art are the hottest new tools of 2023. But, believe it or not, a cartoon from 100 years ago predicted the AI revolution we’re seeing right now. And we even covered the cartoon almost a decade ago here at Paleofuture.

This cartoon, published in the March 1962 issue of Computers and Automation magazine, could have been published here in the 2020s with just minor tweaks.

What comes to mind when you think of nuclear fallout bunkers from the Cold War? Maybe a small underground concrete hole filled with canned goods from the 1960s that could fit a single family? Well, in Sweden, they built large bunkers that could fit thousands of people. And they were extremely fancy.