50 Historical Figures People Thought Were Nuts At The Time But Were Proven To Be Right Years Later

My classmate in nursing school. He made a big fuss about a “coronavirus” just noticed in China. He asked about if clinicals or classes would be changed because of it. We thought he was absolutely paranoid and insane. We laughed.

Monica Lewinsky. That poor woman was dragged through the mud and seeing everyone reassess what was done to her has been bittersweet.

ETA: Bittersweet bc more people seem to understand she was a victim (sweet), but she was really young, and decades of her life were spent being a public punching bag (bitter)

Barry Marshall. Proved that stomach ulcers were a bacterial infection (and not stress) by ingesting (edit) with Helicobacter pylori and then curing himself with an antibiotic.

Corey feldmen was ridiculed for talking about the abuse he suffered in Hollywood and it wasn’t even a shock, it was obvious that kinda sh*t was going down.

John Rae. Very skilled arctic explorer who unlike most of the rest of Europeans at the time wasn’t above learning from the Inuit. He was largely successful because of his willingness to learn from them and use their clothing and diet and techniques.

Anyway, about ten years after the Franklin Expedition was lost John Rae was out looking for clues what happened because the British Admiralty had a standing reward of £10,000 for anyone who had credible information about the expeditions fate. He found some physical remnants of the expedition and had met with Inuit who’d seen some of the last surviving members of the expedition. They related to him how they’d been taken by disease, lack of food, and how some of them finally succumbed to cannibalism.

Rae took this information back to England, where society was absolutely outraged how he dared to spin such drivel. Surely no sophisticated gentlemen of the hero’s character that would be in Sir John Franklin’s expedition would act so savagely!

John Rae never got the award. Years later someone else did who told of a story that was correct also to some degree, but less than Rae had been.

In modern times bone fragments have been found with telltale cut marks, thereby proving John Rae and the Inuit right.

Galileo Galilei.

Brendan Fraser, that sweet sweet man.

I would say Monika Lewinsky. I watched her TED talk and thought about it in the world we have today and honestly, can't believe how bullied she was and how much of a joke her name still is

She was in her early 20s and Clinton was in his early 50s.

I can see myself in my 20s easily falling into the trap of thinking "wow I must be so incredible, the president notices me" when in reality, that's just creepy AF

Alfred Wegener hypothesed plate tectonics in the 1920’s, but this wasn’t an accepted notion until the 50’s.

He was a meteorologist, and copped a lot of flak from the geological community at the time.

Bernie Sanders. That dude complains a lot and he may not be right every time but it sure seems like most of the time.

Ralph Nader wasn't taken seriously about automobile safety. Now we have seatbelts and laws mandating them.

Marshall Ferdinand Folk when speaking of the Treaty of Versailles. "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."

Prescience personified.

Duff Roblin, the Premier of Manitoba. After the 1950 flood, Roblin's government initiated the Red River Floodway project. The floodway diverts part of the river around the city. At the time he was mocked and a lot of people thought it was a waste of money, because "a flood like that will never happen again."

It's been estimated that it's saved $40 billion CAD in flood damages since it was completed in 1968. I was there for the '97 flood. The floodway saved my home and my in-laws' home.

Janet Jackson

The whole nipplegate thing made her out to be something she wasn't whilst Timberlake faced no backlash

The English physician, William Harvey

(A.D.1578–1657), discovered the

circulation of blood. The current

opinion in those days was that blood

oscillates in the vessels of the body.

For his views, Harvey was ridiculed

and was called “circulator”. He lost

most of his patients. However, before

he died, Harvey’s idea about

circulation was generally accepted as

a biological fact.

When I was in elementary school, we learned about the different areas of taste on the tongue: salty, bitter, sweet, and sour. In front of the class, I asked then "why do I taste the sweet all over my tongue when I eat candy?" She dismissed my question and the other kids said I was dumb. Who's dumb now?

Jack Layton -Early on in the Afghanistan war when the Taliban had been largely beaten and splintered into several small groups, many of them leaderless and wanting a way out, Jack suggested negotiating with these groups to end the war. The Conservative government of Canada labeled him Taliban Jack, and he was widely ridiculed. Had they negotiated back in 2005/2006 there would have been a lot less lives lost, and an opportunity to create a lasting change in Afghanistan.

Chris Crocker.

We all know the Leave Brittney Alone video. We all quoted it at the same and made fun of Chris.

But they turned out to be completely correct. Britney was being pushed too hard by the media, and the aggressive fans and invasive paparazzi were (in part) to blame for her break down. We know now that she was controlled by her family for years, and we really shouldnt have mocked someone trying to draw attention to it. I think part of the mockery came because the breakdown is "funny", but also because society did - and still does - think that celebrities deserve whatever happens to them, so the paparazzi and the fans aren't responsible for how their actions hurt celebrities.

Lady Gaga. She was bullied and there were Facebook groups dedicated to ridiculing her and telling her she'd never be famous. Guess they were wrong.

Karen Carpenter, the singer. Everyone back when they were popular (myself included) mocked and sneered at how uncool The Carpenters were. But time told us she had one of the best singing voices ever. It’s a timeless voice of incredible beauty.

The “Alvarez hypothesis” two guys who 30 years before anyone had indisputable proof of it hypothesesed the dinosaurs died because of an asteroid. Well they were f*cking right on with that one.