- Imagine having a dream that felt so real
that you swear it actually happened.
We've all had dreams like that,
and sometimes those dreams are so scary
that you're grateful when you wake up
that they weren't real.
However, for the following people,
they were not that lucky.
(cloud whooshing)
(ominous music)
Here are 10 people whose dreams predicted the future.
(cloud whooshing)
Number 10 is Frederick Banting.
(cloud whooshing)
Halloween has been known to bring forth some dark imagery,
especially in people's dreams.
But in the case of Dr. Frederick Banting,
the imagery in those dreams did far more good than harm.
Before waking on the morning of October 31st, 1920,
after a night of preparing for a lecture on the pancreas,
Banting dreamt of conducting an experiment on dogs
that he hadn't even thought of previously.
Upon waking, he quickly wrote down
what he somehow dreamed he had to do
and soon after discovered insulin because of it.
The doctor's discovery won him a Nobel prize in medicine
and even led to him being knighted by King George V in 1934.
Banting's dream and the experiment it spawned
helped save the lives of millions of people
and continues to do so to this very day.
(cloud whooshing)
Number nine is Caligula.
(cloud whooshing)
On January 24th of the year 41 CE,
Emperor Gaius Julius Augustus Germanicus,
better known historically as Caligula,
woke up from a dream that he should've
taken much more seriously.
In that dream, Caligula found himself
standing before the throne of the mighty Jupiter,
the king of the gods.
Jupiter took it upon himself to cast Caligula out,
literally kicking him out of heaven
using the big toe on his right foot.
Caligula tumbled along, falling back to Earth,
which is when he woke up.
Although Jupiter appearing in his dream
was widely seen at the time as a divine sign
and, in this particular case,
a firm warning of his impending doom,
Caligula ignored the premonition
and, the following morning, simply went about his day.
That very afternoon, he was assassinated.
(cloud whooshing)
Number eight is several would-be titanic passengers.
(cloud whooshing)
Easily the most famous shipwreck
the world has ever seen to date,
the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg around 11:40 p.m.
on April 14th, 1912 and sank two hours and 40 minutes later.
It took the lives of more than 1,500 people.
Prior to the Titanic's maiden voyage,
several potential passengers dropped out,
having had dreams that their trip
would cost them their lives.
Several of them claim to have had
far too realistic dreams of drowning
or watching as many other people drowned.
Others actually dreamt of the ship
striking an iceberg and going down.
Hundreds would later claim to have seen the disaster
occur in their sleep prior to it actually sinking.
Some passengers who had premonitions
boarded the ship anyway,
only to sadly have their warnings become
a deadly reality as the icy waters claimed them.
(cloud whooshing)
Number seven is Calpurnia.
(cloud whooshing)
The third and final wife of legendary
Roman dictator Julius Caesar,
Calpurnia was said to be a shy and humble woman.
But on the morning of March 15th, in the year 44 BCE,
after she foresaw her husband's demise in a dream,
she was anything but shy,
attempting without success
to stop the events from taking place.
Calpurnia dreamt that Caesar's life
was going to be taken that very day.
After waking from it, she begged him not to leave the house,
even asking praetor and friend of the dictator, Brutus,
to tell the senate that he was ill
and would not be able to attend that day.
However, her husband waved off this idea,
confident he wasn't in danger, and left with Brutus;
Brutus, being the one who actually was the one
leading instigators in Caesar's assassination,
which took place shortly after arriving at the senate.
(cloud whooshing)
Number six is Michael Brown.
(cloud whooshing)
When 18-year-old Michael Brown was gunned down
by officer Darren Wilson on August 9th, 2014,
it sparked a nationwide conversation
about race and injustice practically overnight.
But during Michael's funeral, his stepmother, Cal Brown,
revealed that the young man had been having
dark and terrifying dreams that had shaken him.
One of their final conversations
consisted of Michael explaining that he didn't think
that his ill stepmom would pull through.
When Cal asked him why,
he said that he'd been dreaming about passing away,
gruesome images and blood-soaked
sheets hanging on clotheslines.
At the time, Michael had apparently believed
that he'd been predicting his stepmother's demise
but had somehow sadly predicted his own.
(cloud whooshing)
Number five is Mark Twain.
(cloud whooshing)
Once night, in 1895, American writer Samuel Clemens,
better known to the world by his pen name Mark Twain,
had a dream in which he was in his sister's house.
Walking into the living room, he came upon two chairs
that supported an open, metal casket.
To Twain's horror, laying inside that coffin
was the dead body of his younger brother Henry,
dressed in one of Twain's suits
and with white flowers on his chest.
Twain awoke completely convinced
that his brother was, in fact, dead
and didn't realize otherwise for several minutes.
However, two weeks later,
after an explosion severely injured Henry,
he was accidentally given an overdose of morphine and died.
To Twain's shock, he was buried in a metal coffin
in one of the writer's own suits,
and with white flowers on his chest,
just like in Twain's dream.
(cloud whooshing)
Number four is Sharon Tate.
(cloud whooshing)
Obviously, there are some dreams
that you simply do not want to come true.
And in the case of the tragic tale of Sharon Tate,
that couldn't be more true.
During an August 1968 interview with reporter Dick Kleiner,
the American actress and model
described a dream she had recently had,
one which she remembered in vivid detail
due to the fact that it felt so real.
In the dream, Tate saw someone with their throat cut open,
tied to the staircase in her home.
She somehow knew the individual was either herself
or her friend, hairstylist Jay Sebring,
but couldn't tell which of them the body belonged to.
Less than a year after she told Kleiner about the dream,
it became a sad reality;
as, on August 8th, 1969, Tate and Sebring
both lost their lives to stab wounds
delivered by members of the Manson family.
(cloud whooshing)
Number three is Walter Franklin Prince.
(cloud whooshing)
On the night of November 27th, 1917,
American parapsychologist and Episcopal minister
Walter Franklin Prince
had a dream in which he was handed a note
by a thin, blonde-haired woman around the age of 35.
Written in red ink, the note relayed that the woman
should be immediately executed,
an action she seemed fine with,
so long as Prince agreed to hold her hand.
He obliged; but soon after, everything went dark,
and he felt her let go of him,
only to feel her severed hand in his other hand.
Two days later, he learned of the death of Sarah Hand,
who had placed her own head in front of a train
at a Long Island railroad station.
In her handbag was a note detailing
that she believed her head would stay alive
once removed from her body.
She may have been wrong,
but Prince's dream was tragically proven right.
(cloud whooshing)
Number two is Adolph Hitler.
(cloud whooshing)
Apparently, precognition can be possessed
even by the worst that humanity has to offer.
As legend has it, a man many believe to be
the most evil human being to ever lived
was warned against danger in a dream.
While serving in World War I,
Adolph Hitler, the then future leader of the Nazi party,
fell asleep in a trench and had a dream
in which he and some of his fellow soldiers
were suddenly buried under molten metal and dirt.
When he awoke, Hitler quickly left
the trench he'd been snoozing in.
Shortly after, the trench was hit with a shell
and collapsed, killing everyone in it
except for, of course, Hitler himself.
Just think about this for a moment.
World War II could've been avoided
if not for a dream the Nazi leader had
which would up saving his life.
(cloud whooshing)
And number one is President Abraham Lincoln.
(cloud whooshing)
According to Ward Hill Lamon,
a personal friend and bodyguard of Abraham Lincoln,
the president had a nightmare which predicted his own fate
three days before his assassination.
In the dream, Lincoln was wandering the White House,
searching for the source of mourning sounds,
when he came upon a casket protected by soldiers
and surrounded by crying people.
He asked one of the mourners who had passed away
and received the response, "The president.
"He was killed by an assassin."
Lincoln didn't think the body in the coffin was his,
and he dismissed the dream.
But on the night of April 14th, 1865,
the 16th president of the United States was shot
while watching a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC.
He died the following morning,
having dreamt of his own demise.