Hutchinson News
December 31, 1989
“The Iron Curtain has collapsed, the United States has invaded Panama and San Francisco is still rebuilding from a giant earthquake.
‘But if you think 1989 has been an amazing year already, listen to what’s going to happen in the hours before the year is out:
– All of the hostages in Lebanon wjll be released.
– Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will seek asylum in the United States.
– Fidel Castro will die when a building collapses on him.
“– Virtually all members of Congress will lose their jobs after ‘. flunking mandatory IQ tests. “Who says?
‘ The nation’s top psychics.
One year ago the people who claim to have supernatural powers i were predicting that 1989 would be the year an airliner crashes into the Vatican, the Statue of Liberty topples over and George Bush is impeached.
So far, all of the psychic predictions have a common theme: They’re wrong.
.For example, the “10 Leading Psychics” polled by the National Enquirer last January said that in 1989 Johnny Carson would quit “The Tonight Show” and announce that he’s running for governor of California, Dan Rather would lose his CBS news anchor job to Diane Sawyer and Ted Kennedy would announce plans to marry Donna Rice, Gary Hart’s former girlfriend.
Not to be outdone by the Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid Globe’s crack team of psych’cs said this would be the year Bette Midler publishes a best-selling book on breast enlargement and that UFOs would cause an hour-long nationwide
power blackout.
Globe psychic Alan Stevens predicted that “after a political revolution in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev flees to the West, is granted U.S. citizenship by a special act of Congress and runs for office in California.”
The success rate of the psychics of Weekly World News has also been pretty weak.
Josef Klar, billed as “the world’s most accurate new psychic,” said “a space alien’s starship will be hijacked by Lebanese terrorists and flown to Moscow, where its occupant will be held hostage in December 1989. In response, hordes of flying saucers will invade the Earth.”
“Famed psychic Countess Sophia Sabak” predicted in the same publication that “lightning will singe off Fidel Castro’s beard at a baseball game in Havana. Unable to regrow any facial hair, he forbids all Cuban men to wear beards or
mustaches.”
Among the countess’s other predictions:
UFOs will shoot down a nuclear missile that is fired accidentally, “Tiny Tim will become one of America’s top singing stars,” and Vice President Dan Quayle would knock out Sugar Ray Leonard in a charity boxing match.
Psychics working for the National Examiner said that in 1989 a cure for AIDS would be found, Oprah Winfrey would quit her talk show, Princess Stephanie of Monaco would enter a convent, Mary Tyler Moore’s new TV series “will zoom to the top” of the ratings, nude phone booth stuffing would become America’s newest fad, and Dolly Parton would make a fortune with a new line of designer bras.
Also forecast for 1989 by various psychics:
– Iranian terrorists will try to disrupt the Super Bowl, but blow up the wrong stadium.
– Japanese scientists’ will discover how to teleport people and objects thousands of miles.
– “Hollywood will honor Ronald Reagan with a special Oscar for his performance as President and one for Nancy as best supporting actress in her role as First Lady.”
– “Thousands of people speaking a strange language will be found living in a huge underwater city covered by an immense dome under the Arctic ice cap.”
– Swedish researchers discover that corn chips are an aphrodisiac.
Not all was lost by the tabloid’s seers.
Psychic Penelope Fortune said 1989 would be the year Zsa Zsa Gabor would be in the news. But Zsa Zsa, she predicted, would achieve notability by joining “the Hare Krishna religious sect and sell all her jewelry to raise money for the poor. She will devote her life to begging for nickels and dimes on New York subway trains.
Wow. Talk about a fail. Are these people psychics or just plain nuts? The only prediction that should have happened is: “Virtually all members of Congress will lose their jobs after ‘. flunking mandatory IQ tests”……now that should be a law.