After more than a century of being “cursed,” the Chicago Cubs won the World Series over Cleveland. Who could have ever seen in coming? Only a few people.

Parks and Recreation

In 2014, the long-running NBC sitcom “flashed forward” to the year 2017. In one episode, Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) goes to Chicago to try to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend, Lucy (Natalie Morales). As they’re walking around the city, Lucy remarks that “everybody’s in a good mood now since the Cubs won the series.” Since the episode takes place the summer of 2017, this means that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series the previous fall…in 2016. Parks and Recreation creator Michael Schur downplayed the prediction, saying, “Every baseball writer in American knew the Cubs were going to be good. I can’t emphasize enough how little credit I feel like I should take for that prediction.”

A Teenager’s Yearbook Photo

A young man named Michael Lee graduated from Mission Viejo High School in southern California. The school invited students to put a quote or motto under their yearbook photo. Lee’s photo caption: “Chicago Cubs. 2016 World Champions. You heard it here first.” Indeed, he was first with the prediction because it was so long ago: This appeared in Lee’s yearbook in 1993. 

A Twitter User

A random person on Twitter predicted how the 2016 World Series would end…with eerie accuracy. On November 4, 2014, @RaysFanGio tweeted: “2016 World Series. Cubs vs. Indians. And then the world will end with the score tied in game seven in extra innings.” He got the year, teams, score, number of games, and innings correct. (The world still hasn’t ended though.)