For your pleasure this Monday, we have another National Informer. Perhaps you thought we had run out of these gems, but fear not, sweet reader—we haven’t. In this issue published yesterday in 1972, Informer’s in-house seer Mark Travis puts his self-proclaimed 85% accuracy rate on the line with a raft of bold new predictions. He tells us Earthmen (his term, not ours) will land on Mars by 1980. Um, no. He also predicts that, by 1980 again, Antarctica will be used as a deepfreeze for the world’s food supply. And he also predicts that half the U.S. population will be on welfare by the year… you guessed it—1980. We don’t know what his fetish was with that year, but in a way, these were clever predictions—since his job was results-based, he couldn’t be fired for at least eight years. But our favorite prediction of his actually deals with the immediate future: “I predict several small children will be carried away by eagles in our Western States next summer.” 85% accuracy? Perhaps not. But at least Travis was entertaining even when he was wrong. Elsewhere in Informer you get peeping Toms, swinging mistresses, sex advice, and some rather curious ads. See all that, and more, below.
