It’s funny. I don’t remember any of these things happening.
1963: Last survivors of a nuclear war die out in Australia. On the Beach (1957) Nevil Shute
1970: Robots and suspended animation coming into common use. The Door into Summer (1956) Robert Heinlein
1982: Sale of robots to the public is just beginning. Robbie (1939) Isaac Asimov
1991: Uprising of the sentient ape underclass. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
1996: Eugenics War ends with 37,000,000 dead. Star Trek (1967)
1997: The President’s plane crashes in the New York prison colony. Escape From New York (1981)
1997: Jupiter 2 interstellar spaceship is launched. Lost in Space (1965)
1999: Attempted coup by the nuclear weapons base on the moon. The Long Watch (1949) Robert Heinlein
1999: Big explosion at the lunar nuclear waste site sends the moon out of Earth orbit. Space: 1999 (1975)
2000: Competitive cross-country racing allows pedestrian killing. Death Race 2000 (1975)
2001: Mission to Jupiter encounters alien life-form. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2007: Earth launches its first interstellar attack against the Taurans. The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman
No fanwanking or retconning.
Feel free to add more examples. Alternate histories don’t count.
1955 – The rocket to the moon turns out to be an elaborate fraud, and the perpetrators are captured and lynched. “The Rocket of 1955” by Cyril M. Kornbluth (1939)
I’ve got a twofer. The one about going to the moon with a material that shielded gravity. In one version of the movie they went there twice. Once in the 50s give or take, where they fought it out with the lunites. Then, they (not the same they that went the first time) went again decades later with conventional rockets and once of the main characters was now an old man worried about the new guys running into the asshole lunites.
The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man’s civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn…
A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil.
Capricorn One, the first manned mission to Mars, is ‘launched’, or at least the American public (and the world) thinks so - the mission is actually faked on a sound-stage.
Now, while the exact date is not specified in the movie, the recovery ship for the returning Mars craft (which burns up in decent) is specified - the USS Oriskany (CV-34) (and it briefly is shown in the movie, so there is no question it was the old Carrier Oriskany and not a future ship which shares the name). Unfortunately, the USS Oriskany was decommissioned in 1975, 3 YEARS before the movie was released - major d’oh! moment.
The Oriskany was sunk as an artificial reef in 2006, and since as of 2011 I have heard no mention of a Mars mission named Capricorn 1, I think this counts as meeting the OP’s criteria (I like to mention this as my father served on the USS Oriskany during Korea, and he kind of liked the brief mention of the Oriskany in the movie)
The world was devastated in a nuclear war back in November of '87 – but we’re going to be okay, because Buck Rogers already launched for deep space in May of that year and is coming back to lend a hand with his forgotten 20th-century know-how.
1999: Population of New York 36 million, infrastructure crumbling. Harrison, Make Room, Make Room, 1966. I don’t know if [i[Soylent Green* is set in the same year, but I suspect so.
1975: Overlords arrive on Earth, just before the launch of the first Moon rocket. Childhood’s End, 1953.
1898: Martians launch massive invasion of Earth, starting with England; nearly take over but are decimated by exposure to terrestrial infections.
1938: Martians launch another invasion, this time spreading out from Grover’s Mill, NJ, but are quickly decimated by exposure to terrestrial infections.
1953: Martians launch third wave of invasion, beginning in Southern California, but after early successes, are decimated by exposure to terrestrial infections.
2005: Aliens (possibly Martian) activate war machines buried on earth thousands of years previously; again score much early success but in the end are decimated by exposure to terrestrial infections.
Clearly, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
The Jupiter mission was eighteen months after the monolith on the moon emitted its squeal.
2000: There’s a burgeoning space industry with laid-off and retired astronauts around the spaceports. Fredric Brown’s The Lights in the Sky are Stars.
I’ll have to scour my books later – there are plenty of examples, especially around the year 2000.
August 1985: Warsaw pact forces invade West Germany, Norway and Turkey. After the Soviet Union launches a nuclear strike at Birmingham, England, and suffers a retaliatory strike on Minsk, a rebellion overthrows the Communist government.
But there’s a more important, more fundamental issue here:
1980: Earth is under constant attack from aliens who want our resources (“UFO” 1970 series)
1980: Flying cars, and the first manned trip to mars (“Just Imagine” (1930))
