History AccidentallyCorrectWriting / Literature

** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' describes the Hippogriff as a half-eagle half-horse creature that is very proud. When approaching a hippogryph, a person should bow first, and then wait to see if it returns the bow. J. K. Rowling probably didn't know this, but there actually ''is'' at least one species of giant scary-look bird that displays behavior like this. It is called the shoebill, a very strange dinosaur-like bird found in Africa.

* The writers of ''Literature/{{Warrior|Cats}}s'' admit that they don't know much about cats and [[ArtisticLicenseBiology it shows.]] Still, Clans do coincidentally have a lot of similarities to how actual cat colonies work.

** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'': [[https://www.dailydot.com/irl/rowling-harry-potter-gender-identity-tweet-thread/ A Twitter thread]] observed that the "Battle of the Seven Potters" sequence inexplicably manages to display a better grasp of gender identity and pronoun preference than its now-infamously transphobic author. Hermione, a cisgender female, takes Polyjuice Potion to transform into Harry, and given that she complains about such details as getting Harry's terrible eyesight, we have no reason to believe her genitals didn't also change for the duration. Nevertheless, Harry's InternalMonologue continues to correctly refer to her in the feminine, as her gender identity didn't change even though her physical sex presumably did.

* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' describes the Hippogriff as a half-eagle half-horse creature that is very proud. When approaching a hippogryph, a person should bow first, and then wait to see if it returns the bow. J. K. Rowling probably didn't know this, but there actually ''is'' at least one species of giant scary-look bird that displays behavior like this. It is called the shoebill, a very strange dinosaur-like bird found in Africa.

* In ''Literature/{{Stray}}'', Pufftail repeatedly laments about how cats prefer the company of each other over humans and how they are social animals. At the time of release in the 1980s, cats were seen as loners, with feral/stray colonies being the exception to the rule. Since then, further research has shown that domestic cats aren't as asocial as once thought.

* One of Creator/AgathaChristie's lesser-known works, the Litearture/TommyAndTuppence novel ''N or M'', featured a "Major Bletchley" as one of the characters; at the time it was published, MI-5 investigated Christie due to the fact that the character shared the name with Bletchley Park, the cryptographic capital of Britian's war effort, and Christie was friends with one of the code-breakers there. Christie gave Bletchley the name out of spite, as she had been stuck there during a train ride between Oxford and London and took revenge on the city by naming one of her "least-lovable characters" after it.

* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'':
** In ''Eclipse'', Bella, Edward, and Jacob hide out in the mountains on the same evening that there is a freak snowstorm. There really was a freak snowstorm in that region of the United States in June of 2006.
** In both ''Eclipse'' and ''Breaking Dawn'', Bella and Jacob get a few laughs out of Bella's made-up term of "beta" to mean the second-in-command of the wolf pack. "Beta" is in fact an [[ScienceMarchesOn outdated]][[note]]The term was retired to more accurately reflect what real wolf packs are like. Biologists feel that the word gives people the impression that a pack is a group of wolves vying for dominance with strict rankings won through fighting, instead of the family unit it actually is.[[/note]], but still in ''very'' common use by laypeople, term for such a wolf.

* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': Many have noted that the description of the "Great Burning" which destroyed the US could fit well with nuclear warfare, though the author likely didn't know or intend that, since it was published in 1937 before the first atomic weapons. The "deadly mist" that fell on New York City was likely meant to be toxic gas, not nuclear fallout, and poison the survivors feared in the area could have resulted from that. However, it works both ways and thus could be read as prescient in the Cold War or beyond. The inspiration for the story was Guernica, a Basque town in Spain, being mostly destroyed by German bombing (which also inspired a famous painting of the name by Creator/PabloPicasso).

* As pointed out in the afterward for the 2020 English translation, ''Literature/QuestForFire'' portrayed a paleolithic world inhabited by multiple human species at the same time decades before this was found to be correct. There is even a species of dwarf humans that resemble ''Homo floresiensis'' or ''Homo luzonensis''. Later on in the story, the protagonists encounter a tribe of giant apes, a clear reference to the (at the time) recently discovered Mountain gorilla and thus [[MisplacedWildlife out of place in the setting of Pleistocene Asia]]. Since then, the large gorilla-like ape ''Gigantopithecus blacki'' was unearthed in Asia and has become [[StockDinosaurs a staple of prehistoric media]]. The latter end of its temporal range even overlaps with the time period of the story!

* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' describes the {{Hippogryph}} as a half-eagle half-horse creature that is very proud. When approaching a hippogryph, a person should bow first, and then wait to see if it returns the bow. J. K. Rowling probably didn't know this, but there actually ''is'' at least one species of scary-look bird that displays behavior like this. It is called the shoebill, a very strange dinosaur-like bird found in Africa.

* ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': The mole characters Diggum and Gurrbowl switch genders between books. This was clearly an error as this fact wasn't known at the time the book was written, but [[https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/oct-17-coronavirus-and-pain-sampling-an-asteroid-intersex-moles-and-more-1.5763905/female-moles-are-intersex-they-have-testicle-like-tissue-that-helps-them-grow-big-and-tough-1.5763925 "female" moles are in fact intersex, changing between outwardly male and female outer appearances due to hormone changes depending on whether they're ready to breed or not]].

* ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': Accidentally Correct Writing: The mole characters Diggum and Gurrbowl switch genders between books. This was clearly an error as this fact wasn't known at the time the book was written, but [[https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/oct-17-coronavirus-and-pain-sampling-an-asteroid-intersex-moles-and-more-1.5763905/female-moles-are-intersex-they-have-testicle-like-tissue-that-helps-them-grow-big-and-tough-1.5763925 "female" moles are in fact intersex, changing between outwardly male and female outer appearances due to hormone changes depending on whether they're ready to breed or not]].

* ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' has the equation 6 x 9 = 42. In the story it's ''meant'' to be wrong wrong (due to a computer programme being disrupted), but it is actually correct--in ''base 13'' notation (it's 54 in Base 10, the numbering system we use every day). Douglas Adams responded to the suggestion that this was deliberate with, "I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13."

* ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'': In ''Purgatorio'', the mountain island of Purgatory is in the southern hemisphere at the antipodal point relative to Jerusalem, placing it in what we now know to be the South Pacific ocean about halfway between Chile and Australia. Dante describes a constellation of four stars similar to the Southern Cross about 200 years prior to the age of European discovery. This might not've been accidental; the Southern Cross ''was'' visible in southern Europe prior to about 400 CE (before the Earth's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession axial precession]] brought them too far south to be visible from European latitudes), and its stars were well-known to the ancient Greeks, but there's no way for us to know if Dante was aware of this or not.

* ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'': In ''Purgatorio'', the mountain island of Purgatory is in the southern hemisphere at the antipodal point relative to Jerusalem, placing it in what we now know to be the South Pacific ocean about halfway between Chile and Australia. Dante describes a constellation of four stars similar to the Southern Cross about 200 years prior to the age of European discovery.

* Creator/TomClancy's description of a submarine's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system inertial navigation system]] in ''Literature/TheHuntForRedOctober'' would have been considered as ShownTheirWork... if it weren't not classified information. Some high-up people were concerned that Clancy somehow got access to classified information when he extrapolated this himself.