10 bad historical predictions

1. “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” Marshall Ferdinand Foch, future French World War I commander, 1911.

2. “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — HM Warner of Warner Brothers, 1927.

3. “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” – Actor Gary Cooper after deciding to reject the leading role in Gone With the Wind.

4. “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said no. So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” – Steve Jobs on his efforts to get Atari and HP interested in his personal computer. 

5. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” – Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project. 

6. “The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn’t mean they are any good at making aircraft.” – Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, 1942.

7. “I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.” – Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.

8. “Man will not fly for 50 years.” – Wilbur Wright, 1901 two years before the first recorded flight by the brothers.

9. “It will be years – not in my time – before a woman will become Prime Minister.” -– Margaret Thatcher, 1974, five years before she was elected PM.

10. “Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” –The response of the drillers Edwin L Drake tried to enlist in his project to drill for oil in 1859.

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