Hindsight is 20/20.
A random sampling of history’s most clueless predictions — from faulty scientific forecasts to sweeping political statements
Some gems:
“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop — because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.” —TIME, offering predictions for the year 2000, 1966
“Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it.” —British physicist Lord Ernest Rutherford, date unknown
“I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.” —Thomas Edison, 1922
“These Google guys, they want to be billionaires and rock stars and go to conferences and all that. Let’s see if they still want to run the business in two or three years.” —Bill Gates, on Google magnates Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 2003
“Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, like the first pancake, is a flop.”—Russian music critic and composer Nicolai Soloviev, 1875