"Oops, I've made a terrible error!" (part 3)

Throughout history there have been many examples of people making foolish predictions which ultimately proved to be completely false. Here are a few more such predictions...

"I ain't nothing but a hound dog! Woof!"

1) Truck driving singer

When Elvis was 16, rockabilly singer Eddie Bond told him, "Stick to driving a truck, because you'll never make it as a singer."

Elvis Presley went on to become the best selling solo artist of all time, with his estimated record sales totalling somewhere between a staggering 600 million and 1 billion. I think it's fair to say therefore that Eddie Bond was just a little bit off with his prediction regarding Elvis' musical career.

2) A female Prime Minister

Back in 1974, Margaret Thatcher famously remarked, "It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister." She went on to become Prime Minister a mere five years later.

I suppose technically she was half right. It was years later before the UK had its first female Prime Minister - five years later to be precise!  However, unless she was a zombie during her time as Prime Minister, which I'm pretty sure she wasn't, then she was wrong about it not happening during her lifetime.

3) Missile mail

"Sparrow mail is faster than pigeon mail!"

While the first two examples of foolish predictions featured claims that something wouldn't happen, but it did, this next example is a prediction that something would happen, but thankfully it didn't!

That's basically a long winded way of saying that back in 1959 Arthur Summerfield predicted that we'd all be getting our long distance mail delivered by missiles!

"Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
~Arthur Summerfield, Former U.S. Postmaster General

It seems crazy today to think that the former head of the US Post Office thought that we'd be firing rockets at other countries filled with letters and mail! Imagine seeing a missile flying overhead and thinking, "Oo, I wonder if that's my parcel I'm expecting."

4) An end to lawyers

Here's a quote from way back in 1893 regarding the fate of lawyers which sadly proved to be wide of the mark...

"Law will be simplified [over the next century]. Lawyers will have diminished, and their fees will have been vastly curtailed."
~Journalist Junius Henri Browne

It turned out that Junius Henri Browne was as clueless as today's journalists, because unfortunately his words proved to be inaccurate. Today's top London lawyers charge around £1,000 per hour, and according to a mate of mine who is a lawyer, they sometimes get trainee ******* ** ** ***** **** for them, then charge the client ** ** **** *** ** **********.

Editor's note: "Charles, you can't say things like that! I've therefore taken the liberty of censoring your claim."
Charles: "I didn't make the claim. My mate did, and he's a lawyer."

5) Switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead

"Ha, ha! I'll prove that Darryl Zanuck wrong!"

Television nowadays is watched by billions of people all around the world. However, back in its early days, not everyone was convinced that TV was going to be a success. In 1946, Darryl Zanuck, a studio executive at 20th Century Fox, predicted...

"Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
~Darryl Zanuck

To highlight the inaccuracy of Zanuck's prediction, the London 2012 Summer Olympics was watched by an estimated worldwide audience of 3.6 billion viewers, which was more than the entire population of the world back in 1946 when Darryl Zanuck made his claim. I think its therefore safe to say that Zanuck was somewhat off the mark with his prediction.

You can find more foolish predictions in my previous blog posts:
"Oops! I've made a terrible error!" (part 1)
"Oops! I've made a terrible error!" (part 2)