Famous Predictions Trivia

1. Which great polymath who was forced to recant his belief in heliocentrism, dismissed Kepler's proposal that the moon caused the tides as "useless fiction"?

From Quiz Brilliant Mistakes

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Galileo (1564-1642) was an Italian polymath, astronomer, scientist, mathematician, author, engineer and physicist who spend a great deal of his life under house arrest because of his views on heliocentrism and Copernicanism. He was forced to recant all his beliefs on same by the authorities of the day. This great man also believed, but mistakenly so, that tides were caused by the seas swirling around a point on the surface of the earth as the earth spun on its axis around the sun. When fellow great scientist, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) came up with the theory that it was our moon that caused the action of the tides, Galileo didn't take too kindly to his own tidal theories being challenged - and dismissed Kepler's correct findings as "useless fiction".

From Quiz Where's My Flying Car? Predictions Gone Wrong

Answer: Wernher von Braun

During WWII, von Braun worked on weapons programs developing anti-aircraft rockets and eventually the V2 ballistic missile. After surrendering to American troops, he came to the US and worked first on military missiles, then for NASA where he led the development of the Saturn rockets for the moon program. Despite his expertise, his prediction of childbirth on the moon appears quite optimistic.

From Quiz How Did They Know?

Answer: Jules Verne

The Apollo 8 mission occurred in 1968, over one hundred years after the publication of Verne's novel in 1865. In the novel, a spaceship with three astronauts on board was launched into space from a launchpad in Florida (think Cape Canaveral). It reaches the moon successfully but has to crash-land in the Pacific Ocean on the return trip. Fast forward one hundred years and that's exactly what happened to the Apollo 8 mission with three astronauts on board: James Lovell, Frank Borman, and William Anders. Fortunately, all three astronauts landed safely in the Pacific Ocean.

From Quiz You're the Worst Predictor Ever

Answer: Irving Fisher, Yale University professor

This highly respected professor of economics made this pronouncement only a few days prior to the Wall Street market crash on 29th October 1929. This was the start of the worst world-wide depression of the 20th century.

From Quiz Wrong Predictions

Answer: A concert manager, on firing Elvis Presley

This quote is by Jim Denny, Grand Ole Opry manager, on firing Elvis Presley on 2 October 1954 after one performance (his full quote was "You ain't goin' nowhere son. You ought to go back to driving a truck"). Fortunately, Elvis disregarded this advice and went on to earn Gold or Platinum status for 81 albums, 53 singles, and 16 extended play singles. Presley died 16 August 1977 at his home Graceland in Memphis, TN. His only daughter, Lisa Marie, was married to Michael Jackson on 26 May 1994, but that marriage lasted not quite two years.

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #2

Answer: tunnel

The efforts Johnson administration and the General Westmoreland to portray the war as nearly won were dashed a few months later when the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched the Tet offensive which completely changed the situation. Despite the fact that the VC was virtually destroyed during the operation the NVA took on the bulk of the fighting leading to American disillusionment with the war and their total withdrawal by 1973. As casualties continued to mount within their ranks the phrase became a bitter joke among the troops forced to fight in a lost cause.

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #1

Answer: Hitler

Hitler made this claim to his top commanders during the planning stage of operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. It demonstrated his total contempt for the Communist regime and the Red Army. The initial success of the invasion, especially when the front door was 'kicked in' at Kiev with the destruction of several armies and the capture of 600,000 troops seemed to bear out his prediction. However the onset of winter and a vigorous Soviet counter-stroke before the gates of Moscow demonstrated the fatal error of this statement. The ability of the Red Army to recover from seemingly fatal blows and of the government to rally the country shocked everyone in the German high command from Hitler down.

From Quiz Brilliant Mistakes

Answer: Wilhelm Rontgen

Wilhelm Rontgen (1845-1925) was a German-Dutch engineer and physicist who is credited with the invention of the X-ray. In 1901, he was awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics for same. He could have made millions by patenting his invention but refused to do so because he wanted mankind to gain the benefit from it. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824-1907) was a Scots-Irish mathematician physicist and engineer, who worked largely in the area of physics, electricity, thermodynamics, the mariner's compass and the telegraph. The latter of these achievements earned him millions and saw him knighted in 1866 by Queen Victoria, and become President of the Royal Society in 1899. Oddly enough for a man with such an incisive mind, he was convinced that Rontgen's invention of X-rays would prove to be a hoax. He also believed that radio had no future at all, and that heavier than air machines were impossible.

From Quiz Where's My Flying Car? Predictions Gone Wrong

Answer: Rock & Roll

1955 was the year that Rock & Roll exploded into the public eye. Protests based on taste, 'morality' or both were common. Records were burned and banned. 15,000 teens wrote to a Chicago radio station complaining about the "indecent" music the station was playing. The protests have failed and the predictions of rock's demise seem to have been wrong.

From Quiz Predictions that became Fictions

Answer: Popular Mechanics

The University of Manchester developed the "Manchester Mark 1" that took up an entire room. It achieved what was a high mark in those days of running error-free for nine hours on June 16th, 1949.

From Quiz How Did They Know?

Answer: Total Recall

Based on a short story by sci-fi writer Philip Dick, this dystopian film features Schwarzenegger as a construction engineer who seeks out his true identity after his memory is erased. The body scanner used on Schwarzenegger's character foreshadowed the ones used in airports today.

From Quiz Wrong Predictions

Answer: An executive at Columbia Pictures, after Fred Astaire came to Hollywood and made several screen tests

Fred Astaire went on to make more than 50 movies, many with dancer Ginger Rogers. He won an Honorary Academy Award in 1950 and was nominated for a second one in 1975 (for Best Supporting Actor for "The Towering Inferno" (1974)). The scene in the movie "The Green Mile" showing death row prisoner John Coffey watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing (in the 1935 movie "Top Hat") to the song "Cheek to Cheek" and the line "I'm in Heaven?" is a real tearjerker.

From Quiz Prophecies, Slogans and War Cries

Answer: pips

The pent up anger of four years of suffering was reflected by this slogan from the general election of December 1918 just one month after the Armistice. Prime Minister Lloyd George was re-elected in this atmosphere of revenge but had grave misgivings about imposing a harsh treaty on Germany because he saw that this would only bring a temporary peace. However his voice of moderation was drowned out by French and Italian calls for harsh conditions. The resulting Treaty of Versailles proved to be not as moderate as Lloyd George wanted, as vindictive as Clemenceau the French prime minister hoped for, nor as utopian as Wilson the American president desired. The Germans felt that the onerous 'war guilt' clause was particularly unjust and this resentment ensured that another generation were condemned to suffer an even greater calamity in the future.

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #2

Answer: Ben Tre

'We had to destroy the town in order to save it' was a quote from an army officer reported by a news correspondent referring to the town of Ben Tre which had been bombed and shelled while being recaptured from the Viet Cong in the aftermath of the Tet offensive in 1968. The quote became more familiar with 'town' being replaced by 'village' after many similar incidents occurred during the Vietnam war.

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #1

Answer: Richard Nixon

Nixon made this startling claim at a press conference in November 1973 while defending his record as increasingly damaging information about the Watergate break-in was being revealed. Less than a year later Nixon was forced to resign to avoid impeachment proceedings as the full scope of the scandal and of his involvement became apparent. Al Capone, a well known underworld figure, was finally convicted on tax evasion charges as most regular Funtrivia players will know by now. Kenneth Lay was the former CEO of Enron and convicted of dodgy accounting practices which led to the corporation's collapse in 2001. Spiro Agnew was Nixon's Vice President who had his own run in with the law and was forced to resign over his involvement in a kickback scandal during his time as governor of Maryland.

From Quiz Brilliant Mistakes

Answer: Tanks

Well, he certainly got that wrong. Today, these giant war machines are an ever increasing sight in any field of war, wreaking destruction wherever they appear with their fire power and maneuverability. The name of Field Marshal Haig's aide-de-camp who made that oops statement in 1916 cannot be located, but Douglas Haig himself (1861-1928), a senior officer in the British army, earned himself the general nickname of "The Butcher" for the appalling number of casualties under his command. War, though, isn't about marshmallows and lollipops. Prior to the invention of the tank, the cavalry used horses instead. One can only imagine the horror those poor animals endured. On a lighter side, did you know that when tanks were first being constructed in the early 20th century, they had male and female versions of these machines? Female tanks only carried machine guns, but the male tanks carried cannon as well. The first design of this machine was nicknamed "Little Willie". It was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) who first came up with the idea of a tank as a war machine six centuries earlier however. A reconstructed model of his invention shown in Wikipedia looks a little like one of the famous Dr Who's enemies, the Daleks.

From Quiz Predictions that became Fictions

Answer: William Thomson

Lord Kelvin, as he was also known, was the Professor of Natural Philosophy (a now oldfashioned name for physics) for over 50 years at the University of Glasgow and became President of the Royal Society. He was a very smart man and contributed important ideas in mathematical analysis, physics, absolute zero and on and on. But he did miss it on this one.

From Quiz You're the Worst Predictor Ever

Answer: Lord Kelvin, Irish Engineer and Physicist

Lord Kelvin came up with these words of wisdom in 1895. Eight years later the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered flight from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Marechal Foch of L`Ecole Superieure de la Guerre also had a low opinion of airplanes considering them just prior to World War I as "interesting toys, but of no military value" Da Vinci, some 500 years ahead of his time had already drafted designs for the airplane. Joseph-Michel and his brother, Jacques-Étienne, invented the hot air balloon in the 1700's. Their name is immortalized in French, a montgolfièr being a hot-air balloon.

From Quiz Wrong Predictions

Answer: Thomas Watson, Sr., former chairman of IBM

Although this quote is widely attributed to Thomas Watson, Sr. (108,000 Google hits), there seems to be no concrete record to definitely prove he ever said this. After spending umpteen hours researching this, I am reminded of the famous quote from the 1962 movie "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance" (starring John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart). Newspaperman Maxwell Scott said (after listening to a long-concealed story), "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #1

Answer: Neville Chamberlain

The sight of Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper making this bold statement as he exited his plane after his return from the Munich Conference in 1938 was the climax of the policy of appeasement and one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. In return for the dismemberment of Czechslovakia, where Hitler wished to incorporate the ethnically German Sudetenland into the Reich, no more territorial claims were to be made in Europe. Hitler felt ready for war at this time and was furious that he had been manoevered out of it and regarded Chamberlain with contempt. He broke the agreement the following March by occupying the rest of Czechslovakia finally revealing his true intentions to Chamberlain and Daladier, the French Prime Minister. This led to the fateful Anglo-French guarantee to Poland and the start of WWII in September 1939. Winston Churchill's opposition to the appeasement policy was vindicated and he became Britain's wartime Prime Minister in May 1940. The vainglorious Mussolini felt he was very much the peacemaker by persuading Hitler to meet the Anglo-French leaders at Munich.

From Quiz Brilliant Mistakes

Answer: Max Planck

Max Planck (1858-1947) was a German theoretical physicist who discovered quantum theory. This discovery saw him win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Yet, if he had heeded the above advice from Phillip von Jolly (1809-1884), a professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Munich University, Planck wouldn't have taken up the study of this subject at all. Von Jolly was noted for his work on osmosis and "acceleration due to gravity with precision weights", and sincerely believed that there was nothing new to discover in the realm of physics when he gave his not-so-jolly advice to Planck.

From Quiz Where's My Flying Car? Predictions Gone Wrong

Answer: Photocopier

IBM had been offered sales rights to the "914" plain paper copier by the small firm that developed it. IBM hired a consultant to determine the potential market for such a product and his report stated that due to the low cost of carbon paper, no more than 5000 copiers would be sold worldwide. Ten years later the company that developed the "914" (now known as Xerox) was generating $1 billion in sales annually. In the mid 60s IBM's "experts" struck again, estimating worldwide demand for word processing at 6000 work stations. By 1990 there were 90 million.

From Quiz Predictions that became Fictions

Answer: Charles H. Duell

It has been questioned as to whether he actually made the statement, but he became famous for it anyway. In 1902 he said, "In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness." This last quotation is of course at odds with the earlier one.

From Quiz How Did They Know?

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln described his Presidential assassination dream to his friend Ward Hill Lamon who later incorporated it into his biography "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847-1865." In the dream, Lincoln recounted how he saw a group of mourners grieving over the dead body of the president who had been assassinated. Eerie, isn't it?

From Quiz You're the Worst Predictor Ever

Answer: Sir Harold Spencer Jones, U.K. former Astronomer Royal

Within two weeks of making this disparaging remark the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik. A month later Sputnik 2 took flight orbiting the earth with the first living creature on board, Laika the dog. Earlier the same year a space advisor to the British government, Dr. Richard van der Reit Wooley readily agreed with Sir Harold by saying "space travel is utter bilge". Great minds think alike. Roddenberry created Star Trek in 1966 so would have been inspired by man's travel in space. Even Ed Wood had a concept of space travel, albeit his space travellers were aboard flying saucers as depicted in his camp 1956 film, Plan 9 from Outer Space. John McConnell was Chief of Staff at the time of the Sputnik flights.

From Quiz Wrong Predictions

Answer: Gary Cooper, on his decision not to take the role of Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind" (played by Clark Gable)

Gary Cooper turned down the role of Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) saying, "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." In the 1940 Academy Awards, "Gone with the Wind" won nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Vivien Leigh for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Hattie McDaniel for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland were nominated for Oscars but did not win. "High Noon" (1952) starred Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. It won four Academy Awards and was nominated for Best Picture (but lost to "The Greatest Show on Earth").

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #2

Answer: 1948

There is a classic picture of a beaming President Truman holding up this headline as he claimed victory in the 1948 election. The 'Chicago Tribune' made this bold prediction on the basis of early exit polls and rushed out this early edition. One of the more memorable wrong calls of the 20th century!

From Quiz Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #1

Answer: capitalists

This statement is usually attributed to Lenin during the early years of the USSR when confidence was high that Communist revolutions would soon sweep the bourgeois capitalist governments from power. There was a perception that the wealth of the capitalist countries benefitted the rich at the expense of the workers. Although this was true to a certain extent it overlooked the fact that sufficient wealth trickled down to the working class to prevent revolutionary sentiment developing. Although impressive gains were made in industrial output in the USSR under a succession of five-year plans this was more than matched by the growth of the capitalist economies. By the 1980s the boot was very much on the other foot with the ailing Soviet economy stagnating and it had to be bailed by a succession of Western loans. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the reforms of the Chinese to 'Communism with Chinese characteristics' the triumph of capitalism was complete.

From Quiz Brilliant Mistakes

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) rose to power during the French Revolution (1789-1799), and eventually became Emperor of that great nation. For many years he dominated the political sphere of Europe, winning most of the ongoing wars that littered the fields of the continent during this time, while ever increasing the expanse, power and influence of the French Empire. His reign ended in 1815 during another mighty battle with a combined English and Prussian coalition, after which this compelling world figure was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later. Described as "one of the greatest commanders in history" Napoleon's influence can still be felt all this time later in the political and legal changes he ushered in. It seems odd that such a far-sighted leader dismissed the notion of steamships so quickly, but this he did. His words, when informed about the steamboat, were "How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense".

From Quiz Where's My Flying Car? Predictions Gone Wrong

Answer: "X-rays will prove to be a hoax"

Kelvin proclaimed X-rays a hoax - not an uncommon opinion at the time. But upon seeing Rontgen's research, Kelvin was convinced of the value of the work and even had his own hand x-rayed.

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Last Updated Dec 21 2024 5:52 AM

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