26 Shockingly Bad Predictions

    These people looked into the future...and got it completely wrong.

    Luke Lewis
    by Luke Lewis

    BuzzFeed Executive Editor, UK

    1.

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    Variety magazine, 1955.

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    Charles Darwin, writing in the foreword to On the Origin of Species, 1859.

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    Economist Irving Fisher in October 1929, three days before the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.

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    A Decca Records executive to the band's manager, Brian Epstein, following an audition in 1962. He continued: "We don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out. Four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished."

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    Time magazine, 1968.

    6.

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    John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of the Future, 1936.

    7.

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    Margaret Thatcher, Oct. 26, 1969.

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    Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, writing in Technical World magazine, October 1912.

    9.

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    Kaiser Wilhelm II to German troops at the outset of World War One, August 1914.

    10.

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    Surgeon General of the United States William H. Stewart, speaking to the U.S. Congress in 1969.

    11.

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    Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

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    Dr. Dionysys Larder, science writer and academic, in 1828.

    13.

    Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.

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    New York Times, 1936.

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    Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, in InfoWorld magazine, December 1995.

    16.

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    The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company, 1903.

    17.

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    William Orton, president of Western Union, in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell tried to sell the company his invention.

    18.

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    Charlie Chaplin in 1916, two years into his big-screen acting career. The rest of the quote: "It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."

    19.

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    An aide to British military commander Field Marshal Haig wrote this in a report following a tank demonstration, 1916.

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    Thomas Edison, 1889. The lightbulb inventor insisted his own direct current (DC) system was superior to competitor George Westinghouse's AC power, and took every opportunity to discredit alternating current.

    21.

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    Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.

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    Byte magazine editor Edmund DeJesus, 1998.

    23.

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    Alan Sugar, 2005.

    24.

    Popular Mechanics, 1949.

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    Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling in The New York Times, 2007.

    26.

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    Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 2007.