- “I expect to win it. Sit back, put your feet up in front of the TV, relax and enjoy it. Let me do the worrying – that’s what I get paid for.” – England manager Graham Taylor before the 1992 European championships. England didn’t win a game.
- “I have always found strangers sexy.” – Hugh Grant, six months before he was arrested with stranger Divine Brown.
- “I would not wish to be Prime Minister, dear.” – Margaret Thatcher in 1973.
- “That rainbow song’s no good. Take it out.” – MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard Of Oz.
- “You’d better learn secretarial skills or else get married.” – Modelling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944.
- “Radio has no future.” “X-rays are clearly a hoax”. “The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.” – Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-9.
- “You ought to go back to driving a truck.” – Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.
- “Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” – MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind.
- “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” – A film company’s verdict on Fred Astaire’s 1928 screen test.
- “Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, `ut it will never work.” – Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge, shown Frank Whittle’s plan for the jet engine.
- “There will be one million cases of AIDS in Britain by 1991.” – World Health Organisation in a 1989 report. It over-estimated by 992,301 cases.
- “The Beatles? They’re on the wane.” – The Duke of Edinburgh in Canada, 1965. They went on to produce a string of No 1s.
- “The atom bomb will never go off – and I speak as an expert in explosives.” – U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945.
- “All saved from Titanic after collision.” – New York Evening Sun, April 15 1912.
- “Brain work will cause women to go bald.” – Berlin professor, 1914.
- “Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine.” – Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936.
- “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – director of the US Patent Office, 1899.
- “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.” – Newsweek magazine, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.