Predictions that were spectacularly incorrect. Is so wrong it’s funny!

17. “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam” – Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s, before the Vietnam War.

18. “If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.” – W.C. Heuper of the National Cancer Institute in1954.

19. “No, it will make war impossible.” – Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun. He said this when asked if the machine gun would make war more or less terrible.

20. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” – Associates of David Sarnoff on radio in 1921.

21. “We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.” – Simon Newcomb, Canadian-born American astronomer. Basically, he thought we were done learning in 1888.

22. “I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here… We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.” – Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institution in 1901.

23. “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” – Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University. He said this in 1929, just before the Great Depression.