"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." -
Modeling 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, but 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 Organization 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.