Tempting Fate/Real Life: Difference between revisions

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* Hermann Goering reputedly said, "If bombs drop on Berlin, you may call me Meyer."

** Meyer said what?

* Captain William "Buckey" O'Neill of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War was strolling up and down the lines in plain view. When one of his soldiers asked him to keep his head down, he responded with "Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me." A few minutes later, he caught a bullet that went in through his mouth and out the back of his head, killing him instantly.

* As worded in ''[[Escape from Alcatraz]]'', "No-one has ever escaped from Alcatraz, and no-one ever will." 34 people attempted to escape, but everyone was recaptured or killed, one when he reached shore. Five were unaccounted for and probably drowned, though there's evidence pointing to Frank Morris and his co-escapees boarding a nearby boat headed for Brazil, thus making them the only people to successfully escape from Alcatraz.

* It was widely boasted before the ''Titanic'''s ill-fated maiden voyage that not even God could sink her. As mentioned in another page, it turned out that God loves a challenge.

** This quotation was included in the [[James Cameron]] [[Titanic|movie]] (along with every other well-known anecdote about the ''Titanic'').

* The UK military putting automated death machines under the control of a system called [[Terminator|Skynet]]. Nothing bad yet, but I think we can all agree it is only a [[Turned Against Their Masters|matter of time]].

* Field Marshall Rommel was once watching a propaganda film with his men when it showed a clip of him boasting that the Africa Corp would never again retreat. Everyone (including Rommel) immediately burst into laughter.

** The same could be said of any Air Force roundel in the same style.

*** Except that the roundel used by the British is in the style of a ''bullseye''. The New Zealanders upped the ante by centering a ''flightless bird'' in theirs, at which point they had to be doing it just to openly mock their opponents.

* The BBC tempted fate during the Moon landing to a horrifying degree that -- thankfully -- never went through. While the astronauts were on the moon, the BBC decided to play "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. It was a space-y song, which is understandable. However, the last few lines of the song have Major Tom ask Ground Control to tell his wife he loves her, before his circuit dies. This implies he never makes it back to Earth, which was pretty creepy when you realized that no one knew if the Apollo astronauts would make it back alive.

* At the turn of the 20th century, a brilliant politician and the Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin said that given 20 years of peace he'd be able to turn Russia into a prosperous and advanced power. Before long the country was plunged into the bloodiest war so far, had two revolutions break out with the second of which the Russian Empire was gone. To be fair, he was not even around at the start of [[World War I]], since he was assassinated in 1911. There is still [[Alternate History|a lot of speculation]] about what would have happened if he managed to keep Russia out of the war.

* The game(?) where one chants the mantra, Bloody Mary the required amount of times would qualify. Not sure how many times it actually requires, and it may vary.

* Lee Harvey Oswald's last words were, "Aww, there ain't going to be anybody shooting at me, you're just being melodramatic."

*** Not of a magnitude 6.5, though.

*** Post-Boobquake analysis showed that the number of earthquakes that occurred that day was not a statistically significant amount above average, and pointed out that there's a 37% chance of a 6.5 quake happening on any given day.

** Give up? [[Don't Explain the Joke|He, his wife, and dozens of others get all kinds of dead]] from a pyroclastic flow (that is, a wave of super-hot gas. How bad? you don't get to try to [[Outrun the Fireball]], or, thankfully, even spend much time on fire. ''Maybe'' somebody on that ledge lived long enough to get out the "oh" in [[Oh Crap]].)

* So, it's the sixteenth century, and you, the King of Spain, have decided to liberate England from the heresy of protestant rule by conquering the shit out of it. So, you build the biggest naval fleet in recent memory and merrily sail it up to England, whistling all the way. And what do you call it? The [[Nothing Can Stop Us Now|"Great and Most Fortunate Armada"]], also known as the "[[Too Dumb to Live|Invincible Armada]]". After being repulsed by the English the fleet gets caught in a storm that takes it all the way round the British Isles, sinking most of the ships along the way, and what's left gets destroyed by Sir Francis Drake. Frankly, you deserved it.

* According to [[The Other Wiki]], the [[wikipedia:Deepwater Horizon oil spill|Deepwater Horizon explosion]] occurred when BP executives were on board celebrating the project's safety record.

* General John Sedgwick, during [[The American Civil War]], claimed that his enemies "couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." [[Sedgwick Speech|These were his last words]], as he was gunned down by a Confederate sniper just seconds later.

* [[Those Wacky Nazis]] just had to go and call their state "The Millennial Reich" (''Tausendjähriges Reich'', "Thousand-Year Empire"), didn't they?

** And also ca. two millennia before the Nazis, there was this whole "Eternal Rome" (''Roma aeterna'') business.

*** Rome made a pretty good run at it, going about 2200 years from the founding of the City to the fall of Constantinople.

* According to [[The Other Wiki]], leading up to the [[wikipedia:St. Nazaire Raid|St. Nazaire Raid]] during World War 2, one of the German commanders, when asked what would they do if the base was subject to an attack by British Commandos, replied that "an attack on the base would be hazardous and highly improbable."

* [[Cassandra Truth|Before WWII the American military was warned that if the Japanese were to ever launch an attack on the United States that their most likely first target would be Pearl Harbor.]] Not only did they blow it off as nonsense they fired the guy as well. A couple years later....

** Possibly a reference to this occurred in 2011: regional rival BVB Dortmund had an almost insurmountable lead to win the national title, which hadn't happened for nearly a decade. Everyone from the team was so careful ''not'' to say the word "championship" that the fans started to carry mocking signs saying "Klassenerhalt!" ("non-relegation"). It worked - Dortmund won the 2011 Bundesliga.

* Neville Chamberlain pronounced that "I believe it is peace in our time" after returning to England following the [[wikipedia:Munich Agreement|Munich Conference]]. The date? [[World War II|1938]]. [[Sarcasm Mode|Feel free to congratulate him on his accomplishment.]]

* Union General John Sedgwick in the American Civil War. Last words "What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!" He was shot by a sniper minutes later while his men were ducking for cover. In some versions of the story, the soldier accompanying him lampshaded this, and Sedgwick replied, "All right, my man; go to your place."

* An Australian billionaire is apparently commissioning a Chinese company to create "[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17890754 a 21st-century version of the Titanic]" ready to set sail in 2016. [[Sarcasm Mode|Yeah, that's gonna end well...]]

* Various castles and fortresses that were declared to be "impregnable" at one point or another, although since any television documentary involving a successful siege operation invokes this trope one has to wonder how often that claim was actually made.