You once listed some famous rejections and...

Here’s one for a rainy day: Pablo Picasso, during his early days as an artist in Paris, was caught in a rainstorm with some of his paintings. He asked a nearby art dealer for shelter and was refused. James Joyce received 21 rejections from various publishers before he found a home for Dubliners. Virginia Woolf read his book Ulysses and commented in her diary that it was a “misfire,” “brackish,” underbred,” and “tricky.” In 1889, the San Francisco Examiner sent a rejection letter to Rudyard Kipling, claiming that he didn’t know “how to use the English language.” One of our favorite missed predictions is a commentary on travel by rail. Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), a professor of natural philosophy and astronomy at University College in London, stated, “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” Lardner also believed that no large steamship could ever cross the Atlantic. Two years later, one did.