In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca recording Company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out." The group was called The Beatles.



In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married." She went on and

became Marilyn Monroe.



In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, Fired a singer after one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere....son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." He went on to become Elvis Presley.



When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to see one of them?"



When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."



In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947, after 7 long years of rejections, he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, NY, the Haloid Company, to purchase the rights to his invention -- an electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became Xerox Corporation.



A little girl - the 20th of 22 children, was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contracted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a

paralyzed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed a rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race; and then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl – Wilma Rudolph, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.



A school teacher scolded a boy for not paying attention to his mathematics and for not being able to solve simple problems. She told him that you would not become anybody in life. The boy was Albert Einstein.