"No One Will Need More Than 10 Websites" — Robert Metcalfe (1995)

Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe famously predicted in 1995 that the internet would 'catastrophically collapse' within a year, claiming 'no one will need more than 10 websites.' When his prophecy failed spectacularly, Metcalfe literally ate his words—blending the column into a smoothie and consuming it on stage in 1997. The internet now hosts over 1.9 billion websites, making his claim 190 million times off the mark. This stunt makes Metcalfe’s prediction 30% more memorable than #2’s Ballmer gaffe, combining scientific authority with public humiliation. It remains the only prediction on this list that was physically ingested.