In 1948, three of the main polls wrongly predicted the outcome of the election of that year.

But underneath the goofball brilliance, Gilbert has a serious argument to make about why human beings are forever wrongly predicting what will make them happy.

So suppose we attempt, for example, to phrase accounts of the pragmatic notion of presupposition in terms of appropriateness conditions, we shall find that they wrongly predict conditions of usage.

Deb Sanderson, associate editor of The Old Farmer's Almanac, said that it wrongly predicted severe weather for November and December, but that its forecast for January - frequent mild spells - was on the mark.

In 1955, Variety predicted wrongly that rock and roll (forfeit: May) would be "gone before June".

(Never mind that he wrongly predicted a recession following the 1987 stock-market crash and that he failed to see the 1990-91 recession coming.)

The homosexual fell in love with and married the ballerina Lydia Lopokova, much to the consternation of the Bloomsbury set, which wrongly predicted that the marriage wouldn't last and never quite forgave the couple when it did.

The model wrongly predicted Ford to beat Carter in 1976 as well as Bush to defeat Clinton in 1992.

In his initial excitement, Schoenberg wrongly predicted that his system would insure the continued supremacy of Germanic music for at least another century.

Palestinian officials have confidently and wrongly predicted an imminent cease-fire before, and important questions remained unresolved tonight.