Unheeded Warnings: Major Tragedies That Could've Been Prevented

Regret is always at the end. Looking back through history, you’ll see many instances when people’s warnings were ignored and disregarded. Perhaps because they were not convincing or logical enough, or maybe the warning sounded crazy. The results were disastrous historical events that could have been prevented if only they had believed these people.

#3: Georg Sieber Predicting the Munich Massacre

Georg Sieber was an established police psychologist who predicted the Palestinian terrorist plot during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Olympics organizers hired him to forecast what could go wrong at the Munich games to give the organizers an idea of how strict or lax their security would be.

Sieber gave them 26 predictions. One of which was that there would be 12 Palestinians who would scale the fence of the Olympic wall and break into the building. They would take the Israeli athletes and coaches as hostages and kill one or two among them. He further said that the Palestinians would demand two things: their prisoners to be set free from Israeli jails and a plane escape back to the Middle East.

The Israeli flag flies at half-mast at Lod Airport in expectation of the arrival of the coffins of the Israeli athletes murdered by an Arab terrorist at the Munich Olympics. (Government Press Office (Israel), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The committee assigned to tackle security thought that Sieber’s notes of caution would create a security environment that was not in line with how they envisioned the Games. In the end, they ignored the prediction. With Seiber’s forecast, the only inaccurate detail was that there were only eight terrorists instead of twelve. The terrorists got into the building pretty quickly, as the security was lax. The authorities tried to rescue the hostages, but they all died during the rescue operation.

To save face, Sieber was removed from his advisory position as they began working to hide evidence of their mistake, which was not listening to his warning.

#2: Charles Colchester Advised Lincoln To Watch His Back

Lithograph of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. From left to right: Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth. Rathbone is depicted as spotting Booth before he shot Lincoln and trying to stop him as Booth fired his weapon. Rathbone actually was unaware of Booth’s approach, and reacted after the shot was fired. While Lincoln is depicted clutching the flag after being shot, it is also possible that he just simply pushed the flag aside to watch the performance. — Lithograph of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. From left to right: Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth. Rathbone is depicted as spotting Booth before he shot Lincoln and trying to stop him as Booth fired his weapon. Rathbone was unaware of Booth’s approach and reacted after firing the shot. While Lincoln is depicted clutching the flag after being shot, it is also possible that he pushed the flag aside to watch the performance. (Currier & Ives, 1865., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Abraham Lincoln was shot dead on April 14, 1865, in a theatre in Washington DC. But before this tragedy happened, Charles Colchester, a British clairvoyant and a close friend of the first lady, told the president of the dangers in the early months of 1865. However, Lincoln was skeptical about his “abilities” and did not pay much attention to Colchester’s warning until it was too late. Lincoln was killed by actor Wilkes Booth while watching a play in a private box of Ford’s Theatre.

What was intriguing about Colchester’s position was that he was also friends with Lincoln’s killer, so there were speculations that he was not a clairvoyant but a guy with some inside information that he decided to use to warn the president of the plotted assassination.

Weeks before the murder, Booth stayed at the National Hotel, just six blocks from Ford’s Theatre. During those times, he shared his plans to kill the president with his close friends, although it was unclear if Colchester was one of those.

Colchester fled Washington after the president’s inner circle started confronting him, and he died in Iowa after a few years.

#1: Ferdinand Foch Predicting World War II

General Ferdinand Foch. (P. S. Rogers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Nothing could be on par with the impact this warning has on human history. If people had listened to this person, we could’ve avoided the gut-wrenching World War II.

French officer Ferdinand Foch was the one who assumed command of the Allied forces beginning in March 1918 and witnessed the hard-fought final victory over the Central Powers. The major powers of Europe were no doubt exhausted after four years of relentless fighting, and restoring peace was tough. After the Germans signed the strict terms of the treaty, Foch believed that their approach did not go far enough to eliminate the German threat entirely. He also believed the Germans would soon recover and threaten France again. Foch famously predicts: