Visionaries

A studio closed, a character lost, banks that turned down the park. Walt Disney kept going, and the story goes he saw Walt Disney World before it existed.

Before Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford saw two companies close. Later, according to Napoleon Hill, he was told the one-piece V8 block was impossible.

In 1985, Steve Jobs left Apple, the company he had founded. Twenty years later, he said it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

A modest car at Monaco, a race stopped early, an engine that stalled at the title start. Ayrton Senna and what he said, with sources, about limits.

The "10,000 ways that won't work" line isn't quite Edison's. What he said, according to a colleague, is even better. And the light bulb has a date.

In October 1903, a newspaper predicted the airplane could take up to 10 million years. Sixty-nine days later, the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

In 1901, Santos-Dumont's airship got stuck on the roof of a Paris hotel. Five years later, the 14-Bis took off before the public at Bagatelle.

A new highway diverted traffic from Colonel Sanders's restaurant. At 65, he sold the place at auction and started over with a recipe.

Unemployed, a single mother and with a book turned down by publishers, J.K. Rowling said at Harvard that rock bottom became the foundation of her life.

Toyota rejected Soichiro Honda's first parts. Then a bomb and an earthquake brought down his factories. He sold what was left and started over.

The viral list of Lincoln's failures exaggerates. The real defeats happened: 1832, the store that closed, the Senate races of 1855 and 1858.

In 1977, Oprah Winfrey was taken off the evening news desk in Baltimore. At Harvard, she said failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison and came out to govern. "It always seems impossible until it's done" has no record from him. What he wrote does.

Almost left out of the 1903 Nobel and turned down by the French Academy of Sciences in 1911, Marie Curie won her second Nobel that same year.

Grace Hopper had a working compiler and nobody would touch it: they said computers only did arithmetic. Today every program is born from that idea.

Alan Turing helped win a war, asked the question that opened up artificial intelligence and was convicted by his own country. The pardon came in 2013.

Tesla changed the world's electricity and saw his biggest project, the Wardenclyffe tower, halted for lack of money. Today the site is a museum.

Between 2006 and 2008, SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 rockets failed and the company nearly went under. The fourth reached orbit on September 28, 2008.

In 1999, a magazine called Amazon "Amazon.bomb". The company only closed a full year in the black in 2003. And Bezos always spoke openly about failures.

Jack Ma failed China's college entrance exam twice and, by his account, was turned down by KFC and Harvard. In 1999, he founded Alibaba in an apartment.

In 1950, the landlord refused to renew the lease and took the store Sam Walton had grown. He started over in a smaller town and created Walmart.

Sony's first product was a rice cooker that didn't work. Decades later, Akio Morita launched a tape player that couldn't record, and heard doubts.

Son of immigrants, a street vendor at 14, Silvio Santos built a group. In 2010, he pledged all his assets to cover the Panamericano crisis.

A paper picker in the Canindé favela, Carolina wrote in notebooks found in the trash. Her diary became Quarto de Despejo, translated into 13+ languages.

An editor told García Márquez to change professions. Years later, out of money, he could only afford to mail half of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Clubs turned Garrincha down for his crooked legs. In 1953, at a Botafogo practice, he dribbled past Nilton Santos. Then he won two World Cups.

Capoeira was a crime under the 1890 Penal Code. Mestre Bimba created the Regional style, opened a school in Salvador and, in 1937, got it licensed.

In 1960, Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at two stars and listened to the hydrogen frequency. He heard silence, and even so he opened a path.

On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened, almost five years after Walt's death. In 2026, Bairo marked on that date the start of what he built.

Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011. He spoke of death as life's best invention and had already measured computer seconds in human lives.

On October 30, 1988, at Suzuka, Senna's engine stalled at the start. He dropped to 14th, won the race and clinched his first world title.

On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened on a day so full of problems it became known as Black Sunday. Walt fixed everything and carried on.

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers flew for 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk, 69 days after a newspaper predicted it could take up to 10 million years.

On October 23, 1906, Santos-Dumont made the 14-Bis take off under its own power in Paris, before the public. In Brazil, the date is Aviator's Day.

On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered, the cartoon that introduced Mickey to the public. The mouse was born after Walt Disney lost Oswald.

On March 25, 1951, Harold Ewen and Edward Purcell detected at Harvard the hydrogen line, 1420 MHz, predicted on paper seven years earlier.

On April 15, 1944, mid-war, the Dutchman Van de Hulst presented in Leiden the calculation predicting hydrogen's 21 cm signal, at 1420 MHz.

October 16 marks the founding of FAO, in 1945, and is World Food Day. Why the date matters and how it connects to Instituto CEASA.

On April 8, 1960, Frank Drake pointed an antenna at Tau Ceti and listened to the hydrogen frequency in search of another civilization. He heard silence.

On June 3, 1900, in Sao Paulo, the priest Roberto Landell de Moura gave a public demonstration of the human voice sent without wires, by radio waves.