Bits of Irony, 5-9

See the remaining bits of irony on our list below.

5. Tom Seaver

In 1966, baseball pitcher Tom Seaver signed with the New York Mets and was assigned to a minor league team in Jacksonville, Florida. After seeing Seaver pitch, Chicago Cubs scout Gordon Goldsberry said, "He won't make it." On the contrary -- when Seaver was called up by the Mets in 1967, he had 18 complete games with 16 wins, including two shutouts. Seaver was named the National League Rookie of the Year and went on to a 20-year career with 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts, and a 2.86 ERA. Nicknamed "Tom Terrific," Seaver was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992.

6. Ludwig van Beethoven

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in history and was a dominant figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western music. Around age 28, Beethoven developed a severe case of tinnitus and began to lose his hearing. His hearing loss did not affect his ability to compose music, but it made concerts increasingly difficult.

According to one story, at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, he had to be turned around to see the applause of the audience because he could not hear it. In 1811, after a failed attempt to play his own Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor, he never performed in public again.

7. Gus Grissom

Virgil "Gus" Grissom was America's second astronaut in space aboard the capsule Liberty Bell 7. After landing in the Atlantic, a hatch on the capsule opened prematurely, and Grissom nearly drowned before being rescued by helicopter. To prevent this from happening again, Grissom recommended to NASA designers that the hatch on the three-man Apollo capsule be made more difficult to open. Ironically, while testing the Apollo capsule before its first flight, Grissom was killed in a fire along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee when the new hatch proved too difficult to open.

8. Television

Darryl F. Zanuck was an actor, writer, producer, and director who helped develop the Hollywood studio system in the 1920s. He also cofounded Twentieth Century Pictures in 1933. In 1946, television was in its infancy, but the movie industry was worried. When asked his thoughts, Zanuck said, "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Of course, television thrived, but it did not bring an end to movies.

9. Charles Justice

In 1900, Charles Justice was serving time at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. While performing cleaning duties in the death chamber, he thought of a way to improve the restraints on the electric chair. Justice suggested that metal clamps replace the leather straps, allowing the inmate to be secured more firmly and minimizing the problem of burnt flesh.

These changes were made, and Justice was later paroled from prison. In an ironic twist of fate, after his release, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. On November 9, 1911, justice was served and the inmate found out firsthand how well those metal clamps worked on the same electric chair he had improved.

Helen Davies, Marjorie Dorfman, Mary Fons, Deborah Hawkins, Martin Hintz, Linnea Lundgren, David Priess, Julia Clark Robinson, Paul Seaburn, Heidi Stevens, and Steve Theunissen