List of intelligent/famous people once thought to be dumb/destined to
fail but who surprised the world by their
success/brilliance/achievments.  Albert Einstein is the only one I can
come up with.  I need more...as many as possible.

Hi there, ihaveaquestion~

Albert Einstein is, indeed, an oft sited brilliant individual who was
predicted to be a failure. Here are some other good examples:

* Thomas Edison's boyhood teacher told him he was too stupid to learn
anything.

* Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women and numerous other novels)
was "told by an editor that she'd never write anything that people
would like."

* Playwright Eugene O'Neill spent only nine months in college before
he dropped out.

* The famous tenor Caruso was told by a voice teacher that he couldn't
sing at all.

* Leo Tolstoy (author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, among
others) flunked out of college.

* Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald flunked out of college

* Isaac Newton was a poor student in grade school.

* Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. 

* At age ten, famous artist Pablo Picasso stopped going to school
because he was barely able to read or write. His father hired a tutor
for Pablo, but the tutor soon quit, saying that the boy refused to do
math.

* Beethoven's music teacher once said "as a composer he is hopeless."

* Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a captain and came out
as a private.

* F.W. Woolworth's (of the five and dime store fame) employer wouldn't
let him wait on customers because he "didn't have enough sense."

* A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney, saying he lacked good ideas. 

* Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade. 

* Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school. He did return later,
attending a class for those with learning disabilities, but after only
a month, he dropped out of high school again.

These notables and more can be found at the following websites:

Famous "Failures"
http://www.cybergrrl.com/fs.jhtml?/views/guides/art6382

Famous "Flops"
http://faculty.marymt.edu/learning/famous_flops.htm

Dropouts achieve success without University diploma	
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1999/07/19/princetoniana/zamo.html

Keywords Used:
famous failures
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=famous+failures&btnG=Google+Search


Kriswrite

Fred Astaire was described as follows at an early screen test: "Can't
act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."

Elvis Presley was fired after just one show at the Grand Ole Opry and
told "you
ain't going nowhere, son."

One of John Lennon's school reports said he was "on the road to failure".

http://beatle-city.merseyworld.com/tour/lennons.htm