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Hermann Göring was all set for a go at dollar diplomacy in 1940, said Assistant Attorney General O. John Rogge. The fat Nazi had had a huge sum salted away in the Washington embassy for a political campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt's reelection, but "the opportunity never presented itself."
Howard Hughes had one consolation: he had predicted it. After test-taxiing the XF11, a fast, twin-fuselaged, Lightning-like photo reconnaissance plane he designed and built for the Army, the manufacturer-sportsman commented: "I wouldn't worry about those rudders if I were sure an engine wouldn't conk out. If that happened, I don't think I could keep the plane in the air." Two days later he took off on the maiden test flight; within an hour an engine conked out. The plane crashed, sheared the roof off one house, ricocheted a block further and piled into a $100,000 mansion, which burned to the ground; Hughes landed in a Beverly Hills hospital with a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, a better-than-even chance.
*The Cathedral was built in 1879.