More precise than a million monkeys with typewriters

Ferdinand Foch is remembered for remarking, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed, that it was "not a peace but a 20-year armistice". This was eerily prophetic – he was right to within a handful of months. Foch must have had an unusually precise sense of the forces that make history go.

Or did he? I wonder how many would-be prophets characterized the treaty as an armistice for 10, 15 or 25 years, and were quietly forgotten by history.

It's easy to pick successful prophecies when you're allowed to wait until they come true before you decide which prophecies to point to.