Hello [FIRSTNAME],Today's humorous theme is: Doubt.
A concordance is listed below the anecdote.

Opportunity Knocked
They say opportunity knocks once, but only once. Here are a few instances when her knock was not heard.

A plumber submitted to the British War Office in 1911 a design for a tank?a then-unknown military device. Across the drawing, in red ink, was written the official comment: "This man is mad."

It is difficult to give recognition to those who loaned Robert Fulton the money for his steamboat. So fearful of ridicule were his backers that they stipulated that their names be withheld!

When George Westinghouse perfected his airbrake, in 1875, he offered it to Commodore Vanderbilt. The railroad magnate returned Westinghouse's letter, with these words across the bottom: "I have no time to waste on fools."

One day a stranger approached Mark Twain with a request for $500, for which he would sell half interest in his invention. Twain, bit several times before, refused flatly. Out of courtesy he asked the stranger his name. "Bell," the man replied, as he turned away, "Alexander Graham Bell."

It wasn't a stranger who approached Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A young actor playing in one of Doyle's productions suggested that he and the writer divide their incomes with one another the rest of their lives. Doyle laughed heartily. "Charlie Chaplin," he said, "if I didn't know you were joking, I'd have you fired for such audacity!"

Concordance for doubt:
The concordance is temporarily out-of-service.  It will be on-line again soon.