1

As the turn of the century approached, many people predicted that the change from 1999 to 2000 would crash critical computers around the world, as some were set up with only two date slots instead of four. However, the year came and went and nothing went wrong. Not without loads of successful preventative work from computer scientists however.

2

In 1899, the United States and Imperial Germany were ready to go to war over Samoa, with Great Britain about to join the fray. However, a typhoon came and destroyed much of each army, and the three superpowers negotiated a three way split without a shot fired instead.

3

Originally advertised as the government admitting to the existence of aliens, it turned into a congressional hearing that presented no hard evidence of any kind. Around six months later, most people hardly even remember it.

4

After winning World War II, allied forces broke into Hitler’s personal bunker, expecting to capture the German leader. Instead, they found his burned ashes. There wasn’t even a corpse to parade around, or a manhunt to begin.

5

Admittedly, most sane people did not believe the world was going to end in 2012. Many did however, and were surprised that the clock kept on ticking into 2013.

6

Perhaps the biggest escalation during The Cold War happened when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Knowing that the entire United States, and effectively the world, had nuclear weapons in place and pointed at them, is pretty scary. Thankfully, the whole thing ended without a shot fired.

7

On April 21, 1986, Geraldo Rivera hosted “The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults.” In the show, he opened the iconic gangster’s vaults inside the Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The highly anticipated segment resulted in no significant finds of any kind. “There were no bodies. No Capone loot, no Capone swag. And no cases of gin or scotch whiskey.”

8

For almost a week, the world waited with baited breath to learn about the whereabouts of a missing billionaire and his wealthy passengers visiting the Titanic’s wreckage on a homemade submersible. People speculated how much oxygen might be left, and what conditions might be like. Eventually however, it was discovered that a collapse meant they had been dead the entire time.

9

While the Segway is one of the many technology fads of the mid 2010s that died out quickly, people forget that it was once a highly anticipated product. “The inventor has invented some really amazing stuff, like wheelchairs that can walk up stairs,” one Redditor wrote. “Then he unveils a scooter!”

10

It’s hard to call a conflict that pushed the world’s two greatest superpowers into building hundreds of world ending nuclear weapons “anticlimactic,” but while the United States and Russia spent the greater part of three decades engaging in the arms race to end all arms races, it thankfully ended without world annihilation.