A good example: Dr. E. Schuyler English once told of a man on Long Island who was able to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing a very fine barometer.
When he unpacked the instrument, he was dismayed to find that the needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the section marked "Hurricane." After shaking the barometer vigorously, the man wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument and, on his way to his office in New York the next morning, mailed the protest.
That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also.
The barometer's needle had been right--there was a hurricane! (Campbell, Donald: Daniel God's Man in a Secular Society.)