Here are some of the most expensive mistakes EVER!
9 - A few misplaced coins
Somewhere under four feet of mud and trash in a space about the size of a football field
in the Docksway landfill site near Newport, Wales, is a hard drive worth more than $32
million as of 2017!
How can a hard drive be worth so much money?!
Well, it held the private keys to quite a few bitcoins.
It belonged to James Howells, who threw it out when he was clearing up his desk.
He found his hard drive in a drawer and just put it in the trash.
Later on, he realized that it was the drive that held his digital wallet of 7,500 Bitcoins
that has a current value of over 32 million dollars!!
With bitcoin hovering at just over four thousand dollars today, you guys can do the math.
Just to give a quick refresh on how bitcoin works, that drive contains the cryptographic
private key that’s needed to be able to access the Bitcoins.
Without it, the coins are lost forever.
After seeing the value of the Bitcoin going up years later, he went to the local junk
yard hoping to find the drive, but without luck.
He even considered retrieving the hard drive himself, but was told that even for the police
to find something, they would need a team of 15 guys, two diggers, and all the personal
protection equipment.
Apparently today that drive is still buried somewhere in a pile of junk.
8 - Mars Climate Orbiter
The Mars Climate Orbiter was a 745 pound robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11,
1998.
It was originally designed to study the climate on Mars and report any atmosphere or surface
changes back to mission control.
Mars Climate Orbiter began the planned maneuver to land on Mars on September 23, 1999.
However, communication with the probe was lost shortly before it could begin its mission
because of a calculation error.
While most of the different groups working on the project used the metric system, one
group used the Imperial system, which is in inches, feet and yards.
This caused an error in the calculation of coordinates between the various groups that
led to the Mars Climate Orbiter travelling too low in the atmosphere and being destroyed
over Mars.
C’monnnnn people, couldn’t of they just have done a simple double check here?!
The cost of the mission was a staggering three hundred and twenty seven million dollars for
the orbiter and lander!
Hopefully NASA won’t be making this mistake again.
7 - Lottery Ticket Oopsie
A British couple made what you can say to be a life changing error back in 2010.
Supposedly, the woman picked the winning numbers for the Euromillions Lottery.
The prize for the winning ticket was an estimated $181 million, a life changing amount for one
of the biggest prizes offered by the lottery in its history.
Unfortunately for the woman who picked the numbers, her husband had thrown away the ticket
obviously by accident.
How can she be sure that she was the actual winner?
After the whole story was uncovered, she told reporters that she played the lottery every
week, both Euromillions and the Thunderball.
She always had the numbers written on a separate piece of paper, because she usually gives
the ticket to her husband and never sees it again, because c’mon, who wants a losing
ticket?
However, unfortunately for them, this was exactly the same case but with different results.
After the ticket remained unclaimed for over a week, she checked her notepad and found
the winning numbers to be hers.
The jackpot went unclaimed, as the woman was the only winner.
Over 1000 people actually put in a claim for the lost ticket.
But in the end, some good did come out of the lost ticket, as the money was given out
to various charitable causes and people in need.
6 - Space Shuttle Challenger
On January 28, 1986, the American shuttle Challenger broke up 73 seconds after liftoff,
bringing a devastating end to the spacecraft’s 10th mission.
The disaster claimed the lives of all seven astronauts aboard.
Two rubber O-rings that are designed to separate the sections of the rocket booster, had failed
because of cold temperatures on the morning of the launch.
The mission’s initial launch date was delayed for six days because of weather and technical
problems.
That particular morning was unusually cold, and engineers had warned that certain components,
particularly the rubber O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s solid rocket
boosters, were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures.
The tragedy and its aftermath received extensive media coverage and prompted NASA to temporarily
suspend all shuttle missions.
However, top administration decided to go ahead with the mission anyways.
At 11:39 a.m. Challenger lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later hundreds of people watching on the ground, along with millions
on TV, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in smoke and fire in mid-air.
Within seconds, the spacecraft broke apart and plunged into the ocean, killing its entire
crew, traumatizing the nation and throwing NASA’s shuttle program into turmoil.
The financial cost for NASA was an astronomical five and a half billion dollars!
5 - AOL + Time Warner
In 2001, then Internet giant America Online merged with Time Warner in a colossal $165
billion dollar deal described as the ‘largest merger in American business history.’
The merger was done because it was thought that the combined businesses would benefit
from synergies in technological infrastructure, consumer reach and operations.
The merger was supposed to give Time Warner the ability to digitize its content and reach
out to a new online audience, and in return, AOL was supposed to be able to access Time
Warner’s cable systems, giving rise to innovative broadband capability and additional content
to provide to its 27 million subscribers, or 40% of its subscriber base.
Yet by 2002 the merger resulted in a net LOSS of $99 billion, the largest loss ever reported
by a company, and 7 years later, both companies had failed to pretty much do anything right
with the merger.
It’s been described by Time Warner Chief Jeff Bawkes, as ‘The Biggest Mistake in
Corporate History’.
Nine years later, Time Warner spun off with a market cap of $36 billion -- a $178 billion
loss.
The newly separated AOL was valued at only $2.5 billion.
Let’s just say neither of these companies are exactly relevant today.
4 - Chernobyl
On April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident happened at Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl accident happened during a test to see how the plant would operate if it lost
power.
Plant operators made several mistakes, but nevertheless, they proceeded with the experiment,
shutting down safety systems that would be lost during a power outage, including the
turbine system that provided cooling water.
With the flow reduced, the cooling water in the reactor began to boil and turn to steam.
Operators tried to reinsert rods to slow and control the nuclear reaction, but a design
flaw in the control rods caused them to jam.
The steam likely caused an explosion in the reactor, which, in turn, caused a second explosion
seconds later.
Debris from the explosion started a number of fires around the Chernobyl plant.
It released radioactive smoke into the atmosphere that spread all over western part of then
Soviet Union and Europe.
The radioactive release has been estimated at FOUR HUNDRED times the size of the atomic
bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The disaster could have been worse if not for the actions of firefighters who were able
to put out the fires before they caused explosions in the other three reactors.
The number of deaths directly caused by the Chernobyl disaster is usually estimated to
be between 31 and 56, but the long-term effects of the disaster have impacted a much larger
number of people.
The financial cost was estimated at $358 billion in clean-up and value of lost farmland.
3 - The deal of a lifetime
George Lucas, the creator and director of Star Wars, was determined to make Star Wars
happen.
He had to go through a number of difficult negotiations with 20th Century Fox in order
to ensure he would get the money he needed to make the first Star Wars movie.
Lucas just knew that he had a hit on his hands, and decided to invest in the future instead
of the present.
Thinking that the film was going to be a huge flop, Fox sought to reduce the directing fee
paid to Lucas by around $350,000.
Lucas smartly agreed, but under one condition - that he gets to keep the licensing rights
to the Star Wars brand.
Fox not only signed away the licensing rights to the first Star Wars film, but also to all
the subsequent films that may have been made in the future.
Really?
All that just to save some upfront cash?!
The first Star Wars film generated nearly $800 million dollars worldwide, and collectively,
the films released as of 2014 have generated a total of EIGHT BILLION in box office and
DVD sales!
Those aren’t numbers to sniff at, but it's the merchandise that’s the clear winner.
Between toys, branded apparel, books, video games, and miscellaneous items, the rights
that 20th Century Fox signed away for a few thousand dollars have generated nearly $20
BILLION dollars since 1977.
2 - Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon rig was owned and operated by offshore oil drilling company Transocean
and leased by oil company BP.
On April 20th 2010, an uncontrollable blowout caused an explosion that ignited a fireball
visible from 40 miles away.
The blowout and oil spill on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by
a design flaw.
The fire wasn’t able to be put out, and two days later the Deepwater Horizon rig sank,
leaving the well gushing oil at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill ever in
U.S. waters.
At the time of the explosion, there were 126 crewmembers on board.
Eleven workers were presumed killed in the initial explosion.
Thousands of birds, mammals, and sea turtles were plastered with leaked oil, and there
was an unusual incidence of Brucella infection in stranded dolphins.
In January 2013, Transocean agreed to pay $1.4 billion dollars for violations of the
US Clean Water Act.
BP had agreed to pay 2.4 billion, but they still face additional unresolved penalties
that could range anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion.
All in all, the company has paid out around 28 billion so far from the accident.
Yikes.
1 - Most Expensive Typo Ever
In 2003, Japanese firm Mizuho Securities wanted to sell one share of stock in the holding
company J-Com on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The value they put on the share was 610,000 yen, which was roughly around $5,000 at the
time.
But the trader responsible for executing the sale made a typing error and instead, listed
610,000 shares for sale at just 1 yen.
Despite the fact that this number of shares was more than 40 times the actual number of
total shares available for J-Com, the Tokyo Stock Exchange still processed the order after
protests from Mizuho Securities.
Mizuho said they tried to cancel the order three times, but the exchange said it doesn't
cancel transactions even if they were executed on erroneous orders.
By the end of the day, Mizuho Securities, a division of the nation's second-largest
bank, Mizuho Financial Group had lost at least 27 BILLION yen.
Just for the record, 27 billion yen converts to $225 million.
Dammmmmmn.
Here’s what’s next!