From crashing the Mars Orbiter to losing thousands of Bitcoin, here are 13 of the most expensive
mistakes in history!!!
13.
Star Wars Merchandising
When George Lucas persuaded Fox to release his film Star Wars: A New Hope, the company
was not entirely on board.
In fact, they were convinced that the film would flop.
It’s a miracle the movie was made in the first place!
In order to save a little money, the studio came up with what they thought was a clever
solution.
They persuaded Lucas to pass on an additional $500,000 in directing fees.
In exchange, Lucas kept all of the licensing and merchandising rights for himself.
The movie, however, turned out to be a major, culture-shifting hit.
In 1978, more than 40 million "Star Wars" figures flew off the shelves, reaching a gross
sale of more than $100 million.
The notoriety and love for the movie only grew with time.
It didn’t even matter if a new movie was coming out, the toys continued to sell.
For example, in 2011, a year where there was no new "Star Wars" movie, "Star Wars" toys
brought in more than $3 billion.
No so good for Fox, but George Lucas became a billionaire!
12.
Mars Climate Orbiter
In the late 1990s, NASA developed the Mars Climate Orbiter to study the climate on Mars
(like its name suggests).
The purpose of the orbiter was simple and no one really expected anything to go wrong.
It’s also the general assumption that NASA checks and double-checks everything.
Well, with the orbiter, something small but critical slipped through the cracks.
On Sept. 23, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the red planet.
Why?
Because of math.
Specifically, because of a conversion error in the math.
One engineering team in charge of the orbiter used metric units.
Since most of planet Earth uses metric, that probably didn’t appear to be a problem,
except that the United States is one of a handful of countries still on the Imperial
System.
A second team of engineers used feet and inches and the math was not properly converted.
This caused the navigation in the orbiter to go a little awry.
After nearly 10 months in space, the Mars Climate Orbiter came too close to the planet’s
surface on the day it was supposed to enter Mars’ orbit.
In a written statement, NASA said, “People sometimes make errors.”
This error cost $125 million and countless hours of work.
11.
The Millennium Bridge
The Millenium Bridge in London opened in June, 2000.
The designers called it a “pure expression of engineering structure” and were extremely
proud of their cool, sleek bridge that cost 18.2 million pounds.
It was the first bridge to be built over the Thames in more than 100 years and around 80,000
people crossed it on its opening day.
Unfortunately, it had to be closed right away.
Why?
Because it wobbled.
As more and more people started walking on the bridge, it started to sway.
To keep their balance, people started planting their feet wide and walking in near perfect
unison.
Engineers used “lateral suspension” in building the bridge.
This innovation allows bridges to be built without tall supporting columns.
When a large number of people walked on the bridge, it caused a phenomenon known as “Synchronous
Lateral Excitation”.
Essentially, it swayed and twisted in regular intervals.
As people started to walk in unison to adapt to the movement of the bridge, it just made
it worse!
The engineers blamed the “synchronized footfall” for the failure of the bridge.
It was closed and engineers installed dampers and springs to absorb the shock of all the
pedestrian feet.
The repair cost another five million pounds.
Today, the Millennium Bridge still carries the nickname of the Wobbly Bridge, even though
it doesn’t wobble any more.
10.
Destruction of 150-year-old guitar
Quentin Tarantino’s Western The Hateful Eight is famous for several reasons but I
think one of the most important scenes is when Kurt Russell’s character breaks a guitar.
There was nothing particularly special about the acting of that moment, it was all about
the musical instrument.
In the movie, Jennifer Leigh’s character strums a guitar and everyone told her to be
super careful with it.
It turns out the guitar used in that shot was a 150-year-old rare guitar rented from
the Martin Guitar Museum in Pennsylvania.
Russell’s character is like, give me that guitar!
And he snatches it from her hands and smashes it on a post.
Apparently Tarantino never yelled cut and Russell was never told that it was the real
thing.
The scene was supposed to have been shot in two parts.
First, Russel was supposed to snatch the guitar away.
Then, the real guitar from the 1870’s was supposed to be swapped out for a cheaper copy
before the scene continued.
Leigh’s reaction on camera was completely authentic and it was the one used in the film.
Kurt Russell felt horrible.
Some suspect Tarantino did it on purpose to get a real reaction out of Leigh.
Whatever the reason, it was $40,000 mistake.
The guitar was only insured for its purchase price which did not reflect its value as an
irreplaceable museum artifact.
This led to the Martin Guitar Museum’s decision to never rent out its pieces for movies under
any circumstances.
9.
Misplaced Comma
Punctuation matters, friends.
In this case, a comma cost 1 million dollars!
(Canadian) Rogers Communications, a Canadian cable company,
and Bell Aliant, a Canadian telephone company, signed a fourteen-page contract which regulated
Roger’s use of telephone poles.
Bell Aliant, citing the rules of punctuation, argued they could cancel the contract with
Rogers at any time without notice, and decided to cancel after 1 year.
Rogers argued they could use the poles for at least 5 years.
Quite naturally, Rogers took Bell Aliant to court.
There were actually two versions of the contract: one in English and one in French.
The misplaced comma in the English version is the one that caused the fiasco.
At first, courts ruled in favor of Bell Aliant.
However, Rogers Communications appealed the decision using the French contract and won.
But it still cost them a lot of money.
8.
Trashed Lottery Ticket
In 2010, over 1,000 people claimed they won £113m in the EuroMillions jackpot.
BUT, they had lost the ticket.
A retired woman from England said she had purchased a ticket and wrote down the numbers
in a notebook.
She gave the ticket to her husband for safe keeping...but...yeah, you probably already
know what happened.
When she saw the winning numbers written in her notepad, she couldn’t believe it!
She asked her husband for the ticket to confirm and he confessed that he had actually thrown
it away.
She buys the lottery ticket every week and unless they can prove they are the rightful
winners, the couple has missed out on the biggest jackpot in the history of the Europe-wide
lottery.
Just FYI, if you happen to find a winning ticket, you are supposed to write to the lottery
company describing the circumstances in which you found it.
7.
Prestige Oil Spill
In 2002, a storm damaged one of the fuel tanks of an oil tanker named the Prestige and it
sank off the coast of Spain.
About 63,000 tons of oil leaked into the water poisoning countless sea creatures and leading
to carcinogenic effects in fish and other larger animals.
The ship drifted for days at sea because it was refused docking permissions by Spain,
Portugal, and France.
Why the ship was refused docking permissions is unclear but it eventually the tanker split
in half and sank, spilling the oil into the ocean.
The total financial cost of the spillage was about 4 billion euros.
Over 1000 beaches in Spain and France were polluted and the local fishing industry in
Galicia was destroyed.
At first the entire crew was acquitted.
Eventually, the Greek captain of the tanker was convicted by Spanish courts of recklessness
resulting in catastrophic environmental damage.
He was sentenced to 9 months in prison which he did not have to serve because of his advanced
age, so in the end no one at all was held responsible.
6.
Lost Bitcoin Fortune
Everyone who mined Bitcoin when the cryptocurrency first debuted have made millions!
Well, everyone except for a British IT worker named James Howells.
The laptop he had been using to mine bitcoin crashed and so he sold the computer parts
on ebay but kept the hard drive in a drawer.
He had about 7,500 bitcoins, worth about $4 million at the time.
However, in 2013, while he was moving and distracted by family life, Howells accidentally
threw out the hard drive.
Now the hard drive is worth about $108 million and lies under 4 years of trash in a landfill
in Wales.
It is estimated that around 2.78 million bitcoins have been lost since 2009.
According to an article in December 2017, Howells wanted to dig up the landfill to try
to find the drive.
However, digging up a landfill, which is full of dangerous gases, is an environmental disaster
waiting to happen.
So, it’s very unlikely.
In any case, he said he wasn’t going to cry about it.
5.
AOL and Time Warner
Called one of the most disastrous business combinations in history, AOL and Time Warner
merged into a single company in 2001.
AOL purchased Time Warner for $182 billion.
It seemed like an excellent idea at the time.
AOL was a booming business with inflated stock.
Experts claimed that Time Warner’s TV and magazine content would only complement AOL’s
Internet business.
This merger occurred at the tail-end of the dial-up era.
Soon after, broadband became the new thing.
This faster alternative to Internet access effectively killed AOL’s company.
In 2008, like a passenger bailing from a sinking ship, Time Warner spun off of AOL.
When it did, it had a market cap of $36 billion, a $178 billion dollar loss!
The newly-separated AOL was only valued at $2.5 billion.
4.
Russia Sells Alaska
Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in history, in 1867, Russian emperor Tsar Alexander II
sold Alaska to the United States for just $7.2 million.
At the time, Alaska was a trading hub for fur, Chinese fabrics, and other luxurious
items.
Gold was also discovered but the royal family was unable to maintain the colony.
It was far from self-sufficient and it was being overrun by US settlers.
Instead of letting the Americans steal it, Alexander II, decided to sell it instead.
While that was happening, the public in both countries opposed the deal.
Russian newspapers demanded to know how the Tsar could sell land Russians spent a lot
of time and effort developing.
Alaska, after all, did have factories and gold mines.
Americans, on the other hand, saw Alaska as nothing more than an “icebox” where “wild
Eskimos” drank fish oil for breakfast.
Congress wasn’t a fan of the idea, either.
In the end, a deal was signed where the United States would purchase the land but the amount
paid was just symbolic as it added up to 2 cents per acre.
In addition, $165,000 was spent in bribing U.S. senators and newspapers to change their
minds about the deal.
3.
Xerox and Apple
In late 1979, Steve Jobs went to visit Xerox PARC, the innovating branch of Xerox Corporation.
Apple was already a hot tech firm so he offered Xerox the chance to buy 100,000 shared of
his company for 1 million dollars.
In exchange, he could see what new innovations were being developed at Xerox PARC.
This was probably a mistake on Xerox’s part.
Apple likes to take the credit for inventing the computer mouse but the mouse was actually
conceived by Douglas Engelbart.
In the 1970s, technology firm Xerox already had a personal computer controlled by a mouse.
For some reason, though, they never sold the idea or tried to market it.
Another mistake!
During the visit, legend goes that Steve Jobs realized the revolutionary concept of the
computer mouse.
While Xerox eventually gave up on developing personal computers, Jobs was on it and used
his inspiration from his visit to the PARC to create windows, menus, and simplify the
computer mouse so it would have just 1 button.
Xerox’s version cost $300 and would break within 2 weeks.
So Steve Jobs did not steal the mouse because Xerox did not own it and also he made many
modifications to it to improve on the idea.
Xerox missed out on the consumer industry completely but Jobs made those ideas available
to everyone.
2.
Lost Education Grant
The state of New Jersey made a very high profile bid for hundreds of millions of dollars that
would go toward education reform.
A question worth 5 points on the application asked for a budget confirmation and the state
submitted the wrong year.
Governor Chris Christie signed off on the application and no one confessed who was actually
responsible.
Whoever it was did not read the questions carefully and so the state missed out on $400
million.
Hopefully, they learned their lesson!
Read the questions very carefully when you are filling out a form!!
1.
Building Collapse
A newly constructed apartment tower that was almost finished just collapsed one day in
Shanghai, China.
The development has 629 units and most of them were already sold.
Investors and new buyers were clamoring to get their money back and the assets of the
builder were frozen.
Construction practices in China are already being questioned since many buildings are
just put up in a hurry by inexperienced workers.
If the tower had fallen the other way, it could have caused a domino effect, causing
all the other buildings to fall over!
The concrete piles weren’t strong enough to support the 13-story building and large
quantities of earth were removed underneath to build the garage.
The earth was dumped by a creek and the river bank collapsed and the foundation got muddy
and it just toppled over.
This disaster was investigated and no collapses similar to the Lotus Riverside block tower
has happened since.
That we know of.
Thanks for watching!
There are many many other expensive mistakes but I couldn't fit them all in this video!
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