Do you know what priceless antique was destroyed on the set of the Hateful Eight?
Or which company lost more than $250 million dollars in a day...because of a typo?
Find out as we look at the 10 Most Expensive Mistakes In History.
#10 The Millenium Bridge At the turn of the century, the world was
stricken with Millenium madness.
The future was within arms reach and everything from pop music videos to the Guiness Book
of World Records was already there.
To celebrate the monumental occasion, the city of London decided to build a unique bridge
across the River Thames the likes of which the world’s never seen.
But perhaps they were thinking too far into the future as the resulting and aptly named
Millenium Bridge was closed only two days after opening in June of 2000.
The bridge, which was a steel suspension footbridge, was found to sway as pedestrians strode across
it on opening day.
The movement by the people crossing the bridge resonated throughout the bridge causing a
small rocking motion along the structure.
As more and more pedestrians traversed this bridge, though, the subconscious effect of
a mass of people stepping in sync with the rocking made for a quickly escalating danger.
This 23.6 million dollar investment jumped an additional 6.5 million as adjustments were
made to counteract this oversight.
#9 Riverside Apartment Crash No matter the culture you come from, there’s
just something magical and romantic about living beside a river...unless that river
seeps under your home causing it to come crashing down.
In 2009, Block 7 of the Lotus Riverside apartment complex in Shanghai, China toppled to the
ground, narrowly missing the other apartments.
This thirteen story building was in the middle of having a parking garage constructed underneath
it as water from the nearby riverbed seeped into the dirt beneath the building.
A perfect storm bred from the hollow base, displaced soil, and now muddy foundation beneath
the structure coalesced in a super-sized Jenga fail.
This accident resulted in one casualty and millions in lost revenue as the complex, valued
at more than $2,000 per square meter, found itself with little to no tenants willing to
pay the requested price afterwards.
#8 Hateful 8 Guitar Incident When actress Jennifer Jason Leigh was on the
set of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight she had an excellent opportunity to play a
piece of history on loan from the Martin Guitar Museum: a priceless six-string from the 1870s.
There was just one small issue...no one told Kurt Russell.
For those who haven’t seen the film (spoiler alert), Russell destroys the guitar following
a scene in which Leigh, who played his criminal captive, goads him into lashing out in anger.
According to crew members who were on set that day, Russell was supposed to play out
the scene as normal, then the scene would cut to switch the guitar out for a prop.
But word didn’t reach Russell as he continued with the scene as scripted, shattering the
antique in the process.
This accidental obliteration resulted in the Martin Guitar Museum’s resolution to never
lend another piece to Hollywood.
Not a complete loss though, the crew captured the scene on camera and were able to use it
in the film, including Leigh’s very real reaction to seeing Russell annihilate the
invaluable period piece.
#7 SNCF Railway Goof With an incredible railway system throughout
France, the national train operators, the SNCF, decided the country was due for an upgrade
in the early 2000s.
At a cost of more than twenty billion dollars, SNCF ordered 2,000 new trains.
It wasn’t until the trains were constructed and delivered, though, that the French train
operator realized they’d made a huge mistake.
By only ten to twenty centimeters, the newly constructed trains were built too big for
their tracks.
Apparently the plans for these trains were modeled off of newer railway specifications
and didn’t account for the size of most railways throughout the country.
As a result, an additional sixty eight million dollars was required to widen tracks, but
that only covered some of the railways.
In addition, it was found out later that they were also built too tall to enter Italian
train tunnels!
The mistake of the SNCF continues to rack up costs as French taxpayers foot the bill.
#6 The Isaac Peral Submarine In 2013 it was revealed that the new S-80
Plus submarines the Spanish were building had run into a bit of a hiccup.
The first completed submarine, called the S-81 Isaac Peral after the highly-celebrated
Spanish naval captain, had the equivalent of 680 million dollars invested in its development.
In addition, a whopping three billion dollars was poured into the project that would develop
another three submarines as well!
The only problem was that the first one completed couldn’t even float.
At 75 to 100 tons overweight, this undersea vessel needed a plan.
At the cost of 18 million dollars per submarine, the Spanish Navy was able to extend the size
of the hulls on the submarine, making them larger, bulkier, and longer than their original
designs.
But at least they could float!
Then they ran into another hurdle: these new designs made the submarines too large for
the Spanish Navy’s holding pens.
It was estimated in 2018 that an additional cost of 18 million dollars or more would be
needed to upgrade the holding facilities as well!
#5 The Lost Euromillions Ticket Across the world, from Los Angeles to London,
people love playing the lottery.
Everyone who does tends to have some sort of quirk, trick or secret to how they plan
on winning.
As was the case with one elderly woman in England who had made a habit of recording
each set of numbers she wrote down for the Euromillions lottery before handing the ticket
off to her husband.
One week, after having filled out her entry and the winning ticket remaining unclaimed,
she decided to check the winning numbers and cross reference them with her own.
Sure enough, she had the 181 million dollar numbers recorded from that week!
Unfortunately her husband, who’d been running this errand for his wife for years, had apparently
thrown away the ticket thinking it to be another pipe dream like all the tickets before.
The winning ticket, at the time, was the biggest jackpot ever in Euromillions history.
#4 Apple’s Awesome Bargains One of the giants of modern computer innovation,
Apple vaulted from their humble beginnings to the super power they are now.
Hard work and clever design definitely helped fuel their success, but a few lucky breaks
at the expense of others helped them along the way.
In April of 1976, the co-founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack, signed on a
third partner to oversee mechanical engineering and documentation of the young company.
Ronald Wayne, an experienced engineer that had worked with Jobs at Atari, was to serve
as the veteran supervisor of sorts with Jobs and Wozniack being nearly two decades younger
than him.
But only 12 days after joining the company in exchange for a ten percent stake, Wayne
got cold feet.
In order to fulfill one of their early orders, Jobs took out a 15 thousand dollar loan.
Wayne, being the only one of the three with assets and any money saved, feared he would
be left with the financial burden.
And so he sold his 10 percent share, which is valued today at 80 billion dollars.
And he sold it back to Jobs and Wozniack for a mere 800 bucks.
Apple got another stroke of luck in 1979 when Steve Jobs got to tour the Xerox headquarters
in depth.
Jobs facilitated the exchange of a hundred thousand shares of Apple stock at a price
of one million dollars and the opportunity to tour PARC, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research
Center.
It was during these tours of PARC that Jobs discovered the Xerox Alto, a personal computer
that utilized the aid of a mouse to control an on-screen cursor.
It was capable of quickly switching from one window to the next and even had email capabilities
within the building thanks to the world’s first Ethernet network.
Jobs was elated, yet simultaneously frustrated as Xerox had yet to do much with the technology.
Jobs is quoted with shouting during the presentation of the Alto: “Why aren’t you doing anything
with this?
This is the greatest thing.
This is revolutionary!”
The Alto went on sale two years later and flopped due to slow and underpowered operation
speeds.
Xerox would go on to leave the personal computer market altogether.
But Jobs?
He and Apple had bigger plans as Lisa, Apple’s 1983 release, featured a mouse and other similar
functions to the Alto at nearly seven thousand dollars less.
This still wasn’t a huge hit as IBM personal computers still cost much less, however this
chain of events would lead to the development of the famous, high-grossing Apple Macintosh
in 1984.
#3 The Walkie Talkie In the city of London, on Fenchurch Street
in the historic financial district, a large skyscraper with a bulbous upper section looks
down at the city streets below.
This 38-story building, nicknamed the Walkie Talkie for its strange shape, cost more than
259 million dollars to construct.
While the building provides a unique look among the London skyline, when the structure
was first built it became clear there was a serious issue with the initial design.
The concave shape of the glass acted as a mirror reflecting the glare of the sun on
focused points.
This resulted in recorded temperatures ranging from 196 to 243 degrees Fahrenheit!
These temperatures caused damage to vehicles and even scorched a nearby business owners
doormat, and a reporter covering the effects of the Walkie Talkie was able to fry an egg
on the ground in the glare of the skyscraper.
It didn’t take long before a temporary fixture was erected to prevent such an effect again.
#2 Mizuho Securities Stock Typo Not everyone is fluent with typing, and even
if you are, everyone is bound to slip up and make a mistake at one point or another.
But in the case of one employee at the Japanese company Mizuho Securities, no one could afford
to make the typo he did.
Hoping to sell a single share of stock at approximately 610 thousand yen, or $5,000,
this unnamed employee made the biggest flub possible when he accidentally placed 610 thousand
shares of stock for sale at the price of one yen each!
The company made attempts to cancel the order, but the Tokyo Stock Exchange doesn’t cancel
any orders...even accidental ones.
This mistake resulted in a consequential loss of 255 million dollars in one days time as
the publicly perceived value of the company took a sudden, though accidental, downturn.
#1 Purchase of Alaska Originally considered a mistake on the part
of the United States, the purchase of Alaska was highly contested by politicians in Congress.
Thought to be a frigid, barren place by some, footing the bill to purchase the land from
Russia seemed like a hefty cost to others.
And at a time when the different branches of the US Federal government were at odds
with one another, it was very difficult to achieve a majority approval for the new territory
up north.
Luckily, secretary of state William Henry Seward was able to negotiate the price of
the purchase down to two cents per acre!
He met with Russian minister to the United States Baron Eduard de Stoeckl and settled
on a price of 7.2 million dollars.
Nicknamed “Seward’s Folly” by opponents of the purchase, this deal would go on to
be an extremely valuable get with Alaska being rich in natural resources.
Gold, oil, and other precious goods continue to flow out of the Land of the Midnight Sun,
getting that initial 7.2 million dollar investment back tenfold.
Perhaps this purchase should’ve been nicknamed “Russia’s Folly.”
What would you do if you could purchase land at two cents per acre?
Let us know in the comments below!