Everyone makes mistakes, so the saying goes. The problem is that the word “mistake” doesn’t hold a lot of meaning. Sure, it means something wrong happened but you get no sense of gravity. Dropping your toast butter side down is a mistake, but so is forgetting to place a seal on a rocket ship that causes it to explode. Some mistakes can be quite a bit costlier than others.
10. Lou Reed Got All Royalties From A Tribe Called Quest’s Hit Can I Kick It
If you don’t know Lou Reed you’re missing out on one of the greats in the history of music. The Velvet Underground frontman was a singer, songwriter, and inspiration to countless others. He was also never shy about sharing his thoughts.
In 1990, A Tribe Called Quest released a track called Can I Kick It, which is still one of their most memorable hits. But there was a problem with it. The group sampled a lot of music in the production of the song and one of the things they sampled was Lou Reed’s bass line from the song Walk on the Wild Side. And they never asked Lou Reed for permission.
The record label didn’t clear the rights and when Reed found out, he didn’t deny them access to it. He simply told them they’d have to pay. A Tribe Called Quest never received a dime in royalties from the song as a result, all of it going to Reed instead thanks to the label’s mistake.
9. US Forces Accidentally Built a Fort in Canada
A lot can go wrong in the world of construction. One of the credo’s for any carpenter is measure twice and cut once. You really need to be sure what you’re doing. But you also need to make sure you have the where down as well, or all the expert craftsmanship in the world won’t save you.
The border between the United States and Canada is one of the longest in the world and, for the most part, the neighbors get along well with this arrangement. It’s almost a straight line from one coats to the other but there are a few wonky bits, especially around the Great Lakes and up to the east coast. This ended up contributing to the shameful story of Fort Blunder.
Originally called Fort Montgomery, this US military base was built in 1816 in an effort to ensure another Battle of 1812 wasn’t on the horizon. It was to have 30 foot high walls and overlook Lake Champlain where it could prevent another British invasion.
The problem was that the maps were not read correctly, and the fort was built a mile into Canadian territory instead of on American soil. It wouldn’t be until sometime in the 1840s when Britain and the US reached a firm agreement on borders that Canada lost a little land and the fort was given back to the US with a small tweak to maps.
8. Crypto.com Accidentally Refunded Someone Over $10 Million
Remember Monopoly? One of the Community Chest cards you could get in the game awarded you $200 thanks to a bank error in your favor. As kids, many of us hoped to one day be on the receiving end of such a blessed mistake.
In real life, bank errors are few and far between and they are rarely in your favor. Even if they seem to be in your favor, legally the money still isn’t yours and those who have benefitted from them in the past had to give it back. But what about a cryptocurrency exchange?
A woman who was looking for a $100 refund on Crypto.com ended up having $10.5 million refunded instead. As one would expect, she immediately went out and spent a lot. She even bought a house that cost $1.35 million.
How did such a mistake occur? Following an audit a full seven months later, the website realized that someone had entered an account number in the payment section by mistake. That oversight led to an epic spending spree.
The site ended up suing the woman and the Supreme Court in Australia froze her accounts and ordered her to sell the house and return the cash.
7. Soccer Fans Keep Mixing Up Bucharest and Budapest
Geography is not everyone’s strong suit, especially beyond the borders of where they live. Surveys have revealed geographic illiteracy is a huge problem worldwide. For the most part this may never affect you in your day-to-day life, but it might if you find yourself booking flights to places you don’t want to go.
In Europe there seems to be a pervasive issue in understanding the difference between Budapest and Bucharest. Budapest is in central Hungary. Bucharest is in Romania. They’re about 400 miles apart.
Back in 2012, over 400 Spanish fans who planned to watch their team play in a Europa League soccer game loaded up on planes and flew to Budapest to see the match. When they got there, they discovered the game was being played in Bucharest.
In 2021, French fans did the same thing in reverse when they arrived in Bucharest for a game that was being played in Budapest, proving no one reads maps or names very well before booking plane tickets.
6. Astronaut Alan Bean Ruined Apollo 12’s Camera
Everyone and their uncle uses a cell phone to take pictures nowadays but back in the day, you needed a “real” camera. Once upon a time that meant using film, something very rare these days. Part of the reason is that film can be a fickle media. You can’t just keep taking dozens of pictures with film because you run out. It needs to be developed, handled carefully, stored properly, all that jazz. You also want to not point any of it directly at the sun, especially if you’re in a place with no atmosphere.
When Apollo 12 was headed to the moon for our second visit, there was a lot less pressure on the whole mission. There was still interest, but it waned when everyone on Earth realized they wouldn’t be able to watch. That was all thanks to a mistake by astronaut Alan Bean.
As you can imagine, camera equipment being sent in space to document a moon landing in full color was sensitive and expensive. Bean, not fully appreciative of this, ended up pointing the camera directly at the sun. With no atmospheric filter of any kind, the sun destroyed the camera pretty quickly, reducing the trip to an audio-only affair and dampening enthusiasm the world over. By the time crews returned for Apollo 14, networks literally cut away from coverage to put soap operas on.
5. NASA Accidentally Sold a Bag That Had Been on the Moon
One of the most exciting things that can happen on a shopping trip is finding a mis-priced item. Most stores follow a rule where they will sell it to you for the price on the label, even if the label is a mistake and you’re getting a great deal. But not every sale follows those rules.
In 2015, a government auction on eBay included a small white bag. A woman in Illinois bought it for just under $1,000. The bag was from NASA and it had been to space. But there had been a mixup and the bag that was sold had been up in Apollo 11 and had actually been used to collect the first samples of moon dust. It was supposed to have been one from Apollo 17 that went to space but never left the lander.
When the new owner of the bag sent it to NASA to confirm it was real, she trusted that they’d confirm or deny and send it back. They did not. Instead, they kept the bag and told her it was sold in error and that it “belonged to the American people.” They offered her a refund instead.
A lawsuit resulted from the disagreement and a judge ruled in the woman’s favor. She ended up selling it at auction in 2017 for $1.8 million.
4. A Boy Tripped and Punched a Hole in a $1.5 Million Painting
The comedy pratfall has been a staple of laughing at other people’s pain for generations. Everyone loves watching someone else fall down. But sometimes a person goes above and beyond in their tomfoolery and doesn’t just trip, they trip epically. Such was the case for a 12-year-old schoolboy in Taipei who was visiting the local museum.
In 2015, the Huashan 1914 creative arts center had a Da Vinci-inspired exhibit which featured a 17th-century painting called Flowers by Paolo Porpora. As the boy was approaching the painting he tripped and, as most people would, he put his hands out to try to catch himself. Unfortunately, that ended with him putting his hand right through the $1.5 million painting.
A few anxiety attacks later the boy was mostly let off the hook since insurance would cover the restoration damage, but it was a valuable lesson for all in the importance of keeping art either behind glass or at least a velvet rope.
3. Steve Rothstein Cost American Airlines $21 Million in Unlimited Flights
History is rife with tales of companies trying to run clever promos that backfired, like when Red Lobster underestimated the cost of an endless crab promo that cost the boss her job and cost the business hundreds of millions.
American Airlines made the same mistake by offering an unlimited flight promo for $250,000. They must have thought anyone who took up the offer would not take $250,000 worth of flights, or at least not much more. But they did not see Steve Rothstein coming.
Rothstein bought his pass and proceeded to clock more than 10,000 flights. He flew friends to Europe; he flew strangers home, he’d even fly out on business trips in the morning and be home on a new flight for dinner, all first class. Sometimes he’d fly to another city just for a sandwich he liked.
The cost to American Airlines was estimated at $21 million. The company finally canceled his unlimited pass on the grounds of fraud. Because Rothstein sometimes invited strangers to fly with him, he’d book his companion seat under made up names because he didn’t know who was coming with him. The airline claimed that as the reason to terminate his ticket.
2. William Shanks Wasted years Incorrectly Calculating Pi by Hand
Everyone’s favorite irrational number pi has been calculated to over 100 trillion digits. Thank computers for that. But before computers, mathematicians were doing it the old-fashioned way with pen and paper and it was not easy. Just ask William Shanks.
Shanks was born in 1812 when pi had only been calculated to 152 digits. By 1873, Shanks had devoted years of his life to unraveling the number and had reached 707 digits. Keep in mind that, prior to computers, calculating a new digit in pi could take days or even weeks of work.
It would be decades later when another mathematician, going over Shanks’ work, discovered he had miscalculated at digit 527. The end result was years of work being rendered useless.
1. Andres Escobar Was Killed For Scoring a Goal on His Own Team
Professional athletes are under a lot of scrutiny at the best of times and rabid fans will turn on someone at the drop of a hat if they feel they are underperforming. You can imagine how bad the reaction might be if a player were to accidentally score a point for the opposing team,then. Or maybe you can’t, since this one’s almost unbelievable.
In 1994, Andrés Escobar accidentally scored a goal against his own team during the World Cup. Escobar, previously a popular and skilled player, just screwed up. The goal cost them the match and dropped them from the competition. Colombian fans were beyond enraged.
Just over a week after the game, a group of men attacked Escobar on the street, at first mocking and insulting him for what he did. Then things escalated. One of the men pulled a gun and shot him six times in his car.
Officials believed the killer, the bodyguard for some drug traffickers, had been paid to kill Escobar because his bosses lost money on the match, but that was never proven.