10 of the Biggest Mistakes in Human History

for the most part history concerns itself with victories and good decisions there's a reason for the saying history is written by the victor but in many cases the mistakes are just as crucial a part of a story as the right choices are and sometimes the mistakes are an interesting story all on their own while nobody particularly likes to live down a mistake they can serve as important lessons and in some cases can change the entire world the biggest mistakes in history are fascinating glimpses into situations that could have gone very differently wars avoided lives saved fortunes made and treasures preserved there's no going back in time and changing what happened but it is definitely interesting to look deeper into the missteps that contributed to some of the major events throughout history number 10 george bell ceo of excite rejected the offer to buy google twice there are a few different factors that can make a mistake huge loss of life obviously plays a role but sometimes a mistake can represent such a loss of opportunity that it qualifies as enormous such is the case of george bell ceo of excite who was faced with the decision of whether or not to acquire google for cheap and he said no twice in what has since become a notorious piece of internet history bell decided not to acquire google in 1996 for a million dollars and when met with another offer of 750 000 he still said no for reference the net worth of alphabet google's parent company was within one percent of a trillion dollars as of january this year of course at the time the relative valuations of the two companies were very very different though excite functionally doesn't exist anymore at the time it was worth approximately 150 million dollars google founders larry page and sergey brin were in retrospect really onto something with their search engine idea but bell insists that there was no way for anyone to know that it would take off like it did there are conflicting stories regarding the reason but the result is ultimately the same excite and george bell lost out on a deal that would have earned hundreds of billions 9. heinrich schliemann finds troy but destroys it archaeology was not always the rigorous field that it is today as with many fields for a long time it was rife with amateurs unfortunately those amateurs tended to be less careful than their modern day counterparts in finding and excavating their sights which brings us to heinrich schleiman and the discovery of troy schleiman was passionate about proving the truth of stories like homer's iliad and odyssey determined to prove that myths were facts and the place he was most obsessed with locating was the city of troy by schliemann's time the city was declared a mythical place invented for stories the good news is that schliemann did almost certainly find the mythical troy the bad news is that due to his excavation methods the evidence of troy was severely damaged archaeologists largely agree that he did find the right location a site called hissar lick in the anatolia region schliemann in his initial excavations found that there was not just one set of ruins at the site but instead that it was like a subterranean layer cake of older cities one on top of the other but which was troy schlemming decided that troy must be deep down in the pile and used explosives to help clear out the more recent buildings and artifacts unfortunately he had guessed wrong surveys and assays of the various layers of the excavation site discovered that troy was actually closer to the surface shellman's efforts had heavily damaged the remains and artifacts of the city destroying a great deal of irreplaceable evidence it's still a rich sight of course but if schliemann had been a little more patient we might know more about how much the stories match up to the real place and what life was like there and then number eight a wrong turn put franz ferdinand in the right place to start world war one in many ways world war one was a global event waiting for a reason to happen a complex web of secret treaties and agreements and alliances between various countries combined with many different specific ethnic and national tensions which made it likely that something was going to trigger a global war sooner or later the spark that lit the fuse ultimately was the assassination of archduke transferred an end on the 28th of june 1914 but if not for a few key mistakes and miscalculations and a language barrier it might not have ever happened overall the scenario leading up to the assassination of the austrian archduke played out almost absurdly badly two of the conspirators failed to act in the early archduke's itinerary in the city and a third had managed to throw his bomb only to hit the wrong car gavrilo princip even missed his first shot at assassinating franz ferdinand failing to act in time the conspirators could have been forgiven for giving up at that point certainly but the archduke decided after a brief rest that he wanted to visit the hospital where those injured by the earlier bomb were being treated back into the cars the entourage went unfortunately the plans for the change in itinerary were discussed in german and the drivers only spoke czech so initially they continued on the original route when it did become clear that there was an issue the cars stopped to turn around with franz ferdinand's vehicle stopping right in front of cavrillo princip princip fired two shots into the car and somewhat miraculously killed both the archduke and his wife before running away if not for a language barrier and a breakdown in communication the first world war may have come about very differently number seven cost cutting and a broken radar caused the exxon valdez oil spill the exxon valdez oil spill still stands as one of the biggest environmental disasters associated with the petroleum industry in history even after the deepwater horizon spill displaced it as the biggest oil spill in u.s waters the accepted story goes that captain john hazelwood drinking heavily and away from the ship's controls was largely to blame for the incident but hazelwood was actually cleared in the trial with witnesses reporting that he had been sober and alert when the incident occurred the real culprits were cost cutting measures by exxon management and hard hours resulting in the exhaustion of the reduced crew the single most crucial factor was likely the radar system that the ship was supposed to be using to help navigate the waters radar systems are incredibly important for ships at sea they help identify potential hazards in the water allowing the crew to avoid them in the case of the exxon valdez the radar system had been broken for over a year before the oil spill and worse exxon knew about it according to investigative reporter greg palace the company viewed the equipment as simply being too expensive to fix and operate it likely would have been less expensive than the payouts assessed by the courts an initial amount of 287 million dollars in actual damages and 5 billion in punitive damages though through appeals that amount has been reduced over time still the company could have saved itself a great deal of money if it had kept up the radar and crew complement number six constantinople fell due to one gate left open as fans of they might be giants gonna test istanbul was constantinople now it's istanbul not constantinople but the question of how constantinople fell is not answered in the song instead it's necessary to look into the history of the region and particularly into one key mistake made by the people responsible for protecting constantinople in the siege that would eventually lead to the byzantine capital being captured by ottoman forces the siege lasted for 53 days starting on april the 6th 1453. constantinople had been an imperial capital since its consecration under constantine and despite being the center of many sieges had only fallen one other time during the fourth crusade in spite of being very much outnumbered by the armies of sultan mehmed ii emperor constantine xi had reason to be confident the wall surrounding the city had recently been repaired the defenders were reasonably well equipped and the consensus was that the byzantine empire could wait out the siege until help from the west arrived in spite of being outnumbered the byzantine army fought well in the skirmishes launched by the ottoman army until shortly after midnight on may 29th in the midst of a major battle that pitted multiple ottoman groups against different parts of the byzantine defenses the genoese general in charge of the troops giovanni gistanini was badly injured and had to be evacuated from the front lines in the flurry of getting the general back into the safety of the city turkish troops were able to partially breach constantinople's walls and they raised turkish flags this resulted in a panicked retreat to attempt to defend the interior of the city which in turn meant that someone forgot to close one small post and gate that led into the city that one gate allowed a large number of ottoman troops into the city and from there the fall of constantinople was inevitable historians can't say that constantinople would necessarily have remained a part of the byzantine empire without the mistake there are simply too many other factors but the gate being left open allowed a small breach to become a successful invasion and eventually allowed constantinople to become istanbul number five the austrian army attacked itself and killed ten thousand the ottoman empire has the distinction of having seemingly won many of its victories through luck though it happened long after the fall of constantinople the battle of karen seabees was another situation where the opposing army in this case the austrian army made a crucial mistake that enabled an ottoman victory taking place during the austro-turkish war of 1787 to 1791 the battle was not just a significant loss of life but also an embarrassment to the austrian army considered to be one of the most important and valuable armies at that time and it might not have happened if not for a mistake and a crucial breakdown in communication the trouble began when the vanguard of the 100 000 strong army of austria scouted ahead in the attempt to track the ottoman army having crossed the timus river instead of ottomans the hussars encountered an encampment of romani people who offered to sell them some schnapps tired and definitely interested in a break for drinks the cavalrymen accepted and began drinking sometime afterwards some of the infantry also crossed the river sent to look for the delayed vanguard seeing the partying hussars the infantry demanded a share of the alcohol and the drunk officers began building makeshift fortifications around the barrels what started as a drunken brawl turned into something else entirely when in the midst of the melee someone in the infantry shouted turkey turkey which means turks turks that brought about a rapid flight of the different members of the multilingual group of soldiers and eventually to the cavalry and infantry coming upon the encampment of the austrian army the confusion resulted in the encamped army believing that they were being set upon by ottoman troops and both groups firing at each other resulting in ten thousand dead two days later the arriving ottoman army discovered the dead troops and easily took the nearby village if not for some irresponsible partying and a drunken brawl things might have gone very differently number four weak weather forecasting left the germans wide open for d-day many factors played into the success of d-day the attack on omaha beach that turned the tide of the war during world war ii and ultimately resulted in an allied forces victory certainly deliberate misinformation played a key role but notably one of the most important factors that made the attack such a success was weaker weather forecasting capabilities of the german forces the german army had known of course that the allies were planning a major offensive that even narrowed down the most likely places where such an attack would be launched and reinforced defenses there because of this the d-day invasion had a very narrow window and a very exacting set of circumstances for when it could happen but where american and british forces concurred that the bad weather which would be disastrous to the ships and soldiers would clear up in time the older technology and interpretation of the luftwaffe meteorologists led to a belief that the conditions wouldn't be safe for the allies until the middle of june as a result the german forces left the coast of france only very lightly defended and in fact the german's valuable asset field marshall irwin rommel took advantage of the safe window to go home and celebrate his wife's birthday the result of this mistake on the part of german meteorologists was that the normandy coast was inadequately defended rommel wasn't where he needed to be at the time he was needed and the allies turned to the tide of the european theatre of world war ii if the germans had been in on the same details that the allies had they might have been better prepared and d-day may have not been as strong of a success as it was number three mao zedong's agricultural mistakes led to the great chinese famine some of the biggest mistakes in history come about due to personal prejudices or beliefs alongside a poor understanding of the bigger picture the great chinese famine period between the years of 1959 and 1961 caused millions of deaths estimates range from 15 million to 55 million and if it weren't for mao zedong's determined hatred for various pest species including sparrows it might not have happened one of the earliest initiatives of the chairman's great leap forward policy was the four pests campaign targeted at ridding china of rats flies mosquitoes and sparrows it's not hard to imagine why a country would want to rid itself of rats flies and mosquitoes their well-established pests and in all three cases they're well-known carriers of disease sparrows while not a particularly good disease vector are an agricultural pest particularly in large numbers they eat grains and fruit predominantly and in a culture that relies heavily on grain staples especially rice sparrow predation of crops means significant losses in addition the communist government implemented collectivist policies and other agricultural reforms that ignored the basic foundations of agriculture overcrowding plants of the same type in the assumption that they wouldn't compete against their own kind and deep plowing not suited to the rocky sandy soils that much of china has the attempted eradication of sparrows resulted in a loss of effective pest control since sparrows also eat a large number of insects and an increase in these insects led to much more ravaged grain production this paired with disastrous agricultural economy techniques and bad weather resulted in a loss greater than 30 of production this in turn resulted in mass starvation and deaths if mao zedong had paid more attention to the warnings of scientists in his own country millions of lives might have been preserved number two a few pairs of binoculars might have saved the titanic there are obviously a number of errors that brought about the great marine disaster that is the sinking of the rms titanic in retrospect it almost seems as though every possible thing that could go wrong did go wrong and nowhere is this more true than the accident that resulted in none of the titanic's crew having binoculars the original second officer of the titanic david blair was reshuffled at the last moment effectively replaced by henry wilde who had experience with the titanic's sister ship the rms olympic just before the scheduled departure from southampton in his haste he forgot to hand over the key to the crow's nest locker where the supply of binoculars were of course not having binoculars makes it much harder for a crew to spot potential dangers from far away such as icebergs which of course was the cause of the titanic's eventual sinking in the inquiries into the causes of the disaster after the fact one of the crew members interviewed mentioned the lack of binoculars and their potential role in what was in fairness a voyage with so many factors against it that it was nearly destined for disaster frederick fleet the crew member in question remarked that with binoculars he might have seen the iceberg a bit sooner when asked how much sooner he responded well enough to get out of the way while a number of factors played a role if the lookouts had been able to spot the iceberg with more time to spare the titanic may not have sunk and who knows what those on board would have gone on to do number one a mistranslation helped to bring about the hiroshima and nagasaki bombings one of the most controversial decisions in all of military history and there have been many controversial military decisions remains the decision to drop the atomic bomb on two different japanese cities hiroshima and nagasaki many who see the advent of nuclear bombing capabilities and everything that they have come to represent view the decision as somewhat rash and of course the long-term consequences including increased incidence of certain types of cancer in survivors and their descendants do lead to pressure to retire nuclear weaponry altogether one of the arguments made about the situation is that japan would have fallen if only the u.s had been sufficiently patient to maintain a blockade of the archipelago but this ignores the fact that the pacific theater as it was called spanned china and parts of eurasia along with considerable territory scattered around the pacific but while the bomb certainly brought an end to the war it's possible that it could have remained in reserve for a little while longer if not for a bad translation allied forces sent the potsdam declaration also known as the proclamation defining terms for japanese surrender on july 26 1945 alongside the details issued to japan was the informed ultimatum issued by the u.s in particular having successfully tested the atomic bomb 10 days earlier the u.s informed japan that if it did not surrender the country would face prompt and utter destruction such a bold and aggressive statement brought about a hot debate in the japanese government leading to prime minister kantaro suzuki stating in a press conference that japanese policy towards the potsdam declaration would be one of mokusatsu and that is where the breakdown in communication came about makusatsu can refer to two very different things one interpretation the most literal is an acknowledgement with the implication of a need for time to carefully consider however another meaning the word can have is to contemptuously ignore and this was the translation that was provided to president harry s truman that response to the ultimatum heavily weighed in the decision to bomb hiroshima and the lack of response immediately following the first bombing led to the second one if someone had explained the possible other definition of the phrase truman might have held off of course there's no way to know for sure that the bombs would not have been deployed later on but it could have ended with japan's surrender and a longer delay before the atomic bomb was revealed to the world mistakes play as great a role in the history of the world as successes do even if they are not what countries or individuals necessarily want to remember whether a mistake leads to a company that might have otherwise remained a minor piece of history becoming a multi-billion dollar giant to an empire falling loss of life or just loss of opportunities mistakes have the power to change the world and our understanding of it for better and for worse so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching

Channel: TopTenz

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Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020