15 Most Expensive Mistakes in All History #2

we all make mistakes both in our work or education and our personal lives sometimes they can cost us our ego pride and maybe a few bucks but other times they can cause wide-scale devastation and a whole ton of money not the best way to start the working week from a million dollar grammatical error to a swaying bridge here are 15 of the most expensive mistakes in all history number 15 shanghai building collapses when a building unexpectedly collapses engineers break out in a sweat did they do something wrong did they make some grave errors in their design in the case of a high-rise building that collapsed in the mean hong district of shanghai engineers of the actual structure can breathe a sigh of relief after the apartment buildings collapsed killing one worker rumors were swirling about whether the owners had cut costs and as a result impacted the building's structural integrity when people saw the pre-stressed high-strength concrete foundation piles sitting prominently after the collapse they presumed their hollow core undoubtedly played a part but it's really those working on the underground car park who should be breaking out in a sweat after investigations it was found that a pile of mud on the building's north side which was about 10 meters or 32.8 feet tall alongside a 4.6 meter or 15-foot underground car park caused the foundations to shift these shifting foundations resulted in the building's collapse experts looking into the collapse said that the ground would not have withstood more than 5 meters of mud but it had to handle twice that much given that compensation may have needed to be given to the 500 homeowners affected and the worker who lost his life it was certainly shaping up to be an expensive mistake before we go on like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or this centipede will crawl on your face when you're sleeping [Music] now it's time for the star topic during the 1995 kobe earthquake in japan that killed more than 6 000 people an entire bridge was torn apart it looks like it just toppled right over under the sheer force of the 7.2 earthquake but it wasn't just the viciousness of the quake that caused it to topple as it did it was incorrectly built which makes it one of the most expensive engineering mistakes in all history how much do you think it costs to rebuild the city after that earthquake comment down below with the hashtag star topic and let us know your opinion in relation to what we just showed on screen with that said let's keep things moving number 14 apple steak sold for 800. imagine waking up in the morning to see that apple has hit a historic 1 trillion market cap only to remember that you sold your 10 stake for 800 that is the sorrowful reality for ronald wayne who was the lesser known third co-founder of the innovative company because steve wozniak and steve jobs were just 21 and 25 during apple's early days ronald joined to oversee mechanical engineering and documentation while in his words providing adult supervision in exchange for his efforts he was given a 10 stake in the company my passion wasn't a computers in the first place it was slot machines he even drew the first logo for the company which was later replaced however ronald had significant concerns he worried whether business debts would fall on him steve jobs had already taken out a fifteen thousand dollar loan to buy supplies for the first contract the customer was known for not paying bills so it was a big concern as jobs and wozniak were broke but ronald wayne had a house and assets he thought the bank might come knocking on his door he wanted out after 12 days he took his name off the contract and sold his shares to ozniak and jobs if he retained that 10 share he would be worth more than 95 billion dollars oops number 13. millennium bridge the day that the millennium bridge in london's financial district opened was a monumental one it would be the day that people could now walk from bank side south of the river to the financial district along a 320 meter lateral suspension bridge without the worry of traffic but as the bridge was officially opened and the crowds made their way across something no one expected happened it started to sway the swaying was slight at first but before long people were having a hard time making their way across with ease so as quickly as the 32 million dollar bridge opened it was shut as it turns out engineers had accounted for every possible non-human element and had nailed the weight and wind requirements but they hadn't thought about the way people walk and how these movements could change the way a footbridge should be built failure to account for human behavior added an extra 8.9 million dollars to the price tag engineers had to fit 91 dampers which would absorb vertical and lateral oscillations created by pedestrians walking in unison if one good thing came out of this expensive mistake they would call upon this information to build new bridges like it in the future number 12 russia discounted alaska it's hard for us to imagine that russia once owned alaska but it's true it has been populated longer than any other america's location but it was pretty much an unknown land until russian explorer vitus behring claimed it for the czar in 1741 but it immediately became a burden there were never many russians living there and no permanent settlements until around 1784. it also wasn't self-sufficient since it depended on the british and americans and native tribes for supplies russia worried that the u.s settlers would eventually overrun alaska since they had done the same in texas after accumulating a lot of debt in the crimean war and the fur trade in decline the tsar's brother said alaska was unaffordable so they negotiated a price of 7.2 million dollars in gold for the united states to buy it in 1867 on october 18th the russian flags were taken down around alaska and u.s flags were put in their place what was once called a burden that was not worth taking as a gift let alone paying for is now one of our country's richest states it has a gdp of over 50 billion dollars each year and has a labor force in oil and natural gas and seafood of over 370 thousand number 11 the one million dollar comma when you make a grammatical error in your work you might not think it's that big of a deal and it might not be for your situation but if you're in the job of writing contracts it may pay to brush up on your english otherwise you may cost your company around a million bucks the telephone company in atlantic canada bell alliant and rogers communications of toronto were embroiled in a dispute over cancelling a contract involving the use of telephone poles out of every word in a 14 page contract it was a comma that would see the whole thing come undone roger's communication said the contract runs for 5 years and automatically renews unless a telephone company cancels it with a year's notice but a comma in that contract meant bell alliant was able to end the agreement at any time with notice the troublesome statement was this agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made comma and thereafter for successive five-year terms comma unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party the comma after for successive five-year terms made it look like the one-year notice applied to the five-year term and its renewal so the regulator ruled in favor of the phone company allowing them to escape their contract after just one year number 10 nine billion dollar blunder imagine being known as the guy who lost the most ever as a single trader in the history of wall street howie hubler has that unfortunate title at the end of 2004 he had a feeling that there was something fishy with the subprime mortgage business he decided to bet against both it and the u.s real estate market using credit default swaps of course we know he was right but he predicted it too early as we know four years too early to take what is an extraordinary investment bank and trading business howie tried to cover his losses with more cdos but ended up digging an even bigger hole when the u.s housing market finally did collapse howie had lost morgan stanley as much as nine billion dollars which ended up being the second largest trading loss in the history of wall street oops as you would expect howie was out of a job he was given the option of resigning or being fired by late 2007. when he departed he was paid a back pay of 10 million dollars and went on to start the loan value group that works with mortgage lenders number nine 60.9 billion dollar oil spill bp was in a world of hurt and they've shelled out billions of dollars to fix their mistakes in 2010 their oil drilling rig deep water horizon exploded and sank in the mecondo prospect in the gulf of mexico this explosion resulted in the largest oil spill in marine oil drilling history and the death of 11 workers an official report exposed systemic safety problem the rig experienced a variety of problems like sudden gas releases drilling mud falling into the undersea oil formation a pipe falling into the well and blowout preventer leaking fluid at least three times even years later they were still paying out claims in 2018 their total costs were around 65 billion dollars for that quarter the costs were about seven times higher than they anticipated those latest claims included about 400 000 cases and there were still hundreds of outstanding claims that hadn't been closed by the end of september of that year they spent 63.4 billion dollars on cleanup costs and legal fees given that the final claims were taken quite a long time due to their size and complexity the costs were expected to balloon bp was definitely not having a good time number eight new jersey funding error the new jersey funding error was described as a stunning 400 million dollar mistake and well they aren't wrong failure to proofread resulted in new jersey missing out on a massive amount of federal education reform money in the race to the top funding scheme they were supposed to supply budget information for the 2008 and 2009 school years on the application form instead new jersey provided the information for the current year which was 2010 to 2011. that boo boo meant they lost 4.8 points and shuffled them down to 11th place in the competition only the top 10 received funding they received 437.8 points out of 500 and there was no appeals process to help them secure that necessary funding governor chris christie signed off the application his spokeswoman said that an error was made but didn't say who was responsible the new jersey education association said the loss of funding was the result of governor christie's misguided decision to take over the grant application process for his own political purposes isn't it ironic that a proofreading failure in homework caused the educational sector such a massive loss number seven space shuttle challenger disaster perhaps one of the most expensive mistakes in all of history both in money and life was the space shuttle challenger disaster of 1986 just 73 seconds into its flight it broke apart killing all seven people on board at 11 39 a.m on january 28th the challenger fell apart over the atlantic ocean off cape canaveral's coast in florida it started to disintegrate when the solid rocket booster failed at liftoff this was caused by o-ring seals in the joint that were not designed to handle this particular launch's cold conditions as the o-ring seals failed a breach in the srb joint caused pressurized burning gas from within the motor to get outside and affect the adjacent joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank what followed was utterly devastating the right hand srv's alt field joint attachment separated and the external tank failed then aerodynamic forces caused it to break up even though the challenger launch was televised alive very few people actually saw the disaster happen all of the major networks cut away when it started to break apart it wasn't until later that people were able to watch taped replays number six sinking of the vasa imagine the utter heartbreak and devastation you would feel if you threw five percent of your gnp into the creation of one of the largest warships ever made only for it to sink almost immediately that's pretty much what happened in sweden with their ship vasa the year was 1628 and vasa was just leaving the stockholm harbor docks on its maiden voyage the swedish navy was weakened and this warship meant big things for the nation but then just 0.8 miles into its journey a light gust of wind caused the ship to tip over water then flooded through the gun portals and it sank in the stockholm harbor 102 feet below the ocean's surface resulting in a loss of 53 lives and the loss of the ship it then lay there until 1956 when it was salvaged and put in a museum what happened to vasa so many things went wrong and weren't factored into the engineering stage of this masterpiece of a ship the boat builders were under unreasonable time pressure to finish and there was a lack of documentation and project plans what's more the ship was over engineered but lacked any scientific methods and reasoning they had no idea how to make sure the vessel was balanced and it ended up having quite a raised center of gravity which contributed to its lack of balance number five lake pinor sinkhole it's hard to imagine that the 1300 foot deep saltwater lake near new iberia louisiana was once an unremarkable 11 foot deep body of fresh water but a series of events and miscalculations changed the landscape dramatically and resulted in millions of dollars of lawsuits in november of 1980 12 men were probing for oil on a drilling rig under the floor of lake pinor their drill seized up at about 1 230 feet below the surface which didn't seem right given how shallow it was however they heard loud popping sounds before the rig started tilting towards the water at that point in time the drillers recognized that they had a fairly serious problem on their hands realizing something wasn't as it should be they cut the barges loose and exited the rig to the shores 300 yards away moments later the 5 million drilling platform owned by texaco overturned and disappeared a whirlpool around a quarter mile in diameter quickly formed directly over the drilling site it was always known that the diamond crystal salt mine was far beneath the lake but they had planned around it clearly some calculations weren't made properly everyone in the mines had to evacuate as the mines filled with water and violent destruction ensued the sucking force even caused a 12 mile long canal to change its flow direction and for an entire body of water to change from fresh water to salt water number four aol 99 billion dollar loss well not exactly an expensive mistake aol time warner's 99 billion dollar annual loss is definitely something worth learning more about new accounting rules dictated that write downs and non-cash charges were required on goodwill assets so at the next shareholder meeting in 2003 shareholders were in for quite a shock when their fourth quarter showed a loss of 45.5 billion dollars followed by another 10 billion dollars in that quarter 35 billion dollars was for the aol division write down while the 10 billion dollars was a charge for the cable division in the previous quarter they had reported a 54 billion dollar bill which meant they had the largest ever recorded loss in u.s company history at that time the chief executive richard parsons said it wouldn't affect their ongoing operations in a separate but conspiracy theorists would say related announcement the vice chairman ted turner resigned in may of that year richard said the financial results related to the accounting rules but also the weakness of the advertising industry and the depreciating value of some of its businesses he went on to remind his shareholders about america online subscriber growth being three times that of other internet service providers number three zero grande fire definitely one of the most expensive mistakes in all of history was the cerro grande fire in new mexico in may 2000 it started as a controlled burn but high winds and drought conditions quickly saw it become a disastrous forest fire over 400 families in los alamos lost their homes and 43 000 acres burned fortunately no one died in the massive fire but the u.s general accounting offices believe total damages were in excess of one billion dollars the controlled burn formed part of the 10-year bandolier national monument plan for fire hazard reduction the fire started on the cerro grande 10 200 foot summit which was covered in coniferous forests with ponderosa pine white fur douglas fir and aspen trees the plan would see the burns start in the rincon before including flanking fires around freeholy's creek however they didn't factor in winds which frequently occur in springtime around the jimez mountains these winds combined with low humidity increased the fire danger there was always a chance the fire would get out of control which it did but there was also a risk there would already be a fire there anyway due to the tinder dry conditions number two costa concordia ship disaster 2012 a cruise liner by the name of costa concordia sunk after making contact with a rock while sailing close to the island of giglio chaos ensued with over 4 000 passengers and crew evacuated off the 500 million dollar ship while the half a billion dollar ship was one cost more was to come insurance industry payouts relating to its sinking were expected to reach in excess of 1.1 billion dollars some of this amount related to the costs of removing the vessel intact this brought about an estimated price tag of 220 million dollars however given that 32 people lost their lives in the disaster there were also personal injury environmental and liability costs four members of the crew and a company official were sentenced to jail in italy behind the scenes many insurance companies and law firms were involved which saw the costs rise and meant that it could play out in the courts for years at the time the costa concordia ship disaster was one of the largest maritime losses and the largest insurance loss in recent times number one b-2 stealth bomber crash it's definitely not a financially successful day when you destroy an aircraft worth 1.4 billion dollars that is exactly what happened in guam in 2008 when the spirit of kansas crashed on the runway at anderson air force base taken off in guam back in february you see the pop and the ejection of the pilot and then it crashed the u.s air force northrop grumman b-2 aircraft was a stealth strategic bomber it was the first operational loss for that aircraft type fortunately both crew members were able to eject safely but the bomber was entirely destroyed so much so that it became the most expensive aircraft crash in history after an investigation into the cause it was found that heavy lashing rain had allowed moisture to enter the air data sensors these are used to calculate things like airspeed and altitude three pressure transducers were in functioning due to that moisture and the flight controls inaccurately calculated the aircraft attack angle and airspeed the bomber then ended up traveling at 12 knots slower than recorded the crew attempted to save the bomber but one of the wingtips hooked the ground and they were made to eject the aircraft then hit the ground with an almighty bang before tumbling and burning after the fuel ignited you might give someone too much change out of the tilt from time to time but i bet you felt a wave of relief after hearing some of these blunders sometimes billions of dollars were involved what was the most expensive mistake you ever made also check out our other cool stuff showing up on the screen right now see you next time

Channel: The Finest

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Keywords: expensive mistakes, expensive, expensive fails, mistakes, most expensive fails, most expensive, lost money, most expensive mistakes, facts, mistake, business mistakes, money, in the world, history, mistakes in all history, costly mistakes, unbelievable, biggest mistakes, the most expensive, viral, ever, engineering fails, some mistakes, worst decisions, ever made, incredible, caught on tape, made, lost, mostly costly mistakes, unlucky people, expansive, top mistakes, best mistakes

Id: cantv5VsbnI

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021