15 Most Expensive Mistakes in All History

sometimes mistakes cost something spilling a little milk might not seem like a big deal but you paid for that milk so even if it doesn't bother you technically a very small amount of money was wasted but now here's the thing sometimes it's not a small amount of money that's wasted sometimes when all said and done the price of a mistake can seriously add up these are the most expensive mistakes in all history number 15 king tut's beard you can only imagine the pure horror that museum staff felt when while working on a display they accidentally broke the beard off of king tootin commons golden mask at cairo's egyptian museum the attempts that followed to reattach it took nine long weeks but also led to some astounding discoveries in the process after they snapped it off and contemplated leaving the country and starting a new life the museum workers attempted to restore the beard with epoxy in 2015. at the same time they figured that they might as well undertake a full study of the beard since they hadn't yet had the opportunity to do so it was already broken so it wasn't like there was much risk of breaking it any further through this extensive study the museum workers actually discovered that while concerns for the beer dated back to 1922 it had been detached before and was fixed back in place with inadequately applied glue in 1946 to not do any more costly damage they spent over two months undertaking a 3d scan and using wooden tools to remove the resin before applying beeswax as an adhesive fortunately you can't even tell that it was ever broken in the first place 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 now it's time for the odd topic the reason why we've highlighted this photo as our odd topic is because unlike other examples in this video we don't have enough details for what happened here if you know about this please do get in contact and let us know what we do know is that this photo taken from a helicopter shows one heck of an incident on a bridge the cleanness of the break and the presence of the men in helmets is what leads us to the opinion that this is the result of a mistake rather than an accident the cleanliness of the roads also suggests to us that the bridge has not actually been used that's why we think that this bridge is in the middle of being constructed and that construction has gone very very wrong money's gonna be coming out of someone's pocket remember to comment down below with the hashtag oddtopic and let us know your opinion in relation to what we just showed on screen and now to the next topic number 14 botched bridge millennium bridge between the city of london and bankside in south london was called a pure expression of engineering structure when it was opened to the public in 2000 it cost around 22 million dollars to build but the 1049-foot bridge closed nearly as quickly as it opened when it began to sway dangerously on its opening day thousands of pedestrians started to cross it only to find that it wobbled violently that inevitably caused the engineers to start looking up ways to change their identity and leave the country at first it was assumed that the modern design was a failure and that it hadn't been able to factor in the leg movements of pedestrians as was later found though it was the tiny forces that each person makes while trying to keep their balance that was to blame the bridge didn't know what to do with that extra bit of pressure two years later and after fitting 91 dampers to absorb all that movement the bridge was reopened it ended up being a six million dollar mistake all because engineers didn't know how people walked on bridges number 13 hyper alpha some mistakes can be costly to fix in monetary terms but then there are those that are expensive in both lives lost and financial losses the piper alpha oil production platform in the north sea is an example of that the platform was operated by occidental petroleum caledonia limited and started producing oil in 1986. in 1988 it was the scene of the most lethal offshore disaster an explosion a gas fire and an oil fire cost the lives of 167 people including rescue vessel crewmen while 61 workers did manage to escape the bodies of around 30 people were never found what's more the entire debacle cost 3.4 billion dollars and the loss of 10 of the oil and gas production line so why did this disaster happen four modules of the oil field were separated by firewalls to keep everyone safe and were positioned to keep the most dangerous operations away from the personnel areas when the company started converting from oil to gas processing the safety concept was no longer valid and gas compression ended up occurring directly next to the control room now that is why we have health and safety procedures ladies and gentlemen number 12 france's fat trains when you buy a new vehicle that's a little larger than the one you currently have you always think of how it's going to fit in your garage which makes sense because otherwise you've just wasted a lot of money maybe the french-owned railway company sncf should have asked the general public before they blew 15 billion on tgv high-speed trains in 2014 that ended up being too wide for the train stations they were supposed to service the company discovered far too late that the trains were too broad and would then need to spend at least 55 million dollars to upgrade the train stations to make sure that they fit that would be like buying your new car then having to knock down your garage and start from scratch well done guys the head of the rail network was quick to lessen the blow by saying it was normal to have to upgrade stations to welcome new generations of trains perhaps though they should have thought of that before investing in so many trains at once the cost of the station upgrades equated to around 1 of the network's budget for repairs and maintenance number 11 car melting walkie talkie building imagine building a structure that could fry an egg on a city street melt a car scorch fresh produce and set a shop's doormat on fire you wouldn't know whether to be proud or horrified believe it or not that was the costly mistake that engineers and builders of a 220 million dollar skyscraper in london had to contend with the glass mirrored building which had been nicknamed the walkie-talkie before being aptly named the walkie scorchy had a distinct curved shape that would reflect sunlight to a particular part of fenchurch street in london at a certain time of the day at that time of the day not only could you not look up at the 37 story building you couldn't even park your car nearby those who did park their car outside the building would often come back to all the plastic melted and warped and even panels misshapen by the sunlight nearby building owners also had to remove their doormats to stop them from catching fire so engineers had to take action and a bright solail sun shade was added to the outside of the building to stop it from reflecting such a powerful light fortunately that seemed to have fixed the problem number ten nasa's missing satellite for 10 months in 1998 the mars climate orbiter had been navigating its way towards mars to study the martian climate atmosphere and surface changes all was going well and nasa was getting ready to celebrate a successful launch and landing of the 125 million dollar robotic space probe not only would it help nasa to understand what was going on in mars but it would also act as the communications relay for the mars polar lander mars surveyor 1998 program well that was the plan for reasons that we don't want to bore you with we haven't exactly been quick to adapt to the metric measurement system in fact we're mainly on team imperial in this instance it was to our detriment and actually it has been in many other situations as well rather than celebrate a successful operation nasa was instead scratching their heads trying to figure out why their 125 million dollar probe ended up in thousands of tiny pieces and a burning ball of fire after a review it was discovered that miscalculations in the orbiter's thrusters were to blame and all because the pounds of force was measured with the wrong measurement system one person assumed the data was in metric while the other thought it was imperial easily avoidable mistake if we've ever seen one number nine stockbroker typo in most cases when the average person makes a typo it's not a big deal someone will point it out you correct it and everyone moves on with their life if you're a stockbroker though a typo can end up costing tens of millions of dollars and that actually happened in 2005 a worker at the tokyo stock exchange which is one of japan's largest brokerage firms caused a company called masuho securities company to lose about 225 million dollars on a stock trade that small typo caused a 1.95 drop in the benchmark nikkei 225 index not to mention a colossal confidence drop in the japanese market it all began when the company tried to sell 610 000 shares at one yen which is less than a penny a piece in jamco a job recruiting company what it meant to do was sell one share for 610 000 yen or about 5 000 even though the number of shares was over 40 times the outstanding amount the tokyo stock exchange processed the order anyway the security company did try to cancel their order but the exchange does not cancel transactions even when they are in error by the end of business on that day mizuho securities had lost 27 billion yen or about 250 million dollars number eight yahoo sells to alibaba when it comes to money very few of us get it right all the time after all we can't predict the future at the time you sell your classic car it might only be worth a few thousand dollars how are you to know that in a decade it could be worth 10 times that the same thing happens in real estate too you buy in a slump and sell during a high or you buy in a time of record high pricing and sell out of necessity in a slump yahoo was in a similar situation when they sold to alibaba in 2005 yahoo owned 30 of the chinese multinational company called alibaba in 2013 they sold half of their stake to alibaba for 13 a share which seemed like a phenomenal deal because they ended up making 7.6 billion dollars out of it however by 2014 alibaba broke records and announced that its stock had risen to 68 a share today they're worth 150 and yahoo was only able to sell its internet business to verizon for 4.8 billion dollars in 2017. you win some you lose some number seven one of a kind guitar destroyed when you're watching a movie you know that all the reactions and actions are just acted and made up but take a close look at a particular scene of the quen tarantino film the hateful eight and you will quickly realize that the reaction was completely genuine and ended up having some costly repercussions let's slow it way down russell was playing a kg bounty hunter in the film which required the use of a one-of-a-kind martin guitar from the martin guitar museum the guitar dated back to 1870 and he can't emphasize enough the phrase one of a kind there was not another genuine article like it for the film the producers had sex replicas made so that anything potentially damaging would only be done to the fake ones not the real deal no one told kurt russell that though and he proceeds to smash the 145 year old guitar against a pillar damaging it beyond repair what makes things worse is that no one told the museum how it happened and they had to find it out from the media they assumed that scaffolding had fallen on it now they will no longer be loaning out guitars under any circumstances and fair enough number six lost bitcoin there are all sorts of crazy stories circulating about how people purchased the digital currency bitcoin when it was worth very little and are now bathing in gold-plated tubs and driving luxury cars then there are heartbreaking stories of people who purchased bitcoin and then lost them ukit worker james howells has one such story he mined 7 500 bitcoin back in 2009 on his laptop once he had stopped mining he sold all the parts of his computer on ebay but kept the hard drive with the coins on them in case they were worth something one day when he was cleaning out his home in 2013 he accidentally threw away the hard drive which is now buried under tons of rubbish at a landfill site in newport south wales the kicker by the time he realized the coins were worth seventeen thousand dollars each which would have meant he had a worth of around 127 million dollars while james spoke to the council about retrieving his hard drive they said it was not possible as it was illegal there's no doubt james will always remember the day he was almost a multi-millionaire number five star wars merchandise loss most people won't have too much sympathy for george lucas losing a truckload of money because he's certainly rich enough but did you know he could have been far far richer 20th century fox didn't quite like the idea of funding a movie about spaceships robots absurd technology and swords that light up you know which one we're talking about star trek no okay so to peak their curiosity and sweeten the deal a little bit george lucas decided to sign over all merchandising rights for all star wars films to make sure they would proceed with funding that meant that for every toy lightsaber or anything star wars related george wouldn't see a cent that might not seem like a big deal but do you know how much star wars merchandise has been sold in 1978 sales figures were over a hundred million dollars and today they're into the billions tough luck george to be honest though he'll hardly notice a debt in his pocket as of 2020 the filmmaker entrepreneur and philanthropist was worth a whopping 5.1 billion dollars that's certainly nothing to scoff at number four blockbuster's lost opportunity when you see the cemetery of blockbuster stores around the world you can't help but shed a wee tier for the lost era while online movies have created a lot of conveniences nothing quite beats the excitement of rushing to the video store for the latest release in a bag of popcorn to take home blockbuster could still be the thriving chain it once was but they made a crucial mistake they turned down the chance to buy netflix in the early 2000s netflix co-founder and ceo reed hastings had been trying to get blockbuster chief john antioco to agree to a deal to buy netflix for 50 million dollars at the time netflix was a dvd by mail rental service while there was no denying that reid hastings was a respected manager he lacked the foresight to see where the video industry was going at the time netflix was losing money so they actually gave blockbuster several opportunities to buy the company to many people 50 million dollars might seem like a lot of money but guess how much netflix is worth today it has a market cap of 19 19.7 billion dollars and blockbuster no longer exists number three b2 bomber crash it might be crazy to think that a little bit of moisture can come with a 1.4 billion dollar price tag but that was the reality for the united states air force when their b-2 spirit of kansas stealth bomber plummeted to the ground in 2008 the spirit of kansas formed part of the 393rd bomb squadron and 409th bomb wing of the whiteman air force base it was at the end of a four month long deployment along with three other bombers and was taking off from anderson air force base nothing seemed very untoward and the entire launch was being filmed there was no intention for it to become a blooper video or anything other than a standard base exit but things went south very quickly at low altitude both crew members of the b-2 spirit of kansas ejected safely and the aircraft plummeted to the ground tumbled then burst into flames officials watched as 1.4 billion dollars went up in smoke so what went wrong well the weather did thanks mother nature you're a real champion heavy rain caused moisture to enter the skin flush air data sensors which then gave wrong input data to the flight control computers that resulted in a slow lift-off speed and a stall and descent that was entirely unrecoverable fortunately no one was killed number two the unsinkable titanic sinks okay if you didn't already know the titanic was an incredible film but it was also based on a real event so let's get that out of the way and while the movie made squillions of dollars the real titanic lost around 7.5 million dollars and over 1500 lives the titanic was called the unsinkable but we now know that was a slight exaggeration because well it did sink the crew were warned of the possible dangers of icebergs but wanted to test the boat out anyway it ended up scraping alongside an iceberg piercing the hull and causing the ship to take on considerable amounts of water in the middle of the atlantic ocean not only did they make a mistake in not avoiding the iceberg but they also didn't have enough lifeboats for everyone on board what's more there were no binoculars in the crow's nest that night which meant that the crew on the lookout would not have been able to see the iceberg until the last minute there were so many failings that led to the sinking of the titanic that there is a documentary called 10 mistakes that sunk the titanic number one costly proofreading error you wouldn't want to be in charge of book work and applications in new jersey right now if you were to blame for the era that cost over 400 million dollars in federal funding in 2019 new jersey failed to receive race to the top funding in a federal education reform after it accidentally miscalculated budget information for school years instead of submitting 2008 to 2009 data new jersey submitted data for the current year to 2011 which meant they lost 4.8 points and received 437.8 out of 500 finishing 11th in the competition while coming 11th might not seem like a big deal it is when you realize what's at stake number 10 on the list ohio received 400 million dollars in grant program funding while new jersey in 11th received nothing no one was quick to announce who was responsible for the error but we assume they've put on a fake mustache changed their name and fled the country by now everyone else was quick to pass judgment and wonder how they could have made such a mistake assembly speaker sheila oliver even went so far as to say that it was astonishing that the administration failed to proofread their own homework when the money could have improved the educational system to prevent such errors we know some of these were really hard to hear imagine losing millions of dollars from a few written errors what's the biggest thing or amount of money you've lost through a mistake also check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now see you next time you

Channel: Factsopedia

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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: sgXWnmmoZDs

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020