Mistakes happen. Sometimes, truly idiotic mistakes happen that
result in awful consequences, like centuries of persecution and racial hatred. But other times, idiotic mistakes can be a
force for good. Just be glad you didn't cause these problems. The French Revolution was a bloody period
in France's past where lots of unrest led to lots use of the guillotine. "Look at that bad boy. Isn't it a beaut?" King Louis XVI took a final trip to the dreaded
device in 1793, Marie Antoinette followed a few months later, and France changed forever. Their deaths kicked off the Reign of Terror
and led to thousands of executions and the rise of Napoleon. But here's the thing they didn't need to die
at all, and probably wouldn't have if Louis XVI hadn't made a whole series of dumb decisions. It started when thousands of people stormed
the Bastille in July of 1789 looking for weapons. In October they captured the royals, but they
weren't locked up; Louis and Marie Antoinette both could have walked out the door any time,
but they simply didn't. It wasn't until around two years later that
they finally snuck out, but despite having years to plan, they planned their escape pretty
impractically. They traveled together in a large, conspicuous
wagon laden with things like a complete dinner service and wine chest, and Louis sent away
the one person who probably could have helped them: his wife's lover, Count Axel Fersen. Not surprisingly, the royals were captured
again after being easily recognized along the way thanks, in part, to poor disguises
and the fact they loved to socialize. "It's not too much, is it? No…." Then, Fersen organized an escape with help
from Sweden's king, broke into the palace, and hung out with Marie for a day until Louis
sent him away again. Following some other ups and downs, the king
was sent to the guillotine about a year later. By now, everyone knows what a horrible person
Christopher Columbus was, and what his arrival in the New World started. But he was only there in the first place because
he was bad at math, and made errors in his navigational calculations that gave him a
little extra convincing power when it came to getting financing for his voyages. Let's start with latitude calculations. While the ancient mathematician Eratosthenes
came up with the standard that 1 degree of latitude was about 59.5 miles, Columbus decided
he liked the findings of a medieval geographer from Persia better. Alfraganus thought 1 degree was 56.67 miles,
and that's not too much of a difference, right? Only, Columbus forgot that Eratosthenes was
working with a Roman mile, which was 4,856 feet, and for the Persian geographer, a "mile"
was the Arabic mile, which translated to 7,091 feet. That's a huge difference, and he wasn't done
yet. Columbus then mashed together the numbers
and distances of explorers from Ptolemy to Marco Polo, added a bit of his own estimations,
and completely screwed up the location of the Indies. By the time he was done, his calculations
came with an impressive 58 percent margin of error, but they sounded good, he got his
funding, and went off to "discover" the Americas. To this day, Columbus is still known for his
many errors and inadequacies. "Christopher Columbus was the ISIS of his
day." Erwin Rommel is a fascinating figure, one
of Nazi Germany's most prolific commanders and someone the International Churchill Society
has called "a thoroughly decent man," mostly for his tendency to ignore many of Hitler's
most horrible orders. He was a brilliant general, and briefly headed
a unit nicknamed the Ghost Division because it was so fast, so targeted, and so efficient. He was also supposed to be in Normandy for
D-Day. In the days leading up to the Allied invasion
of the mainland's coast, he went deer hunting, and he also went into Paris to buy shoes for
his wife's birthday. After looking at the tide tables and the approaching
storms, he decided the Allies probably weren't going to attempt a Channel crossing in such
unfavorable conditions. Instead of staying on what would very, very
quickly become the front lines of the war, he headed home to Germany for his wife's June
6th birthday. The LA Times says he was at his country house
in Germany when he heard about the invasion happening hours away. He got to Normandy as quickly as he could,
but one of Germany's most prolific generals was essentially taken out of the action to
attend a birthday party. The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the
defining moments of the '80s, and it only happened because of two easily avoidable mistakes. Tensions were already at a breaking point,
and in November 1989, East Berlin Politburo members decided they needed to make some concessions
if they wanted to keep anything resembling peace. They took to the airwaves to make an announcement
that was supposed to say there would be an ever-so-slight relaxation of travel rules,
but that they would retain the right to deny anyone passage at any time. The press conference was completely botched,
though, and the reading of the announcement was garbled save a few phrases, including
that free travel would be, quote, "possible for every citizen, right away, immediately." Chaos quickly followed. The second mistake was even more insane. When thousands of people converged on border
crossings they thought were open, Stasi officer Harald Jager called for backup somewhere around
30 times in a single night. When his superiors didn't believe him about
the mess he was facing and, at one point, called him, quote, "simply a coward," Jager
kicked open the doors, allowed people to pass both ways, and started the real fall of the
Berlin Wall … all because his superiors made the stupid mistake of underestimating
just how much of their garbage he was willing to take. In 1977, New York City lost all electricity
for 25 hours, and the consequences were devastating. Around 800,000 people were reportedly stranded
in the subways and elevators, while others set to looting and pillaging on a medieval
scale. There were about a thousand fires set, more
than 1,500 businesses were looted, and by the time the lights came back on, there were
damages that cost about a billion dollars. Also, some have credited the blackout as the
catalyst that sparked the hip-hop movement, which is a nice bonus. And it all happened because someone didn't
know what buttons to push. "I am Groot." “Uh hun.” "I am Groot." “That’s right.” "I am Groot." “NO! That’s the button that will kill everyone!" Schneider Electric looked at just what happened
on that hot summer night in '77, and it started with a few lightning strikes. That's not uncommon, they say, and most substations
are prepared for it. This one wasn't. After lightning tripped the breakers, Con
Ed tried to restart the station's generators. The problem? No one was there. When employees finally got there and started
running system-wide procedures to get everything back up and running, they ran the wrong procedures. Instead of dumping the necessary 1,500 megawatts
of load, they ran one that got rid of only a few hundred. The station shut down, and the Big Apple went
dark. About 17 percent of the U.S. viewing audience
watched the Challenger disaster live in 1986, and it was a horrifying moment that shaped
how everyone from NASA to the American public thought about the space program. Only 73 seconds after liftoff, dreams of space
travel became a little less romantic and a little more terrifying, and if it wasn't for
that disaster our commitment to exploring the nearest reaches of space would have been
very different. The Challenger disaster happened for one ridiculously
simple reason: because a series of O-ring seals were never tested in the cold. The morning of the launch January 28th, 1986
was freezing cold, which led to the failure of the seals and ultimately ripped the shuttle
apart. And that brings us to the mistake. It wasn't until 2016 that NASA engineer Bob
Ebeling came forward after carrying his guilt for three decades. Ebeling and four other engineers had been
working at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol at the time of the launch, and when they heard
of the conditions the shuttle was going to launch in, they tried to stop it. They argued, very accurately, that the rubber
seals wouldn't work in the extreme cold, that the shuttle would explode. Tragically, they were overruled by both their
managers and NASA. He told NPR: "NASA ruled the launch. They had their mind set on going up and proving
to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn't." In 1989, the Exxon Valdez dumped 42 million
liters of crude oil into Prince William Sound, devastating the coastline for hundreds of
miles. Thousands of animals died immediately, and
the effects are still being felt decades later. According to research reported in Scientific
American, oil that settled into the sound's sediment has shorted the life span of fish,
birds, and local mammals, and in 2018, Marine Insight looked at some of the farthest-reaching
consequences. Tourism plummeted, more than 26,000 people
had their jobs impacted, and even after $3.8 billion was poured into cleanup efforts, the
oil is still there. Yes, even after decades. The majority of area species including orcas
and the Pacific herring have never recovered and likely never will. That's a huge deal, as the Pacific herring
is a cornerstone species that numerous other animals rely on for food. So, why did it happen? Because the crew made some extraordinarily
dumb mistakes. Captain Joseph Hazelwood was deep in alcohol-induced
slumber at the time of the crash, and he'd left the ship complete with non-functional
radar in the hands of a third mate. The third mate was absolutely not trained
to take command and drove the ship right onto a reef he never saw. They were also severely under-crewed and had
strayed from the normal shipping route, all compounding into a tragic disaster that changed
the ecosystem forever. In 1770, James Cook claimed Australia for
Britain, and we all know how well that worked out for everyone living there. He wasn't the first European to set foot on
the continent, though, and if it wasn't for a stupid lack of foresight, Australia might
have been a Dutch colony. According to the National Museum of Australia,
Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon was actually the first European to make recorded, official
contact with Australia. He landed there in 1606, on a ship that was
part of the Dutch East India Company. Having spent some time along the trade routes
in Asia, he was dispatched on a mission to explore a largely unknown southern land mass
to see if the Dutch might be able to harvest any gold or resources there. There weren't, but there were some understandably
hostile native peoples that made them think twice about the whole endeavor. Susan Broomhall, a history professor at the
University of Western Australia, says not everyone thought it was a worthless piece
of land. Some argued for using Australia as a stepping-stone
sort of colony along the Europe-Asia trade routes, and others said it was pretty much
perfect for wine-making. Dutch East India Company officials weren't
convinced, decided it wasn't worth the bother, and left the entire continent up for grabs. "Stop just gesturing around like they’re
everywhere are they everywhere?” “Yes.” “Why did we come here?" Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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