Most Expensive Mistakes In All History - Part 3

everybody makes mistakes but even some of the smallest slip ups can have colossal consequences that end up costing an absolute fortune so following on from part one and two here's even more massive mistakes with price tags that'll blow your mind [Music] non-feng au bridge collapse the nan fang ao bridge was an arch bridge that linked two sides of taiwan's nan feng au fishing port but the 460 foot long structure was struck by a monumental catastrophe on october 1st 2019 as an unsuspecting oil tanker passed over it the entire bridge suddenly warped and collapsed 60 feet into the waters below the tanker looked briefly like it was going to make it but it too was sent hurtling into the port as it fell three shipping boats were crushed beneath tons of falling steel and concrete while 500 others were trapped inside the harbor the collapse cost the lives of six fishermen with a further 10 people injured but the price of this crisis would soon rise even higher because this bridge was just 20 years old an investigation was launched into the cause of its collapse at first many blamed the wind and rains of a typhoon that had struck the harbor several days before but it was soon revealed that this accident had been years in the making rain and salt water had leaked into the anchoring mechanisms over the years causing its metal to rust away steel cables in some places were so badly corroded cross sections revealed they were just 22 percent functional and to make it all worse no inspections had been carried out on the bridge for over four years it was soon uncovered that poor bridge management was responsible for missing these flaws in inspection reports leading to the catastrophic elapse the accident ultimately cost the government over 160 thousand dollars in compensation and the estimates for a replacement bridge started out at an eye-watering 16.8 million dollars but that is quickly climbed to 29.3 million dollars as more safety measures will be put in place all to ensure an avoidable disaster like this doesn't happen again and speaking of avoidable disasters don't forget to hit those like and subscribe buttons below now where was i hubble mirror fiasco in april 1990 after decades of planning and work the famous hubble telescope which at the time was worth 1.5 billion dollars was launched into space it was designed to send back images to earth of far-flung stars and galaxies but there was just one problem the images were coming back grainy it was like they'd been taken on a toaster nasa eventually established that the 7.8 foot primary mirror of the telescope was actually the wrong shape it had been built by the perkin elmer corporation and the problem was traced back to a calibration issue in their mirror making equipment now to make a giant perfectly parabolic and lightweight mirror is no easy feat first chunks of borosilicate glass are melted into a mold over the course of a week then over three months the glass is spun and cooled from a temperature of 1200 degrees celsius to 650 degrees celsius finally the mirror is ground and polished to an accuracy of 20 nanometers which can take more than two years to complete but a calibration issue at this stage meant the hubble's mirror was off by just 1 50th the thickness of a human hair it may not sound like a lot but for that colossal 1.5 billion dollar price tag nasa were not happy replacing the mirror was hugely impractical so instead nasa designed a corrective lens for the hubble a bit like how glasses correct people's vision the corrective optics space telescope axial replacement instrument or costar for short was delivered and installed in 1993 by a separate expedition the costly mistake leading to co-star's development ultimately set the entire project back a further 50 million dollars but for pictures that ended up being this clear i'd say that fix was priceless noaa satellite mishap in 2003 a costly operation at lockheed martin space systems company really went sideways the company had been tasked by nasa to work on the noaa prime weather satellite a 233 million dollar piece of space technology filled with meticulously calibrated instruments but disaster struck when workers were carefully turning the satellite into a horizontal position and the entire structure suddenly toppled over three feet to the ground the damage to all those delicate systems was severe and a full inquiry was launched into the mishap despite the presence of incredibly smart technicians and engineers there was a serious lack of procedural discipline throughout the facility it turned out that while the turnover cart used in the procedure was in storage a technician removed 24 bolts which secured the cart's adapter plate and all without ever documenting doing so the team who used the cart failed to check the bolts before moving the satellites and bingo multi-million dollar destruction was born lockheed martin had to dig into the profits it had earned and with a little help from the government they both foot the astronomical 135 million dollar repair bill if i was the one paying that i think i'd have fallen over bitcoin blunder when cryptocurrency bitcoin was first invented in 2008 very few people saw the value in it the decentralized digital currency hit the market with a value of just .000 cents per bitcoin and people were pretty slow on the up tank but englishman james howell saw the currency's potential the avid it worker downloaded the software and mined more than 7500 coins in a short space of time but by 2010 bitcoins still weren't worth much at just eight cents each so james stored the code required to spend the coins he had mined away on an external hard drive and briefly forgot about it but in 2013 he accidentally threw the hard drive away in what would turn out to be a very costly bout of spring cleaning unfortunately for him 2013 was the year bitcoin really started to take off by april it had reached a peak of 220 dollars per coin making james's stash worth a phenomenal 1.65 million dollars but he realized his mistake all too late he desperately began combing nearby landfills and dump sites in an attempt to retrieve his missing millions but has never recovered the lost drive to really rub salt in the wound on december 17 2017 bitcoin's prices peaked at an unbelievable 19 783 dollars per bitcoin that meant somewhere in an english landfill an unsuspecting old hard drive was actually worth a staggering 148 million dollars and by 2030 that price is expected to climb to 387 thousand dollars per coin meaning it could be worth around 3 billion um has anyone got a metal detector i could borrow a magical mistake just about everyone on the planet has heard of the incredibly successful harry potter fantasy book series while these stories of the wizarding world have brought magic to the masses their success is a painful reminder of a huge mistake made by several publishing companies the first manuscript of harry potter and the philosopher's stone was conjured up by author jk rowling in 1995. it had taken her five grueling years to put what was in her head to paper but that would turn out to be the easiest part her literary agent approached a number of publishing houses who you'd have thought would have been fighting over the chance to print it but amazingly 12 different houses rejected the manuscript before it eventually ended up with bloomsbury initially bloomsbury printed just 500 copies but by the end of 1997 demand for the book was so high that that figure skyrocketed to 70 000 copies it became an international bestseller and was soon converted into a well-loved film series which only fueled harry potter fever by 2019 500 million books had been sold worldwide and the entire harry potter franchise was worth a breathtaking 25 billion dollars while the series has concluded harry potter is still very much the jewel of bloomsbury's publishing crown helping it pull in over 162 million pounds in 2020 alone that's over 200 million dollars oh boy i bet the 12 publishers who turned down that first manuscript must feel sick thinking about how much money they rejected golden ray wreck at 2 am on september 8 2019 the crew of the south korean mv golden ray which had been sailing along the georgia coast suddenly called the authorities their 656 foot long transport ship was listing heavily and their attempts to ride it had all failed by that evening the vessel which had been carrying 4 to 200 hyundai cars had rolled fully onto its port side and was left stranded on the shore of saint simons a year later in october 2020 salvage operations to section up and remove the massive ship from the shoreline finally began this involved a heavy lift vessel called the vb-1000 it used its massive 240 foot high cranes to wrap a 400 foot long anchor chain underneath the wreck and gradually saw it into eight sections each cutaway was then lifted onto a barge exposing all the sea wrecked cars that had been trapped inside for over a year but as fascinating as these cross sections looked they didn't expose why the ship had capsized an investigation was launched which discovered that the ship had been listing while it was in the dock loading in the vehicles it was well below its 7 000 car capacity but instead of taking on an extra ballast to stable the ship the crew just continued loading eventually the ship rided itself but half an hour later following a standard 20 degree movement events took a turn for the worse it became clear that the ship was not in compliance with established safety codes for large vessels but it had left the port anyway this tremendously bad decision along with the complexity of the wreck led to a humongous insurance claim of over 400 million dollars that's a number big enough to give anyone a sinking feeling crab leg catastrophe there's something about snow crab that americans just can't get enough of their soft tender meat has customers paying extortionate amounts for a single serving something seafood restaurant chain red lobster tried to capitalize on back in 2003 that year they began offering an all-you-can-eat crab promotion for just 22.99 their internal calculations determined that this price which was just a few dollars more than their regular 14.99 buffet was high enough to fuel a tasty profit but they were oh so very wrong it turned out that people willing to pay 22.99 were really big fans of snow crab red lobster's profitable calculations assumed customers would eat up to two plates of crap plus other sides and mains but they were actually eating more than twice that about on average this is because crab meat isn't thick so customers were able to eat a lot more before filling up not only that but crab is a fiddly food to eat meaning customers were spending much longer at their tables so they really got their money's worth red lobster on the other claw started hemorrhaging money they'd inadvertently sparked a huge demand for the legs which are an import item this caused the price of the crabs to skyrocket meaning that to honor the promotion red lobster had to keep buying in snow crabs at increasingly exorbitant prices by the end of just one quarter the company took a massive 3.3 million dollar loss this triggered a cascade effect where wall street analysts saw the mismanagement mistake and downgraded their stock price wiping a huge 400 million dollars off the company's value that'll teach them for underestimating the american appetite ariana 5 flight 501 june 4th 1996 was a dark day for the european space agency it marked the launch of europe's newest unmanned rocket the ariana 5 which was a predecessor of the super successful ariana 4. it was loaded up with 4 incredibly expensive satellites and achieved liftoff but 37 seconds in something went horribly wrong [Music] at an altitude of 2.3 miles while traveling at the speed of sound the on-board computer hit the shuttle's self-destruct button the rocket along with the four satellites exploded into an unrecoverable ball of smoke fire and debris the europeans were understandably crushed but discovered the entire accident was down to a simple coding error the ariana 5 reused working software from its predecessor the ariana 4. unfortunately the ariana 5's faster engines exploited a bug that hadn't been found in previous models the numbers the computers were crunching were just too big for them to handle which crashed all the guidance and altitude systems including the backups the launcher veered abruptly and this ruptured essential electrical links that triggered the self-destruct sequence the tiny glitch cost the european space agency a total of 500 million dollars including its incredibly expensive cargo that's one small mistake for man but one huge mistake for mankind b-2 bomber bummer when it comes to aviation accidents none can compare to the 2008 disaster of the usa's b-2 spirit stealth bomber test flight this state-of-the-art machine was taking off from guam's anderson air base when all of a sudden the left wing started to dip down dangerously unable to stabilize the craft both the pilots ejected through the cockpit roof and the plane crashed and burned a few seconds later fortunately both the pilots survived but an investigation was launched into what had caused this high-tech bomber to really bomb it revealed that the planes exposed air data sensors had been waterlogged by heavy rain prior to its takeoff this meant air pressure readings during its pre-flight check were too high so the waterlogged sensors were recalibrated however when the pilots turned on the sensor heaters the water evaporated so while the readings looked normal they were actually way too low this incorrect data caused the on-board computer to display the wrong air speed so the pilots attempted to lift off at 153 miles per hour rather than the required 166 miles per hour to top it off the sensor's bad air pressure readings adjusted the plane into a sharp 30 degree pitch upwards angled way too high and going way too slow the plane immediately stalled and caused the inevitable crash but the most serious revelation was yet to come in 2006 this sensor vulnerability was discovered by the aircrew and maintenance staff but nobody thought to note it down this communication crash came with a hefty price tag as the plane had been valued at an abominable 1.4 billion dollars emphasis on the had i bet the u.s military wouldn't mind this monumental mistake flying under the radar cedar fire fiasco when novice hunter sergio martinez got lost wandering the wilds of southern california back in october 2003 he was convinced he was going to die in a desperate attempt to attract the attention of nearby rescue helicopters he lit two small signal fires amidst the dry brush of the san diego hills while the fire and smoke he made did get attention it wasn't for a good reason the hastily made signal fires accidentally sparked a huge uncontrollable wildfire which was driven across the landscape by the strong santa ana winds thanks to this it quickly spread at a rate of 3 600 acres per hour that's more than 2 700 football fields of hills set ablaze every 60 minutes by the time it was finally contained on november 4th it had scorched more than 270 000 acres an area of land roughly the same size as hong kong 2 820 homes and buildings were destroyed and 15 people tragically lost their lives even today it's widely considered one of the worst wildfires in californian history despite this martinez was only sentenced to serve six months in a work furlough program along with 960 hours of community service while his stupid decision didn't cost him all that much insurance losses were estimated at just over 1 billion dollars in total that's around 1.48 billion dollars today even if his house wasn't burned down i bet he moved out of california pretty quickly the kursk catastrophe back in the year 2000 one of the worst peacetime submarine accidents in history took place off the coast of russia the 18 thousand ton nuclear submarine kursk was in the middle of a training exercise in the barren sea when all of a sudden a huge explosion ripped through the area it was followed a few minutes later by an even larger explosion which ripped a massive gash in the forward bow of the 508 foot long submarine wrecked by the blasts the kursk sank about 350 feet beneath the waves of the 118 crew just 23 managed to survive the initial explosions and were stranded hundreds of feet underwater but sadly international rescue teams couldn't reach them in time and all the crewmen tragically perished when pressed for answers about the doomed sub russian officials claimed that it could have been caused by a collision with a foreign submarine or an old underwater world war ii bomb but the truth eventually surfaced a russian navy board determined that one of the kursk's 65-75a super-heavyweight torpedoes had leaked and exploded in its chamber from a faulty weld like many torpedoes the 6576as used hydrogen peroxide as underwater fuel but this chemical compound can become explosive if it comes into contact with the catalyst which in this case was the copper lining the torpedo tubes the explosion of the fuel started a fire which then caused all ammunition on board to detonate it took 14 months to drag part of the sub back to the surface in a costly 70 million dollar retrieval mission but it was nothing in comparison to the one billion dollars it had taken to build the six-year-old submarine in today's money that's a bank breaking 1.76 billion dollars i reckon somebody got fired for that welding mishap probably out of the next available torpedo tube deep water horizon on april 20th 2010 a huge explosion engulfed the deepwater horizon offshore oil rig just 41 miles off the coast of louisiana the disaster claimed the lives of 11 workers and injured 17 others but the worst was yet to come oil was spilling out into the waters of the gulf of mexico at an alarming peak rate of 60 000 barrels a day that's enough to fill almost four olympic swimming pools with oil every 24 hours the toxic black sludge polluted some 1100 miles of america's shoreline and was quickly declared the largest oil spill in human history but it could have been avoided the trans-ocean-owned rig which had been hired by oil giant bp was positioned over an oil well five thousand feet below the waves and a further eighteen thousand feet below the rock bp had recently hired contractors halliburton to seal the well up on the sea floor in order to temporarily shut the oil supply off they planned to use a nitrogen foam cement mix for this but both companies knew that the mix was unstable three out of the four preliminary pressure tests revealed that the mix did not meet industry standards but the companies cracked on regardless as such natural gas and oil began to leak through the dodgy cement seals then a series of emergency fail-safes above also failed which meant oil traveled up deepwater's rig riser where it explosively ignited at the top the devastating damage sank the rig just two days later and left cleanup crews battling with tides of black tar for over three years but the accident hit bp where it hurt most in its wallet they initially established a 20 billion dollar compensation fund for those affected but by the following year the company had hemorrhaged over 63.4 billion dollars in cleanup recovery and legal costs and in a damning blow the us government slapped the largest financial penalty ever imposed on a single company on bp to the tune of 20.8 billion dollars all up that's a staggering 104.2 billion dollars it only went a small way to making up for their gross negligence but hopefully it's taught them to clean up their act in the future blockbuster blunder netflix wasn't always the international streaming success it is now in the days before tiger king stranger things and money heist netflix actually rented out dvds across america through a mail-in system it was established in 1997 and became the world's first online dvd rental store but it only had 30 employees and 925 titles available by 1999 they introduced a subscription service and managed to raise 30 million dollars in venture capital financing even though they were actually losing money they felt confident enough in the business model to approach blockbuster offering to sell netflix to them for just 50 million dollars being the undisputed kings of home video rental blockbuster who had 9 000 stores and a market value of 5 billion dollars at their peak turned them down but it was a move they'd come to bitterly regret a few years later as the world moved on from video cassettes to dvds to online streaming netflix adapted its business models it wasn't until 2004 that blockbuster launched blockbuster online offering unlimited dvd rentals to compete with netflix but netflix already had the online lead then in 2007 netflix launched its own streaming platform which was streaming internationally by 2010. for blockbuster this was the killing blow very few people were renting videos and dvds in store anymore and their revenue took a serious tumble by 2010 they filed for bankruptcy and were found to be worth a fraction of their previous market value at just 24 million netflix on the other hand thrived when the world went into lockdown in 2020 the country service was valued at an astonishing 194 billion dollars more than 38 times that of blockbuster's peak ouch now that's a mistake that's almost too painful to keep watching kobe catastrophe japan is no stranger to strong earthquakes because it's situated above four tectonic plates which constantly move and grade against each other about 1 500 earthquakes strike the island every year since the 1700s huge quakes with magnitudes of 8.6 have rocked the country so violently that cities have been leveled and lives lost so now japan's city planners and engineers are constantly updating and reinforcing important structures to withstand large-scale earthquakes but tragically this wasn't always the case on january 17 1995 at 5 46 a.m a deadly 6.9 magnitude earthquake rocked western japan's hanshin area though it only lasted 20 seconds the city of kobe was decimated 120 000 structures were damaged at least half of which had collapsed but even more devastatingly sections of the hanchin expressway linking kobe and osaka also toppled over the single reinforced concrete pillars holding the expressway up sheared off at their bases collapsing huge stretches of the expressway when the damage was reviewed it was discovered that this massive elevated structure had been constructed nearly 30 years before under incredibly outdated seismic provisions from the 60s it had been scheduled for a retrofitting to update it but at that point the gesture was a little too late the damages in the hyokogen prefecture alone were estimated to cost a staggering 200 billion dollars though the area has now almost completely recovered it's clear nobody in kobe will ever make the mistake of taking earthquake regulations lightly ever again do you know of any other catastrophically costly mistakes that could have been avoided let me know in the comments below and they might just make it into a future video thanks for watching you

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Keywords: beamazed, be amazed, top 10, most expensive, expensive mistakes, worst mistakes, worst mistakes ever, costly, costliest mistakes

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Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021