- [Narrator] We all make mistakes, right? I frequently go out wearing
odd socks and I was always calling my teacher Mum
when I was at school. Luckily, those mistakes
were pretty harmless and didn't end up
costing anyone a fortune. The same can't be said for the people we're going to meet now. Here's our top 20 typos
that cost a fortune. - Amazing! - [Narrator] Number 20: New York subway. In 2013, the city of New
York decided to increase the minimum amount travelers could deposit to their pay-and-ride
cards from $4.50 to $5. To publicize the change, the
city printed 160,000 maps and posters to display in subway stations. Unfortunately, the people
who designed the posters printed the price as $4.50, not $5. Seriously, how many people
must have checked these posters and didn't notice? Anyway, the entire print
run had to be recalled at a cost of half a million dollars. Number 19: Canadian Miss Universe. I've never been in charge
of adding up the scores of a Miss Universe contest. I guess you could get
pretty easily distracted. That's exactly what happened at Canada's Miss Universe in 2013. An error by a person
in charge of adding up the judges' handwritten scores
led to the wrong contestant, Denise Garrido, winning the crown. 24 hours later, the mistake was spotted and poor Denise had to hand her crown over to the real winner, Riza Santos. Denise was only supposed to come third. Number 18: Sydney ambulance tragedy. Sadly, worse than monetary cost, typos can lead to loss of life. In 2013, in Sydney, Australia, an 18-month-old toddler
fell ill and a doctor called for an ambulance to take him to hospital. Unfortunately, the call-taker, meaning to book the ambulance
straight away at 9:14, mistakenly added a one,
actually booking the ambulance for 19:14, quarter past
seven on the 24-hour clock. After half an hour of waiting,
the doctor called again to chase up the ambulance. The call-taker, realizing their mistake, dispatched one straight away. Tragically, the child
slipped into cardiac arrest before it arrived. This tragedy led to a total overhaul of how ambulances were
dispatched in Australia, including cross-checking
by a second operator and confirming the time with the caller. Number 17: Alitalia's costly mistake. In 2006, Italy's national
airline, Alitalia, caused an online riot
when it priced tickets from Toronto to Cyprus for $39. This was no discount,
though, it was a typo. The price was supposed to be $3,900. More than 2,000 travelers
spotted this offer and snapped up the tickets
before Alitalia noticed. A horrified Alitalia tried
to cancel the bookings, but there was an uproar. In the end, Alitalia
decided it would be better to bite the bullet and honor the bookings. That's a cost of $7.2 million. Ouch. Number 16: Amazon. Even the world's biggest tech
giants can make mistakes. In March 2017, an engineer working on Amazon's web services team
was supposed to take down a couple of servers for maintenance. Unfortunately, a slip
of a typing finger meant they took down the whole of
their Virginia data center, resulting in most of Amazon Web Services going down for four hours. Some of the world's biggest companies rely on Amazon Web Services for their web operations, including Apple. Estimates say the loss of retail revenue from this outage totaled $150 million. Number 15: New York mis-education. Back to New York now, and the
city's education department. In 2006, a bookkeeping typo
caused the city to transfer the budget for education
transportation twice. The bookkeeper typed in an extra character when filling out the
form that requests money. The city's general fund, the guys that had to hand out the money, didn't see the mistake. The rogue extra character
caused their software not to recognize that the
request was a duplicate. They transferred $2.8 million, instead of the correct $1.4 million. That's a lot of yellow buses. Number 14: the typo that saved millions. So far, I've talked about little mistakes that cost fortunes, but here's a typo that actually saved money. In March 2016, cyber
hackers managed to penetrate the Bank of Bangladesh. They managed to steal $80 million through three fraudulent wire transfers, posing as a charitable foundation. However, when attempting a fourth heist, they spelled the word foundation wrongly on the money request. They spelled it fandation. This alerted eagle-eyed bankers, who swiftly shut the transfer down, saving the bank around $870 million. Number 13: racist pasta. In 2010, Penguin Books
of Australia published The Pasta Bible, which included a recipe for tagliatelle and sardines. This recipe called for a quite
outlandish garnish, though: freshly ground black people. No, this recipe wasn't calling for racially specific cannibalism, it's meant to say black
pepper, but there was a typo. Seems a little fishy to me, though. I mean, without some sort
of predictive spelling, the word people is significantly
different to pepper. Either way, when an eagle-eyed
reader spotted the mistake, Penguin decided to get rid of
and reprint all 7,000 copies in their warehouse at a cost
of 20,000 Australian dollars. Luckily, no one tried to
actually recreate the recipe. Number 12: the wickled Bible. In 1631, British book
publisher, Baker Book House, published a Bible that
accidentally rewrote the Ten Commandments
because of a missing word. The Bible declared that
thou shalt commit adultery. The British Parliament, outraged,
fined Baker 3,000 pounds and ordered every copy
of what became known as The Wicked Bible be destroyed. Whether the person who made this typo received eternal damnation, who knows? Number 11: Lockheed Martin. In the late 90s, aviation
giant Lockheed Martin signed a multi-million dollar deal with an unnamed national air force to build C-130J military aircraft. Very clever accountants designed the deal so that the price of the
planes would increase in line with inflation. However, in the very
clever inflation formula these accountants designed,
someone put an extra comma one decimal place away from
where it should've been. This typo meant that the price would rise at a rate significantly
less than inflation. The national air force
insisted the deal went through as written, meaning this misplaced comma cost Lockheed around $70 million. Not very clever. Number 10: typosquatting. Who hasn't made a mistake
typing in a web address from time to time? Web hustlers, known as typosquatters, buy up the domains for popular websites, except they're misspelled
by one or two letters, so if you mistype an address, you might go through to their site. When you get there,
you'll be served an ad, probably sourced through Google. Google make a profit
from every ad they sell, even if it's on a typosquatter's site. Estimates say that serving
ads on typosquatting sites nets Google $497 million per year. Number nine: typo lottery winner. In January 2016, Virginia
store clerk, Michael Donnelly, tried to sell a customer a
Powerball lottery ticket. Michael accidentally pushed the wrong button on the machine, producing a Cash4Life
lottery ticket instead. The customer didn't want the ticket, so Michael paid for the mistake himself. He bought the tickets with his own money. Of course, this ticket
turned out to be a winner. Michael walked away
with a cool $7 million. Imagine if that was you
that refused the ticket. How annoyed would you be? Number eight: Taylor & Sons. Companies House is a
government body in the UK that records the details of
all the country's businesses. In 2009, a typo at Companies House led to them publishing news that
a Welsh engineering firm, Taylor & Sons, which had
been around for 124 years, had been closed. It's a typo, because
the company they meant to announce that had been
closed was called Taylor & Son. Son, singular. Customers deserted
Taylor & Sons in droves, thinking that they had gone bust. Eventually, that's what happened, leading to the loss of 250 jobs. The British government
had to pay Taylor & Sons $14 million in compensation. I expect they double-check
these things nowadays. Number seven: fruit plants. Another typo from history now. In 1872, the US government
wanted to exempt the importation of tropical
fruit plants from tax. Unfortunately, when the law was written, a rogue comma crept in
there, exempting fruit, plants tropical and
semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation. This comma actually exempted
all fruit importation from tax. The revenue lost by this badly-worded law was $2 million, a massive
$40 million in today's money. Number six: exotic destinations? In 1988, when Sonoma travel
agency, Banner Travel Services, decided to take out an
ad in the Yellow Pages, they got more than they bargained for. A typo led to their ad
publicizing exotic destinations being written as erotic destinations. This certainly brought
in some new customers, but a little different
from what Banner wanted. They lost 80% of their business and Banner sued Yellow
Pages for $10 million. Number five: everyone's a winner. In 2007, a car dealership
in Roswell, New Mexico, decided to run a lottery
competition to drum up some custom. They asked Atlanta-based Force Events direct marketing company to
print 50,000 scratch cards with one $1,000 winner in there somewhere. They did and the cards were mailed out. However, the printers had
somehow made every ticket a $1,000 winner, potentially costing the dealership $50 million. Of course, they couldn't
honor that, and settled on giving everyone a $5
Wal-Mart voucher instead. Number four: Macy's necklace. In 2013, Macy's wanted to
mail an advertisement out across the US, promoting a $1,500 necklace that was on sale for $479. Bargain! Unfortunately, they missed
the nine off the end of the price, leading to the
necklace being priced at $47. Even more of a bargain! Shoppers flooded into Macy's stores to take advantage of this offer. People were even placing advance orders once the stores had sold out. No one knows exactly how much Macy's lost due to this typo. They canceled the advance
orders once they realized it had happened. I bet they triple-check their ads now. Number three: eBay ale. In 2007, a bottle of one of
the rarest beers in the world was sold on eBay for a
pittance, all because of a typo. A 155-year-old bottle
of Allsopp's Arctic Ale was listed as Allsop's Arctic
Ale, without the final P. The auction didn't get many hits. One clever person found
the misspelled auction and bought the bottle for $304. He then relisted it, selling
it for half a million dollars. I bet the original seller
needed something strong to drink after that. Number two: Mizuho. In 2005, Japanese finance
firm, Mizuho Securities, introduced a new company to its portfolio, the recruitment company, J-COM Co. Mizuho meant to offer J-COM
at 610,000 yen per share, roughly $5,000. Unfortunately, a trader
filled in the wrong box and shares were offered
at one yen per share. Not only that, they managed
to offer 41 times more shares for sale than actually existed,
all at one yen per share. Were they drinking sake at the time? Mizuho pleaded with the
Tokyo Stock Exchange to allow them to cancel the transactions, but Tokyo said no. The damage for this typo? $340 million. Whenever you think you
have a bad day at work, just spare a thought for that trader. Number one: NASA. In 1962, NASA sent up the
Mariner 1 interplanetary probe, heading for Venus. Unfortunately, it never got there, exploding five minutes after takeoff. The reason? A typo, of course. Someone forgot to put the dot, or overbar, over the R somewhere in
the guidance software. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's apparently enough
to destroy a spaceship. It cost NASA $80 million, around $630 million in today's money. Has a typo ever got you
in this much trouble? Also, which example was your favorite? Leave me a comment down below. Also, if you enjoyed this video, make sure to subscribe to this channel to be part of the notification squad. Thanks for watching.
