- [Narrator] We all like to think the people in charge of our countries have their heads screwed on straight. But the truth is, they
can be just as stupid as the rest of us. In fact, they can be way more stupid. From political punch-ups and selling nuke material
to anyone who asks to state-mandated glowing reindeer. Sounds too dumb to be real, right? Well, get ready to hear some
of the stupidest decisions that our many governments and official institutions have ever made. (upbeat music)
(cartoon character screaming) NASCAR Soldiers. The US National Guard
are always on the lookout for strapping young go-getters
to join their ranks. They were so eager for new recruits, the National Guard partnered
with NASCAR in 2011, plastering their iconography
all over the cars and sponsoring major events. It certainly made sense. After all, high-octane NASCAR races were pulling in up to 15.6
million viewers at the time. Over a three-year period, the National Guard reportedly
spent a phenomenal $88 million of taxpayer money on its
sponsorship deal with NASCAR. And the advertising paid off too. In 2012 alone, the Guard
received 24,800 applicants through the sponsorship. Wow, that's pretty good, especially considering their
yearly recruitment goal is only 50,000 new sign-ups. But the National Guard hadn't really thought
this partnership through. Of the 24,800 applications, only 20 met the National
Guard's requirements. And of those 20, none
ended up actually joining. While the National Guard
never explained exactly why so few of these applicants
weren't eligible to serve, I think I've found the answer. Though data for 2012 isn't
available, according to Statista, the average age for a NASCAR
viewer in 2016 was 58. This means the National Guard
spent 88 million tax dollars targeting people who were, on average, 23 years older than their
maximum sign-up age of 35. It looks this recruitment
logic hit a dead end. Canada Shreds. Oh Canada. The country known for hockey, maple syrup, and accidentally charging random
people millions of dollars. Huh, the tourism board can't be thrilled about that last one. You see, Irvin Leroux
and his wife, Jill Moore, ran a fairly successful RV
park in British Columbia. In 1996, Leroux's business
underwent a routine audit by the Canada Revenue
Agency, or CRA for short, when a slight hiccup occurred. Instead of putting all Leroux's receipts and important documents in a folder, they put them directly into a shredder. Easy mistake to make, right? Folder, shredder... They're just so similar. To make matters worse, the CRA simply refused
to own up to its mistake or give Leroux the benefit of the doubt. As they'd shredded all
his receipts and expenses, it now appeared that Leroux and his wife owed the government a
staggering $640,000 Canadian, which, after interest, was
closer to a million-dollar bill. This was an obscene amount of money to pay for someone else's mistake, so the two took the issue to court. In 2005, after spending hundreds
of thousands of tax dollars in legal costs to try and save face, the CRA reluctantly
gave up the legal battle and nullified the debt. Unfortunately, going to court is expensive and often triggers other
costly side effects. In the years between the mistake
being made and rectified, Leroux's main creditor demanded
he paid back his loans. Leroux reportedly had to sell both his businesses and his home and in the end was left
with basically nothing. Oh, and in the meantime, it
was established that the CRA actually owed Leroux $24,000. The nerve! Have you ever been the victim of a stupid government screw-up like this? It can feel cathartic to vent, so let me know down in the comments. And while you're at it, be
sure to like and subscribe for more incredible content every day. All right, what dumb
government decision is next? Jingle All the Way. Bioluminescence is an
amazing natural phenomenon. There are hundreds of
animals around the world that sparkle, shine, and
glow in truly amazing ways. Most of these creatures are
small, like fish or bugs, but these? These are reindeer. No, this isn't some kind of
reindeer/glow-worm hybrid. It's just a regular old deer
photographed in Finland. Those antlers aren't even really glowing. They're just coated in reflective paint. The big idea behind this
crazy-looking concept came from the Finnish government. Around 4,000 reindeer are
killed in traffic collisions across the country each year, which really hurts the
revenue of reindeer farms. Additionally, these collisions
cause a lot of damage to the cars involved. An adult reindeer can weigh as much as a grand piano, after all. So, to make them more visible at night, the government figured coating
the reindeer's' antlers in a reflective paint would do the trick. Unfortunately, this
blinding solution failed. It turned out drivers often
mistook the reflectors for people in the dark and assumed they wouldn't run
into the middle of the road when they saw car headlights approaching. Big mistake! Even if it had worked, though, the government ignored the fact that reindeer lose their
antlers in the winter, AKA the darkest season of the year. Could someone give Rudolph a call? Maybe he could give the Finnish
government some pointers. Dead Wrong. What's the worst thing you've ever done to get out of an embarrassing situation? Well, you probably didn't go as far as this next government official. Jaime Rolando Urbina Torres
was the mayor of Tantara, a small town in Peru. During the height of the COVID pandemic, he decided it would be a good
idea to ignore lockdown rules and go out drinking with his buddies. But when the police
came to enforce curfew, he wanted to avoid a scene. So, like the brave leader he
was, he decided to play dead, in an actual coffin. This fooled the police
for all of 10 seconds, who brought Torres to the
station shortly after. On the whole, I think
pretending to be dead and hiding in a coffin ranks
below "a dog ate my homework" on the believability scale. Land of the Landlords. Today, the Vietnam War is remembered as a historic waste of
time, money, and lives. But way back in 1961, it was
seen as just a regular waste of time, money, and lives. At this point in the Vietnam War, the Americans, allied with South Vietnam against the Viet Cong in the North, were eager to make themselves look better than their opponents. This is where the Strategic
Hamlet Program came into play. The idea was to create
several small, safe villages in South Vietnam that
peasants could be relocated to and hopefully come to
appreciate American values. Spoiler alert: This did not happen. For starters, people generally don't like being forcefully relocated. The South Vietnamese especially hated it. History and heritage were
huge parts of their culture. And for many villagers, it
was agonizing to have to leave the land their families
had worked for generations, as well as their family graves. At least the hamlets
were nice though, right? Oh, buddy. Many of the hamlets were
in awful, barren locations that couldn't be farmed, and
had no trees to provide shade. To make matters worse, many of these hamlets were overcrowded. Some reports indicate that hamlets initially built to house 6,000 people ended up housing 14,000. Imagine this: It's 90 degrees
Fahrenheit, you're starving, crammed next to 14,000
people you don't know, and they didn't even think to put up an umbrella for some shade. How would you like living there? It shouldn't be all too surprising then that when the Viet Cong showed up, hamlet residents didn't feel
like fighting to the death to defend these places. In fact, the Viet Cong
often used the hamlets as recruitment zones for
new Viet Cong soldiers. By 1963, the South controlled just 20% of the hamlets they constructed. Gee, who could have possibly predicted that forcibly relocating people from the places they love
would end badly, huh? The Pigeon Platoon. If you're in a major metropolitan area, chances are you're
familiar with these guys. Pigeons are as much a part of city life as smog, traffic, and tiny,
overpriced apartments. But what if these flying pests could be utilized for the greater good? Well, that's the same thought the China's People
Liberation Army had in 2020, when they purchased a whopping
10,000-unit pigeon army. The rationale is that the Chinese military needs a way to send messages should all other means
of communication go out. This means these pigeons
will prove invaluable if the Chinese army find
themselves unable to use the phone, the radio, email, fax, pagers, text, instant messaging, Morse
code, or Habbo Hotel. But China might just be taking
a leaf out of Russia's book. In 2013, Russia's guard service
reportedly began a project to revert document-keeping
to typewriters and paper after major online document leaks. Maybe the two countries are planning to rehash
World War I together? All I know is I pity the Chinese soldier stuck with clean-up
duty in the pigeon room. Russia Bans Being Emo. If you were a teenager in the early 2000s, there's a good chance you
went through an emo phase. You know: dark hair, grim outlook on life, embarrassing music. None of us are particularly proud of it. But at the end of the day, it was just a harmless phase, right? Well, not according to
the Russian government. In June of 2008, Russia
held a hearing on a bill that sought to lessen the influence of this supposedly dangerous teen trend. The bill, memorably titled
the Government Strategy in the Sphere of Spiritual
and Ethical Education, sought to ban emo and goth fashion from schools and government buildings, as well as regulating emo websites. Their reasoning was that the emo lifestyle promoted self-harm and
they wanted to stop teens entertaining the thought
of taking their own lives. One of the writers of the bill said that the point was to
make sure that, "By 2020, "Moscow will have someone
to rule its government." Just how many kids did Russia think it was losing to this emo endemic? But there was one pretty big,
obvious problem with the bill. There's no better way to
make something seem cool to a bunch of teenagers than the government
telling them not to do it. On July 19th, a veritable
black parade of emos marched through the city of
Krasnoyarsk to protest the bill. In addition to negative
attention the bill received, there was another problem:
How do you tell someone's emo? Just by the way they dress? Is a goth emo? Is a scene kid? What about a hipster? If all those subcultures don't
mean anything to you then, well, congratulations for being part of a much less embarrassing
generation than I am. But seriously, how do you
legislate subcultures? The bill was doomed from the start, it was never passed into general law, and the emo kids were free to ♪ Carry on ♪ South-Korean Stand-Off. Have you ever had an annoying
co-worker you just hated? Someone so incompetent and irritating you've wanted to smack
them upside the head? Well, imagine that co-worker was the former prime
minister of South Korea. Still tempted? As it turns out, a lotta people were. In 2019, a total of 29 politicians were charged over a mass-brawl that took place at the
country's National Assembly. And if you think this was a
brief little pushing session, think again. The incident saw lawmaker Chae
Yi-Bae and four of his aides trapped in his office for six hours after members of the Liberty Korea Party barricaded his door shut with a sofa. The beef was apparently over a new bill that would reform South
Korea's voting system, giving smaller parties more of a say. Or, in other words, it
would give larger parties like Liberty Korea less of a say. It was not a good look for Liberty Korea, especially after their previous leader and president of South
Korea was impeached in 2017 due to corruption and her
connections to a cult. Hire a PR team, guys! The entire event culminated
in a massive punch-up, with Liberty Korea being so humiliated they were forced to merge
with several smaller parties to remain relevant. Word has it the National Assembly will be convening next week to officially vote on wet-willies, purple-nurples, and swirlies. Elephant In the Room. Elephants are truly incredible animals. They're strong, intelligent,
live a long time, and have great memories. The US Army looked at these facts and came to one obvious conclusion: that these animals should be
on (pausing) the bomb squad? Yep. In 2015, the US Army partnered
with a South African reserve to determine whether elephants would make for effective
bomb-sniffing animals. While it's true that elephants do have a great sense of
smell and that dogs and rats have been used to sniff
out bombs in the past, there's one important difference
between these animals. African elephants can
weigh up to seven tons. That's heavier than five cars. Would you want something that size lumbering around an
airport or a minefield? Imagine how short "The Hurt
Locker" would have been if Jeremy Renner weighed
as much as five cars. According to the Army themselves, the purpose of funding
this strange endeavor is less about sending
pachyderm bomb-disposal-units into the field and more
about trying to figure out how elephants can sniff
bombs out so effectively. Personally, I think this proves that if you want your
research to get funded, convince the US military
they can weaponize it. Who's the Boss? In August of 2002, a
series of tragic accidents caused the I-40 bridge
in Oklahoma to collapse. Before long, the FBI arrived on the scene, eager to help those in need, as well as figure out
what caused the accident. Taking charge was an
assertive army captain, Captain William James Clark. He gave the FBI orders, telling them where to go and what to do, as well as commandeering supplies from local stores for a relief effort. This would have been quite noble if it weren't complete bunk. William James Clark wasn't
an Army captain at all. He was just some guy in
a cheap camo costume. You'd think trying to get away with this under the watchful eyes of the FBI would be the dumbest move in history, but it was the FBI that really messed up. During his role-play session, Clark reportedly picked
up $400 of groceries and racked up a $900
bill at a local hotel, stating the Army would pay for both, and the FBI didn't suspect a thing. He later stole a pickup truck
and made a beeline for Canada before being apprehended
by the Canadian Mounties. The real kicker here is this wouldn't be the last time this would happen. Clark went on to use fraudulent
checks all across Alaska under the guise of being an Army captain. Well, if this story makes you wonder just how gullible the FBI can be... Leave the Door Open. If I asked you to rob the FBI, you'd think I was crazy, right? This is a government agency
with near-limitless resources, top-of-the-line security systems, and enough muscle to make anyone nervous. Well, it turns out you're
probably overthinking things. You can just ask the
FBI if you can rob them. That's basically what a group of anti-war activists did in 1971. After failing to pick the
locks on an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, they had an idea that was equal
parts brilliant and stupid: They just politely asked. Several hours before
burglarizing the offices, the group left a note on
the previously-locked doors that simply read, "Please
don't lock this door tonight." This turned out to be an idea that was just stupid enough to work. Sure enough, a member of the FBI very politely left the door
unlocked later that night. Seriously. All it took was a single note to give these activists unlimited access to secret and confidential documents. What are my tax dollars even
paying for at this point? Sticky notes? The activists were so astounded
at how easy it all was, they initially thought they
should leave another note saying, "Thank you," but
they decided against it. Well, after that catastrophic fail, I'd have been tempted to leave
them an entire fruit basket. UK Hun? If there's one thing the British love, it's being absolute sticklers
for inane and stupid rules. What you're looking at right now is a "keep off the grass" sign nobly and boldly
protecting a patch of grass that is only about two by three feet. If this image isn't awkward and
embarrassing enough for you, here's a wider shot. Ugh... Now, this image may look stupid, but, trust me, context
only makes it stupider. This road is in Raynes Park, London, which was in the process of going through £70 million worth of spending
cuts, or roughly $100,000,000, at the time the picture was taken. Somewhere between not filling potholes, demolishing public libraries, and closing down puppy orphanages, some miserable bureaucrats saw the country's last happy child run across a tiny patch of grass and thought, "Not in my England." To be fair, it might have been a super-important patch of grass. But I doubt it, highly. Have you ever seen a sign this pointless? Hey, let me know down in the comments. Time Trouble in China. China is a great big place,
about 3,250 miles east to west, and 3,500 miles north to south, giving it a total area of
around 3.7 million square miles. For scale, that's big enough
that you could snugly fit all of India, Japan, Kenya,
the UK, Italy, Poland, and South Korea within its borders, while still having enough room
for plenty of tinier nations like Costa Rica or the Maldives. It's weird then that a country so huge has exactly one timezone. America, by contrast, is
slightly smaller than China at 3.6 million square miles, but the mainland US has
four different time zones, with Alaska and Hawaii each on their own. If America were on a single timezone, it might mean that if
the sun set around 9 p.m. in one part of the country, it wouldn't set until
after midnight in others. It also means that in some areas the sun wouldn't rise until after 11 a.m. So, why on earth does
China live like this? Well, it's because in 1949, the ruler of the People's
Republic of China, Mao Zedong, attempted to project strength
and unity across the nation by declaring that from that point on, China would operate on one
shared time, Beijing time. What this essentially means is the further you live from Beijing, the stranger the time is for you, because the government says so. In Urumqi, for example, it's not unusual for residents
to eat dinner after midnight. In some areas of China, the
time of day is so irrelevant it isn't even used on bus timetables. Top-notch decision there, Mao. One Nuclear Bomb, Please. The Government Accountability
Office, or GAO for short, is the agency in the United
States that makes sure all the other US government
agencies are acting responsibly and doing their jobs correctly. So, if you've been paying attention, you'll realize they basically have one of the hardest jobs on Earth. Well, in 2007, someone in
the GAO asked the question: "Hey, how easy is it to
build a nuclear bomb?" I mean, seeing how
dangerous those things are, it should be practically impossible for anyone to get hold of
all the necessary materials without a super-thorough
background check, right? Right?! Well, it turns out the
GAO set up a fake company and applied for a license
to buy nuclear materials. And to their shock, the Nuclear Regulatory
Committee gave them one, just like that. If they had done even the
tiniest amount of research, they would have discovered
the company didn't exist and that it had no offices or employees. It gets worse, though. The GAO discovered that
with just a little tweaking, they were able to edit their license so they could remove the limit on the amount of nuclear
material they could buy, more than enough to destroy a
city block, at the very least. Bomb-sniffing elephant grants, government secrets, nuclear material... Is there anything the US
government won't give you if you just ask? Florida Big Ban Hammer. Now we're traveling to one of
my favorite places, Florida: the birthplace of Margaritaville, Gatorade, and the notorious
Florida Man headlines. This particular Floridian
fable takes us back to 2013, when the state decided
it wanted to crack down on online gambling. In April of that year,
Florida's Governor, Rick Scott, approved a ban on slot
machines and internet cafes. However, there was a big problem with the bill signed into effect. The person who wrote it had clearly never used a computer before. You see, the bill didn't
ban specific machines or the act of gambling itself. Instead, the bill banned,
"Any machine, device, system, "or network of devices" that
may be used in games of chance where money can be wagered. Now, if you've spotted a
problem with the wording here, congratulations on being
more computer-literate than any lawmaker in the state of Florida. When you think about it, every device with internet capabilities, from phones to gaming
consoles to smart fridges, can be used to connect to
the internet and wager money. Heck, if you had two tin cans
with a string between them, that's technically a "system
or network of devices" you could use to gamble. Florida essentially banned
all devices with Wi-Fi and, depending on your reading of the bill, all forms of communication. It didn't take long for
opponents of the bill to make this exact argument. One man who had his internet
cafe closed down by the bill argued that if his business was shut down, it only made sense for Florida
to shut down everything. No worry, though! Several lawmakers have
argued the bill is fine as long as it's interpreted
with common sense. Personally, I wouldn't
sleep any easier at night knowing my rights were in the hands of Florida's idea of common sense. So, there you have it, a small taster of some of the worst, stupidest, and most catastrophic government-led decisions
in modern history. Can you think of any massive blunders or political slip-ups I've missed? Let me know down in the comments,
and thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
