Jimi Hendrix

That’s Jimi Hendrix with his “black beauty” guitar, posing for a photo taken near London by his girlfriend Monika Dannemann just one day before he died. You won’t find Hendrix in a dilapidated state prior to his death, as it was sudden, and he was only 27 years old.

Hendrix died on September 18, 1970, from complications related to drug use and alcohol. A friend claimed that it was his mixture of red wine and lager that led to him over drinking, but the fact that he took 18 times the recommended dosage of sleeping pills certainly also had something to do with it.

Princess Diana

Princess Diana was of course famous for her marriage and divorce of Charles, the Prince of Wales, but also her charitable efforts around AIDS and land mine victims. The European paparazzi couldn’t get enough of the former Princess, and on August 31, 1997, they were at it again.

Diana had just finished dinner with her new boyfriend, Egyptian billionaire Dodi Al-Fayed, at the Ritz in Paris. Her driver sped away at over 60 mph to get away from the paparazzi, then promptly crashed into a pillar of the Pont d’Alma Bridge. Diana died later that night, while Al-Fayad and the driver Henri Paul, (who was drunk and on anti-depressants), died at the scene.

Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain

One of America’s best and most beloved authors was laid to rest on April 21, 1910. Twain’s health was declining, and death was very much on his mind before he went. The author of classics such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” worked right up until the moment he died, as his last completed work was entitled “Etiquette for the Afterlife: Advice to Paine.”

In his last instructions to his biographer, Twain had him transcribe the following: “Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and the dog would go in.” Coincidentally, Twain was born and died when Halley’s Comet was in the sky, saying: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet…” He wasn’t disappointed.

Brittany Murphy

Actress Brittany Murphy left us all shocked when she passed away on Dec. 20, 2009, and there have been little in the way of answers since. Murphy was suffering from an apparent cold when she loaded her body up with over-the-counter medications, and later collapsed in her bathroom.

The coroner’s report tells us that Murphy, very oddly, died of pneumonia. What’s especially odd about that cause of death is that her widowed husband died of the same thing just months later. Speculation amongst the family has endured, as they suspect everything from foul play to poisoning from toxic mold in the house.

James Dean

James Dean loved his cars and was actually a race car driver between films. After purchasing his new Porsche 550 Spyder, the “Rebel Without a Cause” star showed it to British Actor, Alec Guiness, who took one look at it and ominously said, “If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

One week later, on September 30, 1955, James Dean was behind the wheel and headed to a race in California. He rode with a Porsche mechanic named Rolf Wütherich, who encouraged him to drive the new car to the race to break it in. According to reports, right before Dean flipped the car into a horrifying wreck, he said: “That guy’s gotta stop… he’ll see us.”

Burt Reynolds

The man, the myth, the legend: Burt Reynolds was the ultimate macho male icon in the 1970s and 1980s. The charismatic actor starred in several major blockbusters such as Deliverance, The Longest Yard, and Smokey and the Bandit, but as he aged his health began to take a turn for the worse.

Reynolds was largely out of the public eye until he made a public appearance in March 2018 at the Build Studio, at which the media immediately seized on his declining health. He also gave a very strange interview around the same time. Six months later he died of a heart attack at the age of 82.

Anne Frank

All but one of the other photos in this collection were taken within days or months of the subject dying, but in this case, the photograph was taken years before Anne Frank was killed. It was taken sometime in early to mid-1942, which would’ve been a few months before the Frank family went into hiding to escape the Gestapo and the Holocaust.

This means that this photograph was taken just before Anne received an empty diary from her father. She had no way of knowing it (and sadly, she’ll never know it), but in the ensuing months and years, she would create one of the most important written works in history that would sell 30 million copies in 70 different languages.

Amy Winehouse

The downward spiral of Amy Winehouse was a difficult thing to watch, as the talented young singer could not harness her demons. She died from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, and these photos were taken during her last public performance one month before she died. On July 23, 2011, the singer was found dead in her apartment after a relapse overwhelmed her body.

Winehouse won five Grammys, including the 2008 award for best album. “Rehab” had some telling lyrics that help explain why Winehouse was unable to kick her bad habits: “They tried to make me go to rehab. I said, no, no, no… Yes, I been black, but when I come back, you’ll know, know, know…”

President Lincoln

If you think today’s news cycle is crazy and full of sensational stories, then consider the events leading up to President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. After Lincoln was inaugurated as president for the second time one month earlier, Commander of the Confederate Army Robert E. Lee, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the Civil War.

Lincoln was looking forward to post-war life, but just one day later on April 14, 1865, a Southern actor named John Wilkes Booth, who was supremely loyal to the Confederacy, entered Ford’s Theater and shot the president in the back of the head. He would officially die the next morning. The Great Emancipator never really got the chance to experience the presidency without war.

Challenger Crew

On January 28, 1986, the unthinkable happened. Seventy-three seconds into the tenth flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger, it broke apart after an O-ring in the right booster failed, and exploded like a nuclear bomb in the sky. None of the passengers survived the televised tragedy.

An investigation by NASA revealed that the crew may have been alive for several minutes after the explosion and made efforts to recover control. Part of that crew was astronaut Christa McAuliffe, who was going to be America’s first teacher in space after the elementary school educator won a contest with over 11,000 other applicants.

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin was such a fighter during her life it’s a surprise that death was even able to claim her. The singer of A Natural Woman and Respect made her final public appearance during a show hosted by Elton John to raise money to fight AIDS.

Franklin would succumb to pancreatic cancer at the age of 76 within nine months of the performance, but evidently she sill brought the house down. Elton John later said, “She was obviously unwell, and I wasn’t sure she could perform. But Aretha did and she raised the roof. She sang and played magnificently, and we all wept… God bless her.”

Elvis Presley

Despite the fact that Elvis received a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs by President Nixon a few years earlier, Elvis died with a varied mixture of dangerous substances in his system. Despite his declining health and physical appearance, fans were shocked to read the headlines on August 16, 1977, that the King was dead.

Headlines the next day read: “ELVIS PRESLEY DIES OF HEART ATTACK,” despite the fact that the autopsy didn’t reveal any failures of vital organs. A decades-long drug addiction, diabetes, and constipation are what took the King down in his Memphis Mansion, Graceland.

Whitney Houston

Given how the image of singer Whitney Houston was perceived when she started her career, it’s a marvel that her life ended the way it did. Houston looks to be on a good one below, as she participates in her last public performance of her career, alongside Kelly Price, after a pre-Grammy Awards party.

Two days later, Houston’s addiction to narcotics and pills led to her drowning in her own bathtub. On February 11, 2012 her downward spiral that started roughly 20 years earlier finally took her life. The autopsy and analysis from the scene of the crime revealed no foul play, and that the singer’s body was full of illegal substances.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

This photograph of Philip Seymour Hoffman shows a somewhat happy Hoffman during a very troubling part of his life. His appearance at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 happened to be his last one in public, as he secluded into darkness shortly after.

Fans of the “Hunger Games” were certainly sad that the writers were forced to write him out of “Mockingjay,” as he died during filming. Production slowed on the set after Hoffman died of an accidental overdose just a week before finishing his part. Lead actress Jennifer Lawrence said, “It took a week when I wasn’t waking up and having to remember (Hoffman) was gone. We all suffered that together.”

Amelia Earhart

The first female pilot to cross the Atlantic (and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the US mainland), posed for this photo before she attempted to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane. On July 2, 1937, her Lockheed 10E Electra crashed near Gardner Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Recently, final radio transmissions believed to have been sent by Earhart have been transcribed by a 15-year-old girl in Florida whose radio randomly picked up: “waters high… waters knee-deep… let me out… help us quick.” There was also a housewife in Toronto that heard: “…we have taken in water… we can’t hold on much longer.”

Sharon Tate

Sharon Tate was only 26 when her life was taken by the infamous Manson Family. At the time, she was married to director, Roman Polanski, and eight and a half months pregnant with their son. Polanski was off in London filming ‘The Day of the Dolphins’, so he had three friends stay with her who would also become tragic victims. Tate was recently portrayed by actress Margot Robbie in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

As one of Hollywood’s most horrifying incidents, her story recently made it’s way back into the limelight with Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ showcasing the land of luxury in the late 60s.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This photograph was taken just moments before an assassin’s bullet strikes Martin Luther King in the jaw on April 4, 1968. There is also a photograph of the aftermath that shows King after he had been shot with Reverend Jesse Jackson and company pointing at the shooter, James Earl Ray.

Ray fled the country but was later arrested in London and died in prison. As for King: He kind of foreshadowed his demise in a speech when he said, “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

John Lennon

The photo in the middle is the last one taken of John Lennon, and what’s creepy about this photo is the fact that his assassin is pictured with him hours before he pulled the trigger. That’s Mark David Chapman getting Lennon’s autograph as he headed to the studio to record some music.

Chapman waited for Lennon in front his Manhattan apartment and read through pages of “Catcher in the Rye.” When Lennon came back home, Chapman shot him in the back four times killing him on Dec. 8, 1980. In August 2018, Chapman was denied parole for the tenth time and still rots away in prison.

President Roosevelt

Whether or not one agrees with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies as president, it should be noted that he gave his life for his country. The 12-year president basically worked himself to death, succumbing to a brain hemorrhage on April 12, 1944, after uttering the words, “I have a terrific headache.”

Harry Truman was sworn into office that evening, and the next day, he gave a press conference. A shocked and overwhelmed President Truman confessed: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know if you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

There may not be any assassination in history that was more consequential than that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. His murder sparked a European powder keg that exploded into the most massive, bloody conflict the world had ever known.

On June 28, 1914, Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were visiting Sarajevo when a bomb exploded near their car (pictured above), causing them to flee. The driver got away and eventually made a wrong turn. One of the assassins, a man named Gavrilo Princip, just happened to be in a cafe when the car pulled in front of him. He shot and killed them both, and the rest is history.

Vladimir Lenin

If Lenin looks a little freaked out, it’s because he’s in a near catatonic state after suffering a number of strokes in his final years. The man who masterminded the Bolshevik Revolution and became the first Premier of the Soviet Union paid a heavy price for years of stirring the Russian masses.

Lenin rose to power in Russia, but only held onto it for a couple of years. Lenin was only 54 years old when he died, but by the time this photograph was taken, he had already suffered three strokes in two years that had him mute. A final one would finish him off on January 21, 1924.

President Grant

That’s Ulysses S. Grant writing his memoirs, which he barely completed right before he succumbed to throat cancer on July 23, 1885. Boredom always led Grant to drink, but it was his habit of chain-smoking cigars that he developed during the Civil War that ended up killing him.

In fact, he liked cigars so much that after he captured two forts in Tennessee and defeated the Confederate Army at the Battle of Shiloh, the citizens in the area gifted General Grant 10,000 boxes of cigars. Then he went on to win the Civil War and become president of the United States, in that order.

Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball of “I Love Lucy” fame, and so much more, was last seen in public during the 1989 Academy Awards. It was her friend Bob Hope that convinced her to come. It didn’t sound like she had a great time though, as she reportedly said: “No one cares what the hell he looks like, but everybody cares what I look like — God, I’m so tired of myself.”

Ball had been unhappy ever since her late husband, Dezi Arnaz, passed three years earlier. In April 1989, she experienced chest pains and was forced to have open heart surgery. She was then confined to the first floor in house and complained that she was living like an invalid. On April 26, 1989, one of her arteries ruptured and she died. But friends say she died of a broken heart.

Dale Earnhardt

Dale Earnhardt, pictured below with wife Teresa before the Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001, was such an aggressive NASCAR driver that he was given the nickname “The Intimidator.” On the final lap of the race, he was in third place, right behind his son, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

While many drivers were jockeying for position, Earnhardt’s famous #3 black Chevrolet was clipped by another car, catapulting Earnhardt into the wall on turn four. A faulty seat belt that was incorrectly installed at Earnhardt’s insistence (for comfort reasons), snapped, causing him to hit his head on the steering wheel, which was the blunt force trauma that ended up taking his life.

French train company orders trains that are too fat for platforms

French company SNCF flubbed the purchase of 2,000 trains in 2014. The problem? Many of their platforms were too narrow to fit the new trains. The mistake cost around 50 million euros, a steep cost to incur on top of the 15 billion euros they had just paid to purchase the trains.

The error occurred when the operator neglected to factor in measurements of train platforms that had been built more than 50 years ago. The process of expanding the 1,300 platforms to accommodate their corresponding trains took two years, in a process that was equally expensive and time-consuming as it was embarrassing.

‘Walkie Talkie’ building is so reflective it melts car parts

You might have heard of a building so ugly that it hurts your eyes, but you’ve probably never considered a building that can melt a car. The funny looking building on 20 Frenchchurch Street had to shell out some extra funds for sun protection after complaints that it had melted parts of a man’s Jaguar that was parked across the street.

Martin Lindsay was returning to his vehicle one day when he noticed a photographer snapping pictures of his car. His rear-view mirror and part of the body had rippled under the intense heat generated by the reflection off of the side of the building. Developers paid the 946-pound fee to Mr. Lindsay and had to erect a temporary sunscreen to mitigate sun damage to the surrounding area until a permanent solution was found.

Superman’s mustache

Though it’s never a good sign, reshoots in the film industry are fairly common — especially in massive blockbusters when a lot of money is on the line. After filming Justice League Warner Brothers decided a few scenes needed to be added or redone. But Henry Cavill had already begun shooting Mission: Impossible – Fallout and this scheduling conflict proved to be quite the hairy situation.

Cavill plays August Walker in Fallout, a role that required him to grow a mustache and five o’clock shadow. Paramount refused to let him shave to reshoot his scenes as Superman, even though Warner Brothers begged them. Not only did coordinating the reshoots cost around $25 million, the studio had to pay a visual effects crew to remove Superman’s mustache in all these scenes. Good thing they nailed it — er, maybe not.

NASA, Lockheed Martin, and the metric vs. standard system

In 1999, NASA lost a $125 million satellite in a classic case of miscommunication. Engineers at Lockheed Martin used the imperial system (inches, feet, miles, etc.) when calculating coordinates of a communication station, while NASA used the metric system (centimeters, meters, kilometers, etc.). This caused the Mars orbiter to miss its mark, burn up its engine in the atmosphere and disappear forever.

The struggle between competing measuring systems is one most are familiar with. In this case, a small error ended up costing this team of engineers big. They flung an expensive satellite out of orbit: lost in space, likely orbiting the sun. If there’s a silver lining, its that the team will likely never repeat the mistake.

Publishers pass on Harry Potter

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the story — not Harry Potter’s story — but the story behind his, the one about the woman who wrote the books. J.K. Rowling had humble beginnings, writing the Harry Potter stories mostly on scraps of paper. After she finished writing, the books catapulted her to success. But maybe not right after.

For inspiration, J.K. Rowling shared a couple of her rejection letters with her Twitter followers. In response to Robert E. Galbrath (Rowling’s old nom de plume) one publisher says “I regret that we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish [Harry Potter] with commercial success.” Book sales alone of the Harry Potter series have grossed an estimated $7.7 billion.

Spain nearly built a submarine that couldn’t resurface

In 2013, the Spanish government pumped $2.2 billion into a fancy new submarine dubbed The Isaac Peral. Before they finished building the vessel, engineers noticed a serious problem in the design. The unfinished submarine was already so heavy, it risked not being able to reemerge after submerging itself underwater.

Concerned engineers were able to trace the mistake back to a simple calculation error when drafting the design. Someone put a decimal point in the wrong space. Fortunately, the mistake was caught before they completed the submarine, and they were able to salvage the submarine by extending the length of the hull.

A stockbroker’s typo cost a Japanese company $225 million

In December of 2005, a small mistake cost Mizuho Securities Co., a Japanese company, an enormous amount of money. One stockbroker mistyped the data… He meant to offer a single share in J-Com’s stock for 610,000 yen (about $5,000) on the New York Stock Exchange, but instead, he ended up offering 610,000 shares for 1 yen.

Investors pounced on the opportunity, buying up a great deal of the mispriced stock. The loss was somewhat mitigated by stock exchange rules, which only allowed the stocks to be sold for as low as 572,000 yen. Still, the company lost around $225 million due to the mistake.

Record label doesn’t sign The Beatles

As many of the mistakes in this list have made abundantly clear, hindsight is 20/20. You can never be sure what band is going to make it big. When you’re an A&R or executive at a record label a big part of your job is to roll the dice on artists you think have a chance.

Dick Rowe, executive at Decca Records turned down an obscure band from Liverpool called the “Silver Beatles” when they auditioned for the label. His reason for passing? He thought guitar music was a fading trend … in 1962. Months later, The Beatles sign to EMI. In the year 1964 alone, The Wall Street Journal estimates their record sales grossed $50 million.

Yahoo! sells to Alibaba

This story is now legendary in the tech and finance industries. In 2005, Yahoo! owned 30 percent of Alibaba, a profitable Chinese multinational e-commerce, technology, and retail behemoth. Seven years later, they decided to sell half their stake to Alibaba at $13 a share. At the time it seemed like a good deal… Yahoo! made $7.6 billion.

Fast-forward to 2014. Alibaba goes public and breaks records when their stocks rose to $68 a share. Ouch. Today shares in Alibaba are worth $150 (the company is valued at around $84 billion) and Yahoo! sold its internet business to Verizon in 2017 for $4.8 billion.

A missing Oxford comma costs Oakhurst Dairy $5 million

Quite possibly the most hotly debated punctuation marks in literary circles, the oxford comma has its share of fans, detractors, and people who don’t care either way. It separates the penultimate and final items in a list and is usually considered optional (for example, the comma after “detractors” in the previous sentence is an Oxford comma). It has to be a particularly sore subject for the Oakhurst Dairy shipping department — an overtime dispute between the company and its drivers hinged on the lack of one.

Lawyers representing the drivers argued that a sentence in a contract the employees all signed needed the oxford comma to clarify that overtime pay was forfeited in a specific situation. “That comma would have sunk our ship,” the drivers’ attorney David G. Webbert told the New York Times. The company settled the lawsuit by paying the drivers a total of $5 million. That’s one expensive comma!

$39 flights across the world

$39 would be a great deal for a flight from Los Angeles to San Diego, so you can imagine how excited travelers were to score flight tickets from Toronto to the Meditteranean island of Cyprus for $39. This happened to chagrin of Alitalia, the airline company that offered the deal by mistake.

It was a typo — the tickets were supposed to cost $3,900, but their website was offering the tickets sans a couple of zeros. About 2,000 people got tickets before the company could fix the price. The company did the right thing and honored the cheap tickets, which cost them about $7 million.

Kurt Russell destroys a priceless guitar

The production crew for Quentin Tarantino’s film, The Hateful Eight, borrowed a one-of-a-kind old guitar from the Martin Guitar Museum. The guitar was to be used for a scene where actor Kurt Russell grabs the guitar from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, then smashes it. The film crew was meant to cut right before Russell snatched the instrument to swap it with a cheap replica.

Unfortunately, Russell didn’t realize this and went ahead with the whole scene, smashing the priceless artifact as the crew looked on in horror. In fact, Leigh’s reaction to the guitar’s destruction in the film is genuine, it seems everyone knew about the valuable guitar except Kurt Russell. The Martin Guitar Museum was not amused and decided to never lend an instrument to filmmakers again.

New Mexico lost control of a controlled fire

Prescribed fires are necessary for the safety and preservation of the wilderness. Old trees accumulate an excess of fossils, making them especially flammable and dangerous. By preemptively burning certain targeted zones, experts can remove the danger of a fire spreading throughout the entire area. That’s the idea, anyway.

In May 2000, in the Cerro Grande in New Mexico, workers lost control of a controlled fire and gusts of winds quickly spread the flames across the wilderness. The fire raged for a month before it was extinguished, costing around $1 billion in property damage. Fortunately, no humans died in the blaze.

Man throws away 7,500 bitcoins in 2009

In 2009, few saw the way cryptocurrency would take off in the coming years. Unfortunately for James Howell, he was not one of the few blessed with the foresight. Shortly after acquiring 7,500 bitcoins when they were worth very little, Mr. Howell spilled coffee on his computer. He salvaged and sold most of the parts and got all the information he thought he’d need off of the hard drive.

The hard drive sat in his drawer for years, before he threw it away during a move. When he realized his mistake, (and after seeing the way bitcoin had taken off), he began searching for the lost hard drive in the city dump. To make matters worse, the Newport City council barred him from continuing the search due to concerns about the environmental impact of disturbing potentially hazardous waste. 

Bitcoin peaked when it hit $19,783 in December 2017. This means that Howell essentially threw away $148 million.

King Tutankhamman loses his beard, man glues it back

When museum workers noticed the beard on one of King Tut’s funeral masks was coming loose, an inexperienced restorer did the only logical thing — glue it back on. Apparently, there is a better way of fixing priceless gold artifacts than using a permanent epoxy-based glue.

A curator at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo admitted “Epoxy has a very high property for attaching, and is used on metal or stone — but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamen’s golden mask.” Hey, it could have been much worse — at least the fixer didn’t use duct tape. In truth, this restoration failure pales in comparison to the next item on this list…

Priceless Elias Garcia Martinez painting is restored (destroyed)

Most of the time pays to have self-confidence, but sometimes it costs. A lot. When an 80-year old parishioner noticed the fresco Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) at the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, she knew exactly how to fix it. Or, at least she thought she did.

The end result looks a bit different to the original, prompting jokesters on the internet to re-dub the painting Ecce Mono (Behold the Monkey). While the original painting is sadly ruined, there’s a good argument to be made that the mistake actually had a positive effect. So many tourists flocked to Borja to see the painting that the church began charging people to see it — generating 50,000 euros to charity. Local businesses welcome the spike in tourism, and the church saw a substantial increase in donations.

‘Star Wars’ merchandise

George Lucas is a rich man — but it’s quite possible he could have been a lot richer. The film studio was loathe to fork over the necessary cash to allow the green filmmaker to film a certain science fiction story involving robots, spaceships, and light-up swords, so Lucas decided to sweeten the deal.

He signed over the merchandising rights for all Star Wars films to 20th Century Fox. That means that Lucas doesn’t see a dime from every toy droid, TIE fighter, or lightsaber sold. We don’t have to tell you how much money Star Wars merchandise makes for you to understand how much that has to hurt, but here’s a glimpse: In 1978, Star Wars action figures alone exceeded $100 million in sales. By now, it’s well into the billions.

Bridge alignment gone wrong

When you come across a fail like this, it really makes you wonder if somebody was out there playing an elaborate joke or something. There’s no way that anyone could possibly mess up a project that important, right? It’s less than likely that the guy responsible for this one kept his job…

On the plus side, it looks like one lane on each side lines up with the other. At least all they need now is a couple of ramps to send traffic flying over the gap to and from work on their daily commute! Modern problems require modern solutions.

Lotus Riverside apartment complex falls on its side

A residential complex in Shanghai collapsed due to bad construction practices. Ten meters of displaced soil was piled against one side of the building as a 4.6-meter car-park was being dug beneath the opposite side. Sadly, one worker died in the collapse as he returned to the site to collect his forgotten tools.

The real estate company responsible repeatedly ignored warnings about the mud-pile. Simply moving the soil before the incident would have saved the company around $800,000 and one man’s life. The 2009 incident shone a light on problems with construction supervision in China, highlighting the desperate need for reform and accountability.

 

Millennium, the wobbly bridge in the Thames

On June 10, 2000, construction was completed on an 18.2 million-pound bridge connecting both sides of the River Thames. The bridge closed three days later, after a disturbing incident while the bridge was crowded with foot-traffic: The bridge was swaying.

During the weekend it opened, approximately 160,000 people crossed the pedestrian bridge and were understandably alarmed by the rapid movement of the fixture. The cause of the problem was the bridge’s popularity; too many people stepping in unison along the path. The bridge closed immediately following the concerns, but more money had to be raised to correct the problem. It would be two years before the bridge would open again.

Russia sold Alaska to the United States

“The Last Frontier,” wasn’t always part of the U.S.A, in fact, it used to belong to Russia. Alexander II didn’t think much of Alaska; the harsh weather made it hard to farm, and high transportation costs kept it from being especially profitable as a trading port. He sold the colony to the U.S. for $7.2 million in 1867.

Few Russians had explored the land’s interior up until that point, otherwise, they would have noticed what a huge mistake the sale was. The United States clearly got away with robbery during negotiations: Alaska is rich in natural resources like oil and gold. A century and 20 years later, economists estimate Alaska’s oil and gas reserves alone are worth $200 billion.

Robert Wayne sells his Apple stock for $800

Everyone knows that hindsight is 20/20, but still, this had to sting. Steve Jobs is a household name, and most moderately tech-inclined people are familiar with Steve Wosniack, but many are unfamiliar with Apple’s third founder Ronald Wayne. Wayne drew Apple’s iconic logo, and served as an intermediary between the two innovative Steves.

Jobs’ strong personality clashed with Wayne, eventually prompting him to sell his 10 percent stake in the company for $800 in 1976, a decision that prevented him from becoming a multi-billionaire. (Apple became worth over $1 trillion last month). Despite missing out on enormous earnings, Wayne said he has no regrets in leaving the company.

Blockbuster could have bought Netflix in 2000

Before video streaming services became all the rage, you used to have to go to these places called video stores where you’d rent movies. If you kept it past the due date, you’d have to pay a late fee. Blockbuster was the biggest of these video store chains. Netflix was a successful newcomer with an interesting business model.

In 2000, Reed Hastings, the cofounder of Netflix met with John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster to propose a partnership. Netflix would run Blockbuster’s online brand and Blockbuster would promote Netflix in stores. Antioco and his team laughed Hastings out of their office. Ten years later, Blockbuster went bankrupt. Netflix is currently worth $15.8 billion.

Excite could have bought Google during its infancy

If you remember the early days of the internet, you might remember Excite. In 1999, it was the second most popular search engine (Yahoo! was number one). Google, then called BackRub, was a promising new competitor in the search engine market (side note: imagine an alternate reality where people refer to an internet search as a ‘backrub’). Excite was interested in buying the company for $750,000, but passed when Google insisted that its technology replace Excite’s.

Maddingly, one of the main reasons cited for Excite passing on Google’s technology was because they thought it worked too well. Users would find the information they wanted and move on too quickly, and Excite would lose precious revenue. Excite sold to Yahoo! in 2004, and recent estimates value Google at $167 billion. 

New Jersey and the ‘Race to the Top’

Who hasn’t written the wrong year down by accident? In an ironic twist of fate, failure to proofread an application resulted in New Jersey missing out on a large federal grant to be put toward education reform. The oversight cost the state dearly.

In a bid to the federal government for educational reform money, a clerical error cost the Garden State $400 million. Instead of comparing the state’s budget information between 2008 and 2009, the state provided information for 2010 and 2011 instead, costing them five points, 10th place, and $400 million. If one group came out ahead, it was educators in Ohio who edged out New Jersey for the final slot.

Howie Hubler costs Morgan Stanley $9 billion

2007 wasn’t the best time to be a bond trader, but few traders have screwed up quite as badly as Howie Hubler (in truth, only one other person has to date). It happened like this, Hubler bought some risky credit default swaps for $2 billion and sold some rock-solid collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) for $16 billion.

The only problem was that the AAA rated-CDOs weren’t nearly as secure as he thought — in fact, they weren’t secure at all. If Hubler had taken corrective action sooner, his group could have greatly minimized their losses. Eventually Morgan Stanley had enough and forced Hubler to resign, but the damage was done. When the market crashed, Morgan Stanley was only able to recover $7 billion of a $16 billion loss.

Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler

In 1998, Daimler-Benz (maker of the Mercedes-Benz line of luxury vehicles) acquired Chrysler for $37 billion. Nine years later, they sold the company for only $7 billion. Though it was sold to investors as an equal merger, it became clear that Daimler-Benz was calling the shots. For a while, everything seemed to be going right, stocks rose to $108.62 a share in 2001. But rocky times were ahead.

In 2006, Chrysler reported a loss of $1.5 billion despite launching 10 new vehicles that year. The instability and loss of profits proved to be too much for Daimler-Benz who sold off 80 percent of its shares in the company the following year. In 2008, Chrysler filed for bankruptcy and was famously bailed out by the Treasury Department in 2009.

Texaco and the Lake Peigneur accident

Most people can tell you about a time when pushing something a bit too far ended up costing them. Perhaps none more so than workers on an oil rig in Lake Peigneur. In 1980, an oil rig contracted by Texaco drilled a bit too deep below the lake and struck a salt mine, which created a giant hole that quickly swallowed the lake. A giant whirlpool ensued, sweeping up barges, boats, and trees. The mistake caused giant geysers as the displaced air and water filled the caverns of the mine.

The disaster was caused by a calculation error that resulted in the rig drilling in the wrong coordinates. Luckily no one died as a result, but Texaco had to pay $44.8 million in out-of-state settlements (almost $149 million adjusted for inflation), and the ecosystem of the lake was irreparably changed.

B-2 Bomber crashes due to faulty electronics

Despite its primary purpose (stealth), the B-2 military jet is probably one of the most recognizable military vehicles. Unsurprisingly, it is also the most expensive, and unfortunately, in this case, the high cost did not guarantee the quality of materials.

In 2008, the $1.4 billion piece of sleek military machinery stalled and crashed upon takeoff during a practice flight in Guam when faulty sensors caused airspeed, altitude, and trajectory errors. Fortunately, both pilots ejected before the crash and survived the incident. An investigation discovered that the problem was likely caused by heavy rain, as moisture seeped in and damaged the sensors. It was the most expensive crash in history.

The Titanic hits an iceberg

You are undoubtedly familiar with this infamous story of ignored warnings. Dubbed “the unsinkable,” the RMS Titanic was the largest passenger ship in history in 1912. In a sad twist of irony, the Titanic an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and disproved its nickname on its very first voyage.

Despite being warned of the impending danger, the crew decided to embark on the ill-fated route. On April 15, 1912, the boat scraped its right side along an enormous glacier, causing the vessel to take on water and sink. The monetary loss is estimated to be around $7.5 million (about $175 million in today’s currency). While this is a steep cost, it that pales when compared to the loss of life: Over 1500 people died.