I guess this is a “help me with my homework!” thread; I’m working on a project which I want to start with a list of famous mistakes in world history, and I can’t think of one. I can only think of accidents which weren’t the redult of human error. Help me please, you clever dopers.
Ivory soap – it didn’t originally float. A worker left a mixing machine running too long, and the “soap soup” got too much air mixed into it. The company didn’t even know about it until they started getting letters asking for more of “the floating soap.”
How about General Custer? Wrong-Way Corrigan? The Exxon Valdez? Leisure suits? 
The Challenger disaster? The Titanic? Three Mile Island?
This should get your juices going.
How about that bridge that’s famous because its builders forgot to factor in the power of the wind, and the thing twisted and contorted itself to an early death?
Don’t know the specifics, but there was an early edition of the Bible printed. In the middle of the ten commandments, a printing error resulted in a single word being omitted.
The text read “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
Mebbe not famous, but pretty durn funny.
Post-It Notes. The original inventors at 3-M (IIRC) were trying to come up with a new adhesive, but couldn’t get it to stick correctly. One of the team noticed that the lack of permanent adhesion would work well for what it eventually came to be used for.
That would be the Tacoma Bay Narrows Bridge. The “builders” didn’t forget anything, it was the engineers who screwed up. The engineers didn’t forget to factor in the power of the wind. The error had to do with the resonant frequency of the system. When the wind was blowing hard the bridge went into resonant mode and the vibrations didn’t dampen as they would have if the bridge had been designed correctly. Every mechanical engineering student has seen that film at least a hundred times.
Haj
How 'bout electricity? In the early days scientists knew electricity flowed from one direction to another. They had a 50/50 shot.And got it wrong. Today we understand electricity flows from negetive to positive.Oops.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
huge mistake, lots of deaths, sad really
How about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War?
Great book on this - “Backfire”, by Loren Baritz.
–umm, you can also go to your newspaper and read about the Greenville accident.
–The Apollo 1 accident was caused when NASA thought it would be better to test with pure oxygen then another gas that wouldn’t burn like a blow torch, which the oxygen did and killed all three astronauts inside.
– Oct 1871 a huge fire in Chicago which is now said to have been caused by this homeless? guy Mrs. O’Leary had go into her barn. Apparantly she took the blame so the man wouldn’t be lynched.
The “Battle of Bunker Hill” was fought on Breed’s Hill.
This “fact” had been so firmly ingrained in the American psyche that, rather than try to educate the public about the truth, the name of Breed’s Hill was changed to Bunker Hill. So the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on what is now called Bunker Hill, but at the time of the battle was Breed’s Hill.
Pauly Shore’s film career.
LOL! I love this.
Anyway. My choice—
The DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN headline in the Chicago newspaper. (I vas der Charlie) Wish my parents had kept the paper.
Gore Wins Florida! headlines early Nov 8th, 2000.
1972 Olympic Backetball finals (oops, not an accident, that was cheating)
The X-Ray.
Pickett’s Charge, Gettysburg.
My first wife.
The Maginot Line, western France, WWI (although it DID work, it was not effective strategically, and never fell to Germany until VERY late)
Not declaring war on Russia immediately after WWII (according to George Patton, anyway).
The Gremlin.
I don’t remember enough details, but no doubt someone else will – elevated walkway in a hotel that collapsed when, during a party or celebration, too many people were on it. The amount of weight it needed to hold had not been calculated correctly.
Chocolate chip cookies (the chocolate was supposed to marble throughout the cookies as they baked, or something.)
Silly Putty’s cooler properties were accidentally discovered, if I recall correctly.
The Hubble telescope before it got fixed.
Aside: Wrong Way Corrigan knew damn well which way he was going. And so did everybody else, but the Depression-weary world needed a good laugh, so they winked at his “mistake” and made him a hero.
Wrong-Way Corrigan did indeed know which way he was going. Trust me.
– N. L. Corrigan
A structural engineering classic. The amount of weight was correctly calculated originally by the structural engineers. The achitects made some fancy pants changes to make the area more visually appealing which significantly changed the design. Because of some poor communication between the parties, recalculations were never performed to see if the new design could hold the required weight plus a safety factor. Major, major fuck up.
Haj
I was watching “History’s Lost and Found” and one segment focused on “Little Miss 1565 [?]” one of several children who were killed when a circus tent she and hundreds of others were in went up in flames (can’t remember which town, but it was in a New England state if that’s any help). Why did the tent burn up and so quickly? Seems in those days, tents were being waterproofed with a solution that inclded gasoline. THOUSANDS of gallons of this stuff.
Wish I could remember more details for you, but hopefully this is enough to start a web search.
Patty