Stating the obvious.
How about Colombus? I don’t really feel the need to elaborate.
or
Alexander Fleming left a petri dish out over a long vacation and noticed that a green mold grew killing all of the bacteria in an area around them (the mold) thus the discovery of penicillian as an antibiotic.
It was the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, and it wasn’t an engineering problem, but a building one. There were two suspended walkways, one directly beneath the other. Both were to be suspended by cables from a set of structural beams at the top of the room. The lower walkway was supposed to be suspended by cables that were to pass through holes in the upper walkway and hooked directly into the support beams. The builders suspended the lower walkway by attaching cables to the upper walkway, instead of passing them through, thus subjecting the set of cables that supported the upper walkway to double the load they were designed for. This caused the cables to break, and the walkway to collapse, along with more than 100 people that were on them, and they fell on a large group of people below.
You could (fortunately) make a whole list just of Hitlers mistakes.Attacking the Soviet Union to make it a two-front war he could not afford is a classic one. Less well known is that when the first successful German jet fighter (Me-262) was developed, Hitler himself decided that this was the bomber he was looking for. As a result, the allied bombing raids on Germany wreaked havoc as they did not encounter the new high-tech fighters.
A Confederate officer deciding that his troop should make a small detour and get shoes at a little town in Pennselvania called Gettysburg.
Cornwallis getting so exasperated with the rebels that he decided to get rid of George Washington and his upstarts rebels once and for all with a very complicated three-pronged attack.
Stonewall Jackson deciding to reconnoiter the enemy himself, and because of that being shot by his own soldier when the soldier saw Jackson coming from the Union lines.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Clinton listening to that little little voice inside his head which said, “Who will know?”
The Germans in World War I turning away from Paris and heading to the backside of the French line.
The Japanese not following up their advantage after their bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The Germans in World War II not following up their advantage and wiping out the English at Dunkirk.
John Wayne saying “yes” to “The Conqueror.”
The allied forces attempting to push to Arnhem (sp) in what should have been the final push to encircle the Germans on the Western Front during the World War II.
I should point out that philosophically I’m glad that a number of these errors did happen but I bet they (those who committed the mistakes) were not.
TV
This seems a little less important than the beginnings of a war and also I don’t remember the details but for some reason I think it was Webber who tried to call a time out in the NCAA finals, they were down by two points and out of time outs with like 10 seconds left, time ran out while he was holding the ball calling time out
Life I may be wrong, but I think time WAS called, and he got a technical to give foul shots and possesion to the other team to lose the game. Similar to the Georgetown(?) player named Charlie Brown(?) who passed the ball near midcourt to the opposite team (UNC?) in the last seconds of the NCAA Finals to lose the game.
But back to the KC Hyatt Regency, imagine the engineers wanted to have two people suspended from a rope. They say, “Hang one rope, one guy hangs onto the middle, the other guy hangs onto the very end.” That was the plan. What happened, essentially, was the first guy was hanging onto the end of one rope, and he has another rope tied to his waist, and the second guy hangs onto the end of this second rope. Bad juju for the first guy.
Structurally, this is basically what happened. It would have taken a VERY LONG rod with threads more than half way up it to do it right. Threading rods takes effort and time, and the builders took a short cut. Classic Civil Engineering failure study.
Other mistakes? The Royal Navy loading of supplies for the Faulkands War. Classic military logistics failure study (as a for-instance, the extra blankets were stored on top of the bullets, and the gas was even lower down in the holds)
Absolutely, or you could sum it up by saying he micromanaged a top notch military command.
Since someone mentioned sports, how about Jack Dempsey’s refusal to find a neutral corner and let the referee count?
How about the Mars Climate Orbiter? That’s the one where part of the team used metric and part used English units, with calamitous results.
Umm…
Getting involved in a land war in Asia or going against a Sicilian when death is on the line?
Sorry I can’t be helpful =>
[quote]
The Japanese not following up their advantage after their bombing of Pearl Harbor.**
Eh?
There’ve been a few land wars in Asia.
New Coke.
The XFL.
Esperanto.
Beta format video.
Barney the Dinosaur (oh please god tell me that wasn’t on purpose!)
And Barney, there have been very few land wars in Asia we have done well in.
Sorry, meant beatle. That damn dinosaur eats your brain! I swear!
How about the Citibank Tower, in NYC, back in the Seventies? To save time and money, crucial welded joints were replaced with bolts, and if a strong enough wind came along, it would have fallen over if it hadn’t been for some engineering student catching the fault.
The full story can be found on the Useless Information page, at http://members.tripod.com/~earthdude1/citibank_tower/citibank.html
Also, from the same site, there’s an amusing story about Hasbro’s attempts to get rid of the Flubber toy product. Not famous, but pretty damn funny…
Whoosh.
Curse you, for posting this before I got to!
This is actually my favorite example of an engineering mistake. Even better is the way it was fixed. Lots of happy coincidences.
BTW, it’s the Citicorp tower, not Citibank. And they say a sustained wind of 70 mph would have toppled the building.
Hmmm, a similar thing was done to the Hindenburg. They tried to increase its structural integrity by coating the skin with aluminum oxide…oops that’s rocket fuel.
That is apparently what made the Hindenburg burn so fast, and not the hydrogen it was filled with. (Tho I doubt the hydrogen helped…)
There’s a big mistake though.
Columbus running into the new world.
Fleming leaving the dish out of the water allowing mold to grow.
Clinton not using a rubber.
Jesse Jackson not using a rubber.
“Barrabus, Barrabus, give us Barrabus”
The Titanic turning away from the iceberg (made the hole bigger)
Fanny Kaplan severely wounding Lenin in 1918, which he never fully recovered from, arguably shortening his life significantly. (You choose if the mistake was the attempt or the failure)
Goering switching the bombers to London.
Decca (IIRC) turning down a record deal with the Beatles.
On a fractionally less serious note:
Guessing wrong. (see LaurAnge’s post)
“You idiots! These are not them, you’ve captured their stunt doubles!”
Not putting the bunny back in the box.
“Who leaps out?”
“Lancelot, Galahad and I leap out of the rabbit…Ah.”
“I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh no, you knew it all didn’t you? It’s just a harmless little bunny isn’t it?”
Not expecting the Spanish Inquisition…
Correct teams, the player’s name is Freddie Brown of Georgetown who mistakenly passed the ball to a TarHeel at the end of the Championship Game. Oh, how I still feel for the guy after all these years!!! I remember John Thompson on the sidelines trying to console the poor kid. When they show replays of it, I just yell at the TV–“NO!! Don’t throw it to him!!!” But he always does…