The show was “Fire Under the Big Top”. Summary: “Rare footage of the 1944 fire under a Ringling Bros. circus tent in Connecticut that killed 168 people.” The waterproofing mixture was gasoline and paraffin! The accounts of “Little Miss 1565” and other children who died were very touching.
IIRC, Isaac Asimov wrote in an article that it was Ben Franklin himself who made that wrong guess.
Other errors:
Hitler conducting a war against Russia during the winter.
Ditto Napoleon.
marvel, i believe you are referring to the circus fire in hartford ct. the circus tent was waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline. okay, that takes care of
water, now what do we do about fire?!?! stewart o’nan wrote a very good book about the circus fire.
as to the op: invading russia just in time for winter.
a certain miami dolphin kicker thinking he was a quarterback.
selling babe ruth to the yankees.
building a glass building where the glass falls down and goes tink. then finding out you are the insurance company for the glass manuf.
billy buckner.
as for the hotel skywalk… shop drawings are very important documents.
LaurAnge, strange that I was thinking the exact same thing while going through this thread. Good thing I actually read the replies before posting.
Actually, not to say that Columbus landing here wasn’t actually an acident, but let me elaborate. Despite popular opinion nowadays, people back then knew the Earth was round. They even believed it was the size that it actually is (or close to it). The problem was that no one knew about North and South America even existing. They thought it was all open water between here and China. Consequently, Columbus was denied the right to go on his voyage by Isabella because no one was capable of surviving the voyage. Columbus played with the math a bit and convinced them that Earth was half the size it really was. He must have convinced himself in the process because he believed he had nearly circumvented the globe when he came ashore. So yes, it was a mistake, but one that I do believe needed a bit of clarification.
Also, vulcanized rubber was created on accident.
And don’t get me started on the Crusades…
Just wanted to point out that Beta format video was better than VHS. VHS won the marketing wars, but not because of product superiority.
Film students and other poor filmmakers sometimes use Beta because of the high quality and low cost. You won’t catch 'em using VHS.
not true!!!
it was not built to plan!!!
believe it or not,
it all stemmed down to a change in the hanger rod arrangement during construction, which doubled the load on the connection.
the design was modified without proper safety checks during construction, and the catwalks over Kansas City’s Hyatt Regency atrium fell in 1981, killing 114.
see the book: why buildings fall
ugh:
The achitects made some fancy pants changes (rolls eyes).
The engineers didn’t forget… they designed the bridge for a different area under different conditions. The resonant frequency of the bridge wouldn’t have been an issue there. The people who actually built the bridge didn’t realize that the Tacoma Narrows have a constant wind blowing down it and that the bridge wasn’t designed to deal with that.
Just figured I’d try to defend the engineers. It wasn’t their fault… it was the people who figured one bridge is as good as another and put it up in a spot where the wind allowed the resonant frequency to be reached (which was pretty damn cool to watch, btw). Typical Dilbert scenario… the PHB made a decision without knowing anything about it. 
For a very controversial definition of “mistake,” how about the concept of “blowback,” as discussed by Chalmers Johnson?
Here’s a link:
<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blowback_CJohnson/Blowback_CJohnson.html>
Basically, it’s about what happens “when wartime decisions come back to haunt the people who made them.” In one case, it’s about the CIA’s involvement in training Afghani terrorists to resist Russion occupying forces, which has direct connections to the terrible events of September 11th.
[flame caveat]
I am not endorsing Chalmers’ view, and am still looking at it myself. However, I have to admit that I find his analysis both compelling and disturbing.
[/flame caveat]
Leaning Tower of Pisa?
The Franklin Expedition.
Much of the Canadian arctic archipelago and mainland arctic was explored by land and sea expeditions trying to rescue the Franklin Expedition. The Franklin Expedition was frozen in, but rather than waiting it out, they set off south on foot, towing lifeboats loaded with silver dinner services and the like. Needless to say, they didn’t make it, resulting in many years of further resuce expeditions.
Why did they make such a silly error? They were mad a hatters, having consumed too much lead due to the lead solder in the food cans.
Howyadoin,
Close, but the bigger mistake was Clinton & Jesse’s fathers not using said rubbers…
-Rav
Some years ago there was an Air Canada jet that actually ran out of gas in midair because the ground crew read the fuel as being in gallons when it was really in liters. The only thing that saved them was that the pilot flew gliders in his spare time, and just kicked into glider mode when they realized what was happening.
It’s the flow of ‘free’ electrons that’s ‘negative’ to ‘positive’, not electricity per se. And ‘negative’ is only considered negative due to another essentially 50/50 choice in electrochemistry. I want to say it was Faraday, but it was probably someone earlier who started that.
Today it’s not as important, as semiconductors contain positive as well as negative charge carriers, but yes, it was a bad guess at the time.
After the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, there was a struggle with the insurance companies, who originally were only willing to ‘repair’ or restore the bridge as it originally was. This was obviously unacceptable from an engineering standpoint. Governor Arthur Langlie eventually got them to pay even more than what the original bridge cost, but this took many months. By then it was December, 1941, and the new bridge was not finished until 1952. I believe the 50-year-old bridge is soon to be replaced to allow for increased traffic.
Speaking of rubbers, did anyone mention Goodyear’s invention of vulcanized rubber?
I’m guessing by now TYG’s either turned in this assignment or failed the course, but I’d like to drop in a plug for It Seemed Like a Good Idea… edited by William R. Forstchen and Bill Fawcett. An entertaining volume of infamous historical mistakes.
That’s weird, I thought most commercial planes measured the fuel by weight, not volume.
Can you elaborate on this? Coming from a country that, generally speaking, doesn’t get too excited by Basketball (Britain) Ihave no idea what you are on about. A web search brought up something about free throws, but I am still lost.
I don’t remember the specifics, but these are the basics: The U.S. Basketball team was leading the Soviet Union when the time ran out in the final quarter. However, after much discussion, the officials decided that a few seconds should be added back on the clock. Play resumed. Again, the time ran out, and again it was decided that time should be put back. I believe this happended a third time. But this time when play resumed, the Soviet Union scored and won the game. The U.S. subsequently refused the Silver Medal. Incindetally, this was the first ever “loss” by the U.S. in Olympic history. Up to that point they were 62-0.
I see no one has mentioned Fed Ex’s colossal business blunder, Zap Mail, back in 1986. This service was marketed as a way to send documents as overnight mail, but in reality was simply a fax getting sent from one FedEx office to the next.
They grossly miscalculated how many businesses would buy and use their own fax machines, which resulted in a loss of close to $200 million.
I believe that (Tarheel or Tar Heel) was James Worthy, who was way out of position. I never heard anyone ask him what he was doing out there - there was no one to guard, what was he doing? He stood there like he expected the pass, too.
YIKES!