What are some notable blunders in history that resulted in huge loss?
What are some notable blunders in history that resulted in huge loss?
Loss in terms of money or efforts. Could be recent or ancient.
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Okay, I listen to a fair amount of history podcasts, so let's see what I can pull out of my head for fun:
There was Rainbow Man, who famously went to sports games across America, holding up a sign that read "John 3:16" in an attempt to convert people to Christianity. He later died in a hotel shoot out where he took a maid hostage in his hotel room full of guns.
There was the time the President of America secretly went on a trip to Panama on one of two ships. While trying to show off to the president doing drills, the other ship accidentally shot a torpedo at the presidents ship. He pulled a pistol and attempted to shoot the torpedo with it.
The settlement at Roanoke, which was one of the earliest attempts by Europeans to settle in America and by the time ships got back with supplies (I believe years after they said they would be back) the settlement was empty. Still unsolved to this day.
America has dropped at least two nuclear warheads on itself accidentally, which have all failed to detonate.
Benedict Arnold was one of the best military minds ever born in America. He paid for his own troops for years, and when he asked for repayment or even his own salary, the Republicans claimed he actually owed the government money. They gave him tje reputation of only caring about money and refused to ever pay him until he finally took money from Britan to make ends meet.
George Bush senior crashed into German electrical lines and flew the plane back to base causing an international incident. He never received punishment for this and continued to fly for the military. He also did a bunch of drug smuggling and no one cared.
Look into pretty much any time people wanted to explore an area for the first time and there was most likely a massive loss of life and money. Australia and America seem to have the funniest stories of people's attempts to name every river and mountain they see.
That's what I got off the top of my head. :)
The settlement at Roanoke [...] Still unsolved to this day.
The word "CROATOAN" was carved on one of the buildings in the colony. The colonists had had friendly interactions with the native people living on Croatoan Island, which was nearby. There were later reports of native people with fair skin and beards on Croatoan Island.
So mysterious! Where could the colonists possibly have gone?
They were not the only white people to have ever been there though. The colonists could have been slaughtered and those were French decendents or something though. There is no way to prove what happened.
Historian here. Prove? No. Draw a highly likely conclusion that should accompany every telling as the most likely explanation? Yes.
Thank you for the professional input RimJob4.
Didn't even get it right lol
A Freudian Slip or a joke? Either is funny to me.
It's pretty common when people want to have an edgy name in a game with name filtering. You just swap the first letters in two words. Like datfick4, bamrutt4, that kinda thing.
No problem Dildo.
America has dropped at least two nuclear warheads on itself accidentally, which have all failed to detonate.
These are known as "Broken Arrow" incidents, and at least 32 have been officially recognized by the government. Some of them were accidental releases of the bombs, others were plane (or other vehicle) crashes that contained bombs. There's likely more that haven't been recognized by the government. almost all of them happened between 1950 and 1980. Now that the cold war has died down, we haven't been moving around our nuclear warheads as often and so haven't had a new one. At least, not an official new one.
It's pretty hard to have an accidental detonation at this point, though. Prompt criticality is tricky to achieve and easy to deliberately not achieve. Word is the newest bombs require a specific electronic sequence of fuse activations that's stored encrypted, and would require being a superpower to reproduce, so it's actually impossible to set them off as designed even if one was stolen.
Good info thanks for adding on!
None of these resulted in losses. In fact the nuclear bomb example is notable precisely because there were no losses. They're amusing failures or errors, but nothing was lost.
A nuke costs something like $80,000,000 to produce. It takes time and effort from multiple groups of people. What is an example of losses if this doesn't count?
There was Rainbow Man, who famously went to sports games across America, holding up a sign that read “John 3:16” in an attempt to convert people to Christianity. He later died in a hotel shoot out where he took a maid hostage in his hotel room full of guns.
^ Emphasis mine. I was curious about this and did a search. Turns out he's still alive.
Interesting! Thanks for the update!