7 typos, who had to pay for incredibly expensive
The tiniest mistake or typo can lead to big trouble. In some cases, the damage caused by some missing punctuation or a couple of extra letters amounted to tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars:
Lost hyphens NASA
The damage: $ 80 million
The hyphen - is not the most important punctuation mark, but in 1962, its absence in the code of the onboard computer of NASA worth $ 80 million. We are talking about the launch of the guide to the spacecraft Venus "Mariner 1", which is due to a small mistake lost control and was destroyed in the 293 seconds after launch. English writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke wrote a few years later that Mariner 1 was "destroyed most expensive hyphen in history."
The case with the old ale
The damage: $ 502,996
The missing letter "p" in the name of 150-year-old ale cost the hapless seller more than half a million dollars. Several collectors know that the auction should expose a rare bottle of drink called "Allsopp's Arctic Ale", but could not find it, because the seller is lowered one letter in the title of "p" and sold "Allsop's Arctic Ale". As a result, the auction was attended by only two bidders, and the bottle went for $ 304. Buyer corrected the error and immediately sold the bottle for 503 300 dollars.
in the Bible error that changed the meaning of the commandments on the opposite
The damage: $ 4590
In 1631, English printers issued a Bible with an error in the seventh of the Ten Commandments - was leaked particle "no." In their presentation commandment began to sound as "adultery". This Bible dubbed the "Bible adulterers", publishers were fined three thousand pounds, and the entire edition had to be destroyed.
Pasta with racist bias
The damage: $ 20,000
The cookbook "Penguin", was released in Australia, proved to be a recipe pasta dish which was recommended seasoned "with freshly ground black people" ( "freshly ground black people"). It turned out that the cause of the scandal was the prescription error corrector, and in this place means "freshly ground black pepper" ( "freshly ground black pepper"). Revoke already sold did not, however, have not had time to disperse 7000 copies were destroyed and reprinted again.
The sale of shares at a low, catastrophically low prices
The damage: $ 340 million
In December 2005, Mizuho Securities trader Japanese company has received an application for the sale of one share at the price of 610,000 yen apiece. He mixed up the number of shares and price and, as a result, put up 610,000 shares at 1 yen. This error is caused chaos in the market, the collapse of the Nikkei index and led to the resignation of the leadership of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The damage amounted to 340 million dollars.
Record an expensive advertising campaign
The damage: $ 50 million
In 2007, the car dealer Roswell (New Mexico) came up with a "brilliant" publicity stunt: to produce and distribute 50,000 lottery tickets, one of which was winning a thousand dollars. But the company, which had to print tickets, mistakenly took their winning everything. That is, the total amount of winnings amounted to 50 million. Unable to pay the debt, car dealer promised to give each of the winning ticket gift certificate valued at five dollars.
An exotic vacation becomes erotic
The damage: $ 10 million
Several years ago, tourist company from California, "the Sonoma" decided to place your banner in the "Yellow Pages". When advertising beginning to bear fruit, they realized their mistake cruel. Instead of "exotic travel" in the directory have been promised "erotic". As a result, the company received not the popularity they had counted on. Printing error cost 10 million dollars, which has seized their travel company.