Mistakes are a part of human life. Every Human makes mistakes in his life and learns from those mistakes and moves ahead. Humans are also said to be the ‘Statue of Mistakes’. But if we make mistakes related to money then it is not so easy to recover. Below we have discussed some of the expensive mistakes made by humans and wasted millions of dollars for every mistake.
The 10 Most Expensive Mistakes Ever Made.
10. Excite.com
In the 1990’s and 2000’s Yahoo was the most visited website or search engine in the world. At the same time excite.com was the second most visited search engine in the world. In 1999 excite.com got an offer to buy Google for 1 million USD but the CEO of excite.com rejected to buy Google and it was the biggest mistake of his life. Because in today’s date Google has a market value of 280 Billion USD and the most visited website in the world.
9. New SNCF Trains
In 2014 France ordered 1800 new trains from the SNCF Company worth 20.5 Billion USD. The trains were ordered to make the railway system better in France. But the Government gave wrong dimensions to the company and trains became little bit wider from the old stations when trains were little slimmer. The Government measured 30 years old railway stations but most of the stations were made 50 years ago and here they made a mistake. After that the Government of France faced a loss of 68.4 million USD to reconstruct the old railway stations according to the new trains.
8. London Millennium Bridge
The famous London Millennium Footbridge was started to be constructed in 1998 and officially opened in June 2000. The Bridge was made over the River Thames for people crossing. The bridge was completed at a cost of £18.2 million. The engineers of the bridge focused on the Design, Gravitational force and sea level. But they forget about the force exerted by people walking on the bridge. On its opening day thousands of people came to experience the new bridge but the bridge started swaying motion. The bridge was eventually closed for that day and then for the next two years to make modifications and keep it stable. The reconstruction cost was nearly 6.3 million USD and the company faced a huge loss. It is one of the most expensive mistakes ever made.
7. A Million Dollar Typo by Alitalia
In 2006 Alitalia Airlines faced a huge loss of 7.7 million USD due to its silly mistake. Back in 2006 the cost of Business Class on a flight from Toronto to Cyprus was around 3900 USD but Alitalia Airlines misprinted it for just 39 USD so nearly 2000 people booked their tickets. At first the airline refused to continue the tickets but later they accepted the tickets for 39 USD. As I said above you won’t believe that due to such a silly mistake the company lost around 7.7 million USD. This was the biggest expensive mistake made by any airline ever in human history.
6. The Million Dollar Decimal Error
Back in the time a submarine was being constructed for the Spanish Navy but that submarine never worked for the Spanish Navy. The fixed weight for the submarine was around 7.7 tonnes but one of the engineers made a mathematical mistake or the Decimal Point Error. The engineer removed decimals from the number and printed the weight for around 77 tonnes. After the mistake was recognised the Spanish Government faced a loss of 11 million USD to recover. But even after that the submarine never worked and around 6.3 billion USD was wasted.
5. Never throw away your bitcoin
In 2009 a man named ‘James Howell‘ owned 7500 bitcoins. But he threw away the hard disk of his computer with his bitcoins. In 2013 bitcoin came in popularity and more and more people started investing in bitcoin. In 2013 the price of his 7500 bitcoins was around 3.5 Million USD and as of 2020 the price of his 7500 bitcoins was around 70 Million USD. This was the biggest mistake made by him and he might cry daily in any corner of his house.
4. The Lottery
Back in 2010 a woman living in Central England bought a Lottery ticket and waited for the results. When results were declared she did not feel happy even though she won a lottery of 183 Million USD. This is the biggest lottery prize ever. She did not feel happy because her husband threw the lottery ticket in the dustbin just 1 day before the results were declared.
3. The S.I. Unit Confusion
As we all know there are fixed units for measurement like Milli metre, centimeter, metre, kilometres, Milligram, gram, kilogram, litre and more. But Britishers uses different measurement measures called English Units like feet, inches, pounds, wounces and more. In 1999 Nasa launched Mars orbiter space mission and the directions to the satellite was given in meters and kilometres but Lockheed Martin Aerospace Company gave directions in feet and inches. And as a result the satellite was disturbed from its path and lost in space. In this project NASA’s 125 Million USD was wasted.
2. A Million Dollar Stock Market Typo
On 12 December 2005 a great person made a very good mistake. The J-Com company 1 stock price was around 610000 Yen (1 stock=610000 Yen). But a person in the Mizuho Company of Japan sold 610000 stocks in 1 Yen. How did he make such a great mistake, really unbelievable? Due to this mistake the company faced a huge loss of around 225 million USD.
1. Gold Mine for Sale
In 1867 Russia thought their land area had increased and it was difficult to control such a large area. So the government of Russia decided to sell 1.72 Million Square Kilometres to the USA for a price of 7.2 Million USD. But this was the biggest mistake made by Russia because today that land is called Alaska and has gold mines, natural gas and oil of a market value of around 200 Billion USD.
