Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What are some notable blunders in history that resulted in huge loss?

Loss in terms of money or efforts. Could be recent or ancient.

213 comments

China's Four Pests campaign is a great example. As the campaign says, China had a bit of a pest problem. One of these particular pests was the sparrow. The government decided it would be a great idea to launch an "exterminate sparrows" campaign. The only problem was sparrows ate other pests such as bedbugs and locusts.
In short, they sucessfully curbed the "sparrow problem" and replaced it with a "locusts and bedbugs problem". This ultimately upset the ecological balance and further lowered the rice yields. It was a complete disaster
- Sounds exactly like a China thing.
  
  I bet lemmygrad would explain how it was actually a good thing, especially for the sparrows.
- One of the best examples of unintended consequences, aiding in one of the largest human caused disasters.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
  
  I like to call it "The Great Stumble Backwards"
  
  Another good example is when the Soviet Union dammed the Aral Sea in order to create irrigation canals for cotton and other produce in the region. It worked at first and they had a huge economic boom, but this is also one of history's most prominent examples of "Ecological Collapse"
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea#Irrigation_canals
- The great leap forward was such a colossal clusterfuck that you can't blame it on any one thing (although most of them would be prevented without the authoritarianism). Literally everything was wrong. Sparrows, lysenkoism, forced collectivization (basically, and perhaps ironically, farmers not owning the means of production), Mao just being evil, backyard burners, rigid chain of command that gave the chairman absolute authority but at the same prevented him from knowing what was going on, everything.
- I vaguely remember reading about that when I was younger. I don't know if it's true, but this is what I read.
  The peasants and farmers were made to stand in the fields throwing stones at the sparrows, preventing them from landing. The thinking was that the sparrows would die from exhaustion, if they weren't killed by the stones.
  What actually happened was that the existing crops were either trampled or broken by the stones, and as the farmers weren't working the fields, nothing grew the following year either.
  Like I say, I have no idea whether it's true, or if it was just 80's anti communist propaganda, but it's stuck in my head ever since.
  
  The "why don't we just..." school of public policy.
  
  I'd be shocked if they could actually throw that many rocks, but the basic idea is that the policy didn't work as intended, and that's correct.
- Sounds similar to what we did in Australia.

Brexit. As historical blunders go, this has a beautiful unambiguous purity.
- I agree, but unlike usual blunders this was very much planned!
  
  Once the campaigns were underway, yes. But the opportunity came from a huge blunder by David Cameron. He called the referendum expecting an easy win for the remain side that would silence the anti-EU faction in his party and shore up his position as PM. Instead, the anti-EU faction won, prompting his own resignation and causing damage to the UK's economy, a loss of global influence, the loss of British people's right to live and work in the EU, and reopening difficult issues in Northern Ireland that had been laid to rest for years. It also arguably sped up the Conservative Party's lurch to the right and its embrace of UKIP-like policies, disempowering Conservative moderates and leading to the spiral of ever less competent governments we have seen since then. In particular, Boris Johnson's rise was a direct result of post-referendum power games among Conservative politicians.

We’ll there was that time Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan with the largest amphibious assault in history (until D-day) and got absolutely wrecked by a typhoon.
Then tried again a few years later, with an even larger force, and got wrecked by another typhoon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan
- You can't leave aside the fact that those typhoons were called "Divine Winds", or kamikaze.
  
  This kamikaze was far more effective than the later one, though.
- I doubt if it counts as a blunder, but thanks for sharing anyway.
  
  Their blunder was using disgruntled Chinese labor to build their ships. It turns out that conquering people makes them rather upset.

Twitter
- The Las Vegas Loop.
  (known on dictionaries as a tunnel)
  And nobody have died there yet.
  
  oh that's not a blunder, that was intentionally a flop to prevent California from developing a high speed rail network
- You mean X?

Do you guys remember that time u/Spez took the reddit API away from third party apps?
- Unfortunately most reddit users didn't even notice. Or just don't care.
  
  I hope the Redditors that didn't care about the whole thing never find their way here. I can't imagine being that apathetic about something you use daily.
- I wish it had the same effect as version 4 of digg. He is probably still over there, editing posts he doesn't like.
- Oh wow, that really takes me back. 🤌🏼
- Nobody cared. Only reddit addicts and power tripping jannies, who all seem to have migrated here.

World War I didn't do anyone any good whatsoever; including any of the various parties that might be blamed for starting it.
- I'm by no means brushed up on my world war knowledge, but didn't WWI help set the stage for the nazi party's rise in Germany? Still a horrible event, but may have benefited someone even if the wrong someone?
  
  Kinda. The winners of WWI decided to leave Germany be, but took most things of worth and some land. The reparations were brutal. I think Germany finished paying of the reparations a few years ago. Additionally there was military propaganda that the reich was "undefeated in battle, stabbed in the back", because the civilians negotiated the harsh peace treaty and ignoring the fact, that the war was going badly.
  I will not go more into details because I do not know exactly. But the combination of a very depressed economy, the feeling of being treated unjust and the desire for revenge led to a disgruntlement -> rise of populism -> rise of extremist parties.
  I am missing a ton, but when things are unstable it is easierfor radical forces to emerge and succeed.
  Hitler literally was tasked to spy on the NSDAP and joined them. You have to see: at the time two major parties in the reich were anti constitutional.
  That is why a lot of people in Europe look worringly at trump or at least at the whole movement. The USA has issues that need fixing. There is a large disgruntled part of the population and people start to radicalize.
  I may generalize, but the start of WWI was mostly a series of pride, miss communication and bad luck.
  
  Nazism may have been the worst thing that ever happened to the German people.
  
  but didn’t WWI help set the stage for the nazi party’s rise in Germany? Yes, but the Great Depression was another big factor. It amplified the country's economic woes...

King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He was known for winning battles against superior armies, at the cost of taking heavy losses. He was once quoted as saying "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
He was so famous for this, that the term for a victory that devastates the victor bears his name, a Pyrrhic victory.
- I would have expected to see this story way higher in this thread!

Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It led what might be the first great infographic ever though. Charles Minard’s Infographic of Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia from 1869 (Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée française dans la campagne de Russie en 1812-1813)
Tan colour line from left to right is the trip from France to Moscow, 1mm line weight = 6000 soldiers, black colour line from right to left is the trip back to France. The line slowly thins and diverges like a tree branch until 422k soldiers are whittled down to 10k returning. Not quite the outcome Napoleon had intended.
- Also the temperature at the bottom showing how cold it was on the way back. It explains why everyone died in the river.
- Saddam?
- I've heard that if he hadn't ordered the retreat, they probably would have succeeded.
  
  Given the Russians burnt out everything they left behind, which is one big reason the line keeps thinning, I doubt they would have survived very long on the land they occupied. But I'm no Franco-Russian war historian, I just like data.

When the Spanish were raping the New World in the 1500s for gold, they dumped enormous quantities of platinum into the ocean because it was the wrong kind of shiny metal. Nobody in Europe had any clue how valuable the stuff was, only that it was often used to counterfeit gold. But since it wasn't gold, or even silver, everyone thought it was worthless. This was exasperated by the fact that nobody could melt the stuff until the 1800s. But mostly it was just not yellow enough for the idiots at the time.
- You don't hold onto a useless material for 400 years hoping it has some value in the future.
  
  Ever heard of the cables drawer? Bet you feel real stupid now
  
  HODL

Knight Capital - They were biggest equities trader in 2012. They manually deployed code and didn't get configuration right and it reactivated "Powder Peg". They lost $460 M in 45 minutes and went bankrupt.
- The program was called "Power Peg" for those googling for it. It was a test program not intended to be used on the live market.
  The Power Peg program was designed to buy a stock at its ask price, and then immediately sell it again at the bid price, losing the value of the spread.
  The Worst Computer Bugs in History: Losing $460m in 45 minutes
  
  I get the impression that power peg is a risky google.
- Thanks for sharing. This is exactly the kind of blunder I had in my mind when asking the question, a seemingly silly mistake like forgetting to do something causing way too much trouble!
  
  It's actually a good case for why you needed devops and an automated build/release
- Talk about a Nanosecond Buyout!

The Jan. 6th insurrectionists who thought Trump was going to pardon them all because they were heroes.
- Or that they were doing the middle class any favors by fucking up the nation's credit score (as it were) with their smooth-brain fuckery. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Buying Twitter for 44B and renaming it to X.
- Recent or ancient, not future.
  
  They lost almost half their ad revenue. I'd call that recent. Of course, it hasn't actually killed the platform...
- Would be even more of a blunder if people just absolutely refuse to stop calling it Twitter.

Elon acquiring Twitter for $44B in the first place, not taking into account the subsequent blunders. He not only overpaid too much for a social media company without even understanding it, he also wrecked Tesla's stock price as investors saw he was clearly spending too much time on Twitter and he had to panic sell Tesla shares to fund his Twitter adventure. He easily wiped out hundreds of billions from Tesla's market cap during that time.
- I would say he overpaid by exactly the right amount.

Since December 1982, the O-rings had been designated a “Criticality 1″ item by NASA, denoting a component without a backup, whose failure would result in the loss of the shuttle and its crew.
Richard Feynman[:] “… [the shuttle] flies [with O-ring erosion] and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn’t be done over and over again like that.”
Taken from an excellent writeup of the fatal 1986 Challenger flight.
- Never forget that Reagan heavily pressured them to not delay for political reasons
  
  Ahh, the Gipper strikes again. Famously an expert Economist, Rocket Scientist, and "totally not a racist"

Chernobyl comes to mind as the biggest fuck up ever. Whenever I think I fucked up I try to remember, it can never be as bad as Chernobyl.
- Ended up taking down the soviet union. The whole meltdown is fascinating. I read a book about it. I think it was called midnight at chernobyl, so something like it.
  
  What I know of it is mostly from the HBO mini-series that aired a few years ago. Did it really have that much impact on the fall of the USSR? My understanding was that the gradual attrition of competing with the West was the ultimate cause. I'm interested to learn more. Gonna go read some wikipedia on it.
- Yeah it struck fear, we could never fully utilize nuclear energy because people are scared.
- I was going to say something like the Hindenburg, but I think you have me beat.

The Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and his friends were about to blow up parliament, and on the week it was supposed to happen, one of his accomplices sent a letter to a noble. In what was probably the worst example of "asking for a friend" in history, it asked "hypothetically, what would happen if someone went into the basement and blew up parliament". The noble did what nobody expected he would do and, get this, responded to the letter. People searched the palace basement and found Guy Fawkes, he was arrested and killed, and we have Guy Fawkes Day. The reason this led to a loss is because the king of England at the time used it as an excuse to persecute Catholics and make the holiday which is used as a taunt.
- Guy Fawkes wasn't just killed though. He and his fellow conspirators suffered greatly before they died, and even after death their executioners inflicted torment on the corpses.
  "They were to be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both". Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become "prey for the fowls of the air".
  
  Based on his orders, the king sounds like he had a bone to pick.

Russia invasion of Ukraine. They used to be number 2 army with sophisticated weapons. Now they are number 1 world laughing stock with weapons that works exceptionally well for invading Mars but not on earth.
- As they say, from number 2 army in the world to number 2 army in Ukraine.
  Now with a risk of becoming number 2 army in Russia...
  
  Briefly number two in Russia even.
- I don't think they used to be the number two military. I think people THOUGHT they were a world class military. Apparently hadn't been for decades.
  
  Similar to the misperception of the USSR from outside before the collapse.
- You still believing that? Wow
  
  It is not a belief, it is fact.

Does personal blunders count? Because I changed my Bitwarden password and now I'm locked out of all my accounts.
For details: https://reddthat.com/post/1115518
- This is why I never felt comfortable enough to use one of those. A have a formula for generating passwords for each account so I only have to remember that instead of individual passwords. I know password manager might be more convenient but I'm too used to the way I've been doing things all these years...
  Have you had any luck recovering your Bitwarden?
  
  What's more likely: forgetting the master password to your password manager or one of the many passwords you have memorized? I totally get not wanting to trust a hosted service with all of your passwords in case it disappears (having an offline backup would remedy that), but not using one out of fear of forgetting a master password is overblown.
  
  Bitwarden effectivly uses your master password to encrypt all the other passwords.
  Without the master password all the data is gibberish. Even if you reset your master password, you get back nothing.
  
  Um I'm still searching for the final piece of the puzzle. I know every word (or at least I'm 99% sure) except for one word. The way I make passwords, especially for important passwords that I can't risk forgetting (ironic, since I still forgot), is to choose a word and make an acoustic poem out of it. Like for example (not the actually password or the "seed word"):
  Lemmy:
  Lemons Eat My Melons Yesterday
  The actual passphrase I chose is unfortunately does not form a sentence nor are related words. This is how I choose to compromise between security and being able to remember.
  So I know the starting letters of every word of the passphrase, and I know how many words there are, I'm just missing one word. 🥲 I feel so sad. Luckily, Bitwarden allows unlimited attempts, but each attempt requires a captcha. All these captchas I gotta solve... 🥲
  
  I used to do this, there's always a slight worry that some place will get a couple of your passwords and be able to figure out your formula the chances are pretty slim. Were the real pain came from me, when a website forces you to change your password, or they require some limit to the letters numbers and punctuation that wouldn't allow me to use my formula. I had a growing list of websites that had more exceptions.
- Sorry to hear that. I didn't mean to remind people of their personal mistakes. Hope you'll recover your password soon.
- You have my deepest sympathies
  
  That's that actually makes me feel better (seriously, not joking). I'm learning a lot words as I flip through the dictionary looking for that last word of the passphrase, so I guess thats a silver lining?? 🙃🥲 Maybe I'll find that word soon... any day now...

Didn't really result in a loss, but a huge missed opportunity, when AT&T turned down an offer for them to purchase the early internet.
- At least something we can all cheer about :)
  This also reminds me of Yahoo turning down the offer to buy Google in their early stage! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/remember-yahoo-turned-down-1-132805083.html
  
  The thing to remember with these examples is that those companies would have royally fucked up their purchases. Big companies always impose a culture and a mindset.
  AT&T would definately have crushed the internet with a monopoly - we would have had to use AT&T approved internet devices, and they would have brought long distance type charges to it. Oh so your email is going overseas? That’s an extra 10c.
  Same with Google and Netflix. They were all able to continue with the founders vision and create something special.
  
  Or Blockbuster turning down a $50 million offer to buy out Netflix.

I'm willing to nominate Charles II, King of Spain as a formerly alive blunder. The result of decades of Hapsburg inbreeding, he had a number of health and intellectual issues from birth and he was notably infertile. If you live in a monarchy where succession is passed down through children, it's REALLY BAD to be infertile and be King. His death directly caused the War of the Spanish Succession, a 13-and-a-half year war that eventually involved pretty much all of western Europe and likely led to the deaths of over 1 million people.
Literally could have avoided this if the Habsburgs decided to have sex with other people.
- You should be blaming his parents, he didn't ask for all those problems to be born with.
  
  Literally what I'm doing

Target's failed expansion into Canada. It's taught as a case study on what not to do in business schools now.
- Walmart's attempt to break into the German market is hilarious
  Burger King tried to open up in France and literally nobody would eat their muck. So when McDonald's tried, they had to completely change their menu and service style. Hence, "McDo's" in France is actually quite good
  
  When I was in France this past spring I did see advertisements for Burger King so they must have had some success. I do remember McDonald's having great dessert options.
- Wendy's tried to get into the Netherlands, but couldn't, because there was already a snackbar (think small fastfood place but greasier) that was registered under the name "Wendy's" at the chamber of commerce. This spawned a lawsuit. You had Wendy's, a local snackbar who claimed rights to the name because they were already established, and Wendy's, a franchise coming from America. They claimed right to the name because they were a franchise, and not just a single fastfood joint.
  To solve this issue, the local snackbar opened up a second location, making local Wendy's a franchise, and winning them the lawsuit
- It was so weird when Target opened in my city. Everyone was pumped for the great deals Americans are always on about. The grand opening comes, and it was basically just a super expensive Walmart with half the products out of stock. Then they closed without notice like a month later. Employees came in the morning to open up and there were chains on the doors.
- I’m not familiar with this story, could you give some details?
  
  Empty stores, somehow, store managers had a perverse incentive to keep store inventory levels low. Their prices were really high as well. A rushed SAP implementation meant that executives didn't have enough insight into business operations. You can read more here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada

Well, Russia, in 2022...

In terms of money and business, my fav is how Xerox didn't know how to market/capitalize on what was effectively the first personal computer before personal computers were even a concept, which is estimated to be a $1.4 trillion mistake.
- This Xerox Alto restoration series is a really interesting reflection on that. Here's the point in the series where they finally get it running. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OQMhvArI9g
  Yeah, Xerox made revolutionary progress. But it appears that their proximity to a viable consumer product is a bit exaggerated. It really did still take another set of eyes and minds to wrangle it in. I think if they did release it sooner, and without the leaks, the next competitor still would have seen that and soon come along and done a better enough job to nullify their first-mover advantage.
  Those days were chock full of companies that ended up just contributing to the zeitgeist of computing without themselves reaping in the glory.
  I think Steve Jobs' comments about what Xerox could have been... Is largely him stroking his ego that he and Apple pulled off what they couldn't.
  I don't think Xerox would be the Mac of today in most timelines.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9OQMhvArI9g
  https://piped.video/watch?v=9OQMhvArI9g
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
- Thanks for sharing, I remember this from a documentary on Steve Jobs.

Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund founded in 1994 that had notable academics and Nobel Prize winners on its board. It was very successful in the early years (while critics warned of the risks) and eventually collapsed in 1998, losing $4.6 billion in a matter of months due to its leverage and impacts of currency crises. The US government stepped in to shore up the financial system. It's taught as a case study in how a strategy can post impressive returns but quickly turn into a wipeout.

Scotland trying to colonize the Darien gap It bankrupted Scotland and forced the union of England and Scotland to be the UK.

The first thing that came to mind, oddly enough, was Blockbuster refusing to buy Netflix for the equivalent of a rat and a string to swing it with.
- I really doubt that Netflix would be what it is today if they had gotten bought. Too much would change too soon.
  
  In that case it may have prolonged the movie-rental paradigm by a few years allowing Blockbuster to dominate a bit longer.

Coming down from the trees was a pretty big blunder. Nothing but losses ever since.
- And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
  
  In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
- But... but we wouldn't be having this conversation if our ancestors hadn't done that! 🤷‍♀️
  
  Yeah that's part of the mistake

The Battle of Manzikert led directly to the end of the Roman Empire, all because of mismanagement.
- Battle of Manzikert
  If I saved one person the 4 calories worth of finger movements required to open a new tab and Google this themselves then I'll go to sleep happy.
  
  Bah! I'm in the habit of spending those calories (history nerd) and did so before reading your comment. Still, your comment is appreciated. Also, thanks to @Cleverdawny for clueing my into something I hadn't known.
  
  Thank you, my bulk is saved

King Mansu Musa was incredibly rich and when he went on hajj to mecca he spent much of his gold in Egypt causing a massive inflation. On his way back to Mali this has caused him needing to spend much more this time on his route through Egypt which is why he needed loans from merchants.
Dunno if this could be considered a big loss?
- Whether many of the answers here count as a blunder or not, I'd like to say that I got way more replies than I expected and came to know about a lot of stuff I would have never heard otherwise. Thanks for sharing.

Prepare to laugh your ass off.
I'm due for surgery next month to finally get my ass sewn back on after listening to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jDbJbCuKl4
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=5jDbJbCuKl4
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  Can we make a bot that cuts out the begging for likes and subscribes for a full minute at the start of videos?
- I didn't think I'd watch the whole video but wow, the level of incompetence was just unrivaled. Komchatka was captained by Mr. Bean confirmed.
- Wow. I was so annoyed by the prospect of a 20min video but it was chock full of incredible moments of stupidity. Good entry.
  
  Sorry about your ass. But it was worth it right!
- I had to brush the dust off after rolling around on the floor.
- 33,000 km, woah!

Cambium stock recently dropped to $10 after the CEO stepped down during their call. A large part of their problems are likely due to the pandemic shortages catching up.
But a high failure rate on their new line of switches, and high prices while starlink eats their lunch isn't helping.
Edit: Used to be over $50.
- you may want mention the before stock price, that $10 needs something to compare with
  
  It was around $15.

Any history book will be filled with such stories. Depending on the outlook, I'd say all history is like that.
Take any one event. Let's pick any decisive moment in history. Say, the battle of Salamis. Now flip it to the side of the Persians and you have the kind of blunder you're looking for.
- Very true when talking historical events. Say the USA lost the American Revolution and it's now a land mass of Brits that can't believe how foolish the revolutionaries were. (Although if other colonies are any indication independence may have eventually happened anyways)
  
  Difference being canada still sings "God save the Queen/King" and it would be a parliamentary government instead of the 3 branches. Maybe things would be less deadlocked and more democratic if the American Revolution failed. (Ironic, I know)
  
  Say the USA lost the American Revolution and it’s now a land mass of Brits that can’t believe how foolish the revolutionaries were.
  Futurama imagined this: All the Presidents' Heads

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.
- 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!

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg

Oil spills, wars, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, not counting for 2 decimal places in employee cheques by a large firm in Metropolis
- Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberate atrocities, not sure how you’d list them as blunders.
  
  How about neither atrocity nor blunder? It was the right thing to do and saved lives on both sides by ending the war in the Pacific. Wars still happen but we've gone nearly 80 years without making the world wars into a trilogy since nobody sane wants to invite that level of destruction again.

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