The Biggest Mistakes In History Actually Cost a Fortune
Let’s admit it, we’ve all made mistakes. No human is perfect, but some mistakes can lead to extreme consequences. You’re looking at how things are and wonder how did this happen?
One thing is true, some mistakes remained in history as the biggest financial failures ever. One little mistake cost people billions of dollars!
From investing mistakes, to literally throwing away money in the garbage, we’ve gathered some of humanity’s biggest mistakes.
New Trains Won’t Fit!
It cost French train operator SNCF $68.4 million to make over 1,000 old train stations wider because SNCF officials only measured stations that were built 30 years ago.
Older train station were much narrower, and the only solution after the 2,000 new trains arrived on the lines in Paris was to widen the old train stations.
It’s not every day one simple mistake can cost a company $68.4 million!
How Can You Lose Bitcoin?
Talk about bad luck, a British IT worker named James Howells used his laptop to mine bitcoin back in 2009. His drive contained 7,500 bitcoin, which today, they’re worth $127 million!
The problem is he put the drive in the bin in 2013 and it was lost with the trash. He even tried to convince city officials to let him search the landfill, but they didn’t let him do it because it could have caused a “huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
Millennium Bridge Swinging
The “pure expression of engineering structure,” London’s Millennium Bridge was said to also be “an absolute statement of our capabilities at the beginning of the 21st century.” That was until the day of its opening when pedestrians felt like it swayed under their feet!
It was said engineers designed the bridge to withstand wind and weight. It took workers two more years to fix the swaying issues and the costs for that extra work rose to $6.3 million.
A Simple Typo At the Stock Market
Always proofread twice before sending some data! Unfortunately, the company J-Com learned it the hard way in 2005 when instead of listing its shares at 610,000 yen each, they listed 610,000 shares for 1 yen each!
It cost the brokerage firm to $225 million buy back and fix that typo!