The Most Expensive Mistakes in History

Failure leaves a bitter aftertaste, particularly when you’ve tried to give it your all but it just wasn’t enough. Nobody wants to fail, but there is no way to avoid it.

Even the most careful person is capable of messing up. But when money is involved, it can feel like you’re working in a pressure cooker.

So the next time you mess up, remember that it can always be worse. A lot worse. And these extremely expensive mistakes in history are proof of this.

Million Dollar Super Mistake

Henry Cavill was done shooting his Superman scenes for “Justice League” and went on to shoot another film that required him to have a ton of facial hair. But then Warner Bros.

needed the Superman actor to return to do a couple of reshoots. Unfortunately, Cavill couldn’t shave because of his commitment to the other movie, so the studio reportedly spent millions of dollars to give audiences the digital illusion that he was clean shaven.

Blockbuster Blunder

As Netflix’s popularity grew, Blockbuster’s popularity dwindled, but there was hope. In 2000, Netflix approached the video rental company with a proposal to handle the digital aspects of their business while they continued to run their physical rental stores.

Blockbuster responded with a polite thanks but no thanks. Now there’s only one Blockbuster left in Bend, Oregon, while Netflix’s digital empire continues to grow by leaps and bounds around the world.

Goodbye Mars Orbiter

In 1999, NASA’s Mars orbiter was literally lost in space after a metric miscalculation sent it on a course towards oblivion.

The mistake was the result of Lockheed Martin engineers using English measurements like inches and feet to program the orbiter’s course instead of NASA’s metric calculations like centimeters and meters.

As a result, the navigational computer was confused by the mishap and the $125 million orbiter ended up heading into the deepest regions of unknown space instead of Mars, which was its intended destination.

Scorching Skyscraper

A London skyscraper designed by Rafael Viñoly was dubbed the “Walkie-Talkie” because it looked like one and had all these awesome curves and a grill-like exterior.

Unfortunately, the wall that faced south had reflective glass that redirected the sun’s rays towards the unsuspecting people below.

As a result, the sun rays caused fires and melted things like cars. Luckily, they were able to stop this from happening by adding a permanent sunshade, which cost millions.