What are some of the biggest f**k ups in human history?

1. Outside of political moves, probably the time Western Union told Alexander Graham Bell to fuck off with his "toy", the telephone. They offered the patent to WU for $100K ($~2M today), and two years later WU's president regretted it saying if he could buy it for $25M ($~550M today) it would be a bargain. Bell went on to start what would be American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).
   — One1pk


2. the git who released a few rabbits in Australia....you know, just for sport or shooting or hunting. One among the hundreds of fuckups that Australia didn't need.
   — avatharam


3. A Khwarezmian governor executing members of a Mongol caravan, and then executing diplomats sent to ask 'bro, what the fuck?'. The Mongols slaughtered 1.25 million people (a quarter of the Khwarezmian population) in retaliation, executed the governor by pouring molten silver into his eyes and ears, and according to legend diverted a river to completely wash away the home city of the Khwarezmian emperor. It also drew the Mongols west, and they proceeded to fuck up the Islamic caliphs in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and also brought the Black Death to Kaffa, which then spread to Europe. So one dude executed the wrong merchants, and like 100 million people died. Moral of the story? Don't fuck with the Mongols Edit: Yes I know the Mongols sound like the Dothraki, and the way the governor got killed is exactly like what happened to Viserys
   — JustASexyKurt






4. Torrey Canyon oil spill, 1967. Oil supertanker struck rocks and broke up, spills 25-36 million gallons of crude oil, causing huge amounts of environmental damage. For some reason no-one had considered this sort of thing would really happen, so there was no contingency plan to contain it, so the bright idea they came up with? Send in Royal Navy aircraft to BOMB the oil spill. As imagined, never worked very well. They also tried to use new forms of detergent, but those were poisonous to sea life as well. Maybe not the biggest f**k up in human history, but I always thought it was a pretty golden example of mind-blowing incompetence.
   — JustAboutCrazyEnough


5. Mars Climate Orbiter 1998. "NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation."
   — Kaaaol


6. Hyperinflation in post-WWI Germany. Basically, hey, we got stuck with the bill after war, what happens if we just print more money? People were taking wheelbarrows of money to the store and being told they didn't have enough for a loaf of bread. It led to mass political turmoil, which led to Hitler.
   — angruss






7. Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines launched a promo called the “Number Fever” in 1992. It instantly became a hit. Basically, the promo works like a lotto. The company would announce a number, and if the number in the bottom of the caps matches the drawn number, the cap holder wins. The highest amount to win was P1 million. Other smaller prizes were 100, 1000, 10 thousand, 50 thousand, and 500 thousand. Other Pepsi drinks such as Mirinda, Mountain Dew and 7 Up were also part of the promotional activity. Winning 3 digit numbers were announced daily. The sales was booming, it increased up to 40%. Everyone was happy, until on May 25, 1992, Pepsi announced the wrong number – 349. The prize was the whooping P1 million. Only one lucky person should win this. It turned out there were other 490,116 winners. Pepsi had printed the 349 number on 800,000 caps. The Company refused to pay the full P1 million prize to each of the thousands of 349 cap holders. Imagine, for example 1 million to 1,000 winners. That’s 1 billion pesos. And there were 490,116 winners. Pepsi had only a budget of P100 million for the Number Fever promo. As a result of Pepsi’s refusal to pay the full amount of the prize, the company faced thousands of lawsuits – civil, fraud and criminal. Riots and attacks from angry claimants also ensued. Also resulted to deaths, about 5 people died. Pepsi’s 37 delivery trucks were razed. A grenade was thrown into their Davao warehouse, 3 employees died in the incident. The company had to hire armed guards protecting their trucks during the delivery of their products. Some accepted the settlement prize of P35,000. Others were willing to go the extra mile, even more than a decade of lawsuit. But on June 20, 2006, the Supreme Court handed a decision nullifying the complainants’ claim of the prize of P1 million. Meaning – claimants could not get a single centavo of the highest prize. The Court’s decision said that the “winning caps should contain the security code that matched the winning number”. Pepsi got more than what they bargained for in a negative way. Revenue losses for sure and a tainted image. They still could not surpass Coca-Cola’s dominance in the Philippine market since then.
   — kramzazuki


8. Henry Clay's life goal was a desire to become the president of the United States. When his party, the Whigs, ran the candidate William Henry Harrison, he was offered the position of Vice President. Clay didn't accept, and John Tyler ended up being the Vice President candidate. The Harrison Ticket won. Harrison died a month later.
   — Puffinator-0