10 Innocent Typos That Had Shocking Consequences

General1

5 – Shares for a Steal,

5b

  • In December 2005, a trader on the Tokyo stock exchange made what’s known in the business world as Code 11 – that is he completely fucked up!
  • Obviously the trader had his pants on backwards that day, because he intended to trade one share at 610,000 yen, but instead placed an order for 610,000 shares at one yen each.
  • No amount of pleading to the Tokyo Stock Exchange could reverse the error and the firm’s loss was around $18.7 million in damages. Christmas bonus forfeited!

4 – Money Misprint,

4d

  • Coin misprints have happened at mints all over the world, but they’re usually minor details like the modified coin husks on Wisconsin state’s quarter.
  • Certainly no coin errors have been as shocking as the one that occurred at the Chilean Mint. Engraver Pedro Urzua Lizana made an error in late 2008 that was overlooked by all his superiors. Under the approval of multiple employees, the Chilean Mint printed coins that misspelt the name of their own country.
  • The coins, which read ‘Chiie’, somehow went unnoticed until ten months later. By that point they were widely circulated and the Chilean government couldn’t do anything about it.
  • The general manager and responsible staff were sacked for the humiliating oversight and the coins went on to become huge collector’s items.

3 – Racist Pasta,

3b

  • The Australian arm of juggernaut publisher Penguin made an unfortunate blunder in 2010 publication of The Pasta Bible.
  • Instead of pepper, the recipe recommended seasoning the dish with ‘salt and freshly ground black people’.
  • No recall was made of the books already being circulated, but the printer quickly destroyed all 7000 remaining copies in its inventory. It’s lucky the error wasn’t preserved using the powers of the interweb…

2 – NASA’s Missing Hyphen,

2c

  • Hyphens, or dashes, aren’t usually considered important punctuation, but the absence of one from a line of coding spelt disaster for NASA in 1962.
  • The missing hyphen caused the failure of Mariner 1, America’s first interplanetary probe. Given America’s determination to win the Space Race, it’s possible the dash was a communist bent on sabotaging the mission.
  • The missing hyphen was needed to correctly set the craft’s trajectory. Without it, the craft exploded minutes after takeoff.
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey novelist Arthur C. Clarke called it ‘the most expensive hyphen in history.’

1 – X-Rated Vacation,

4d

  • Back in the prehistoric days of phone books, California-based travel agency Banner Travel Services printed an unforgettable ad in the Yellow Pages.
  • Their ad boasted of the company’s “forte in ‘erotic’ destinations”. Obviously they’d meant to write ‘exotic’, but the typo certainly piqued the interest an entirely new demographic: perverts!
  • The printer that approved the mistake offered to waive its usual $230 monthly listing fee, but Banner Travel Services went ten steps further and sued for $10 million.

 

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