What was the biggest fuck up in history?
Reddit top voted answers...
- When Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800. That would be worth $35 billion today.
- In 2003, a lost hunter lit a signal flare near San Diego. The flare started a fire that would later spread to become the biggest one in the history of California. The fire destroyed an estimated 300,000 acres, 2,322 homes, and killed 14 people.
- 1666 great fire of London.Started by a baker who left a pie in the oven too long. Perhaps the bigger fuck up was that most of the buildings were made of wood and built very close together
- Mao ordering the mass killing of birds because he thought they would eat the corn off the farms and compromise the harvest. In the end the lack of birds lead to a explosive growth in parasite populations that destroyed the harvest completely in some areas. What followed was a massive famine killing millions.
- In terms of the entertainment industry: Blockbuster turning down an offer to buy Netflix.
- That grad student who killed the world's oldest tree trying to measure its age.
- Not accepting Hitler to art school.
- The beginning of the universe. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
42 comments:
Walter Mondale against the Gipper deserves honorable mention.
Lem, the only electoral wipeout that compares is McGovern vs Nixon '72, and McGovern carried MA by 200,000 votes. Granted, he lost his home state by about 25,000 votes, but Mondale only took his by a mere 5000 votes
Goldwater '64 doesn't come close, Barry took 6 states.
Actually, I'd say Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver getting lost in the back streets of Sarajevo and turning a corner to come face-to-face with a dejected Gavrilo Princip, who thought he'd blown his chance to get Franz at city hall is the biggest.
That, or the nitwit who wrapped his cigars in Lee's battle plan for Antietam and proceeded to lose said cigars.
When Ray Kroc offered Tom Carvel half of the original investment in McDonalds and Tom said there was more money in ice cream.
They were both poor equipment salesman at the time.
The idea to bring in African slaves to work on new world plantations.
Troop, I am not so sure that Kroc Carvel exchange was a failure, if it had gone through we never would have had Cookie Puss.
Steve Jobs choosing some hokus pokus medicine to treat his curable cancer.
Maybe the serious case of jungle fever that overtook a certain 18yr old Stanley Ann while studying Russian language at University of Hawaii leading to a marriage so discrete that no record of it is known. Discrete or discreet? Eh, both work just as well.
But, he was the cutest little thing.
There's always Xerox PARC giving away the GUI technology to Jobs and Wozniak for a song - if not for free, as I was told.
Operation Tiger: D-day's disastrous rehearsal. http://www.npr.org/2012/04/28/151590212/operation-tiger-d-days-disastrous-rehearsal
Was the shot heard around the world, the shot that started WWI?
Oh maybe that short stop taking the fielders choice and going for the force out. She should have thrown home to keep the runners from advancing.
Lem-
I thought the shot heard round the world was concord/Lexington. But I may be wrong.
Is not recognized as a big fuckup yet but.. ObamaCare is a disaster.
7th century Arabia. PBUH.
Lem, the shot heard 'round the world was Lexington and Concord, from the poem "The Concord Hymn", which I had to recite in grade school (talk about PTSD).
And, yes, Ocare is fully recognized as a disaster.
ampersand said...
7th century Arabia. PBUH.
Don't forget Marx and Engels, Brussels 1848
Ishtar, Water World and Hudson Hawk.
Mike Ditka deciding not to run for the vacant Senate seat from Illinois. The election was won by some rookie Illinois state representative named Barack Obama.
Lem said...
Ishtar, Water World and Hudson Hawk.
The Lone Ranger (with Cap'n Sparrow), Ghostbusters with girls, Batman vs Superman (or whatever it was).
New Coca-Cola.
The US, that has made its share of blunders, really hoodwinked Russia and France w/ the purchases of Alaska and the Louisiana territory.
Ronald Wayne and Apple. What about Walter White selling Gray Matter for a couple months rent? Look what happened! My bride and I are watching Breaking Bad for a second time. It's much better, just like Deadwood and The Wire were, the second time. You can anticipate and focus better on the acting. When I was running my business for 30 years I never had a chance to watch TV. There were so many series on regular and premium TV I missed. When you work 70-80 hrs./week there just isn't time to watch TV. My wife watched and loved series like LA LAW, ER, Remington Steele, etc. The 80's-2012 were a fucking blur for me. But, I've caught up and watching some of the better series a second time.
Designated hitter.
Nick, US should have taken more of Mexico too. And bought Greenland.
Meadhouse
Marco's Gang of Eight
Ouch.
WHOA!! Did you see these exit polls?? If true, it looks like Trump is going to have a bad night in Indiana. Yow.
That is far worse than anyone could have imagined or dreamed. Catastrophic, in fact.
Evi L. Bloggerlady said...
Nick, US should have taken more of Mexico too. And bought Greenland.
The reason for not keeping more of Mexico, and some of the Manifest Destiny types wanted all of Mexico north of the Vera Cruz - Manzanillo line, was that the New England bluenoses didn't want to add any more Catholics to the country than they could, what with the Irish and Germans flooding into the country.
As it was, we held a lodgment from Matamoros down to Vera Cruz, across to Mexico City and up to Chihuahua. And never forget, the original Gadsden Purchase was for the northern tier of states in Mexico.
Michael Haz said...
WHOA!! Did you see these exit polls?? If true, it looks like Trump is going to have a bad night in Indiana. Yow.
IN was called for Trump just after 7 EDT. Last I looked, he had 55% of the vote.
Rickrolled.. Thanks MH.
rcocean said...
was that the New England bluenoses didn't want to add any more Catholics to the country than they could, what with the Irish and Germans flooding into the country.
Where do you get this crazy nonsense? Nobody wanted Mexico. The North didn't want anymore slave states, and the South didn't want a bunch of Mexicans.
History books, you ought to read some.
I remember one from high school with a pro-Manifest Destiny editorial cartoon showing the American negotiators drawing a border at the Vera Cruz - Manzanillo line. Granted, that was considered an extreme, but there were rallies in the 1840s advocating the annexation of Texas all over the country. And the South, in the incarnation of the Confederacy, dreamed of Latin American empires.
We fantasized for years over taking Cuba from Spain.
And, while New England didn't want slave states (paying Irishmen slave wages worked just fine for them), much of the North wanted more open land. Why do you think Abraham Lincoln, who was a stern critic of the war as a plot to bring in more slave states, was voted out of office after just one term?
So how did we end up with Texas, New Mexico, and California?
The Midwest and much of the East craved more land.
There's an excellent biography of James Polk from a couple of years ago, which goes into great detail on a lot of this.
The Mexican War is one of my favorite wars, so it's kind of a bug of mine.
GroupOn not selling to Google for $6 billion.
Oh and eating that God Damned apple.
Compaq's purchase of DEC, HP's purchase of Compaq.
Anything to do with Lucent.
"(paying Irishmen slave wages worked just fine for them),"
Seriously, when are you going to stop wanking on and on about the "poor orish". The Irish were damn lucky "New England" let them come here, and if they didn't like working for "slave wages" in New England, they should gone out to the West and Midwest in the 1850s like the Germans and Swedes did and start their own damn cities.
A branch of my family didn't come to the USA and "Work for slave wages" and then spend 150 years wanking about "No Irish need apply signs" they went out West and worked their own land.
Hmmm, sounds like somebody forgets the West would have died on the vine without the Army to fight the Indians that was largely Irish and the railroads that made living in the West possible, built by the Irish.
And I wasn't aware New England "let" anybody come anywhere.
But, to address the topic of the post, maybe it was the way the One True Ted mishandled his campaign. He has finally tossed in the towel.
"Hmmm, sounds like somebody forgets the West would have died on the vine without the Army to fight the Indians that was largely Irish and the railroads that made living in the West possible, built by the Irish."
No, the US Army was never "largely" Irish. But given that it only 16,000-25000 men from the 1850s to 1890s, I think the USA could have found a few more men to join up. We got 1,000,000 to serve during the Civil war.
And yes, the Irish made up a lot of the RR workers. I guess they had the had enough gumption not to stay in NE and "work for slave wages".
ed, we should have taken Baja and the Colorado River delta. And areas with oil (of course that war predated us looking for it). Remember most of northern Mexico was pretty sparsely populated (New Mexico had more Mexicans than those border states probably did.
rcocean said...
No, the US Army was never "largely" Irish. But given that it only 16,000-25000 men from the 1850s to 1890s, I think the USA could have found a few more men to join up. We got 1,000,000 to serve during the Civil war.
There were enough to characterize many regiments, including the 7th Cavalry, as Irish regiments. Enough that Irish songs and stereotypes characterized the Army until WWI.
But, no, the Regular Army never attracted the numbers the militia did - even during the Civil War. As Thomas Nast characterized it, "Our skeleton army".
And yes, the Irish made up a lot of the RR workers. I guess they had the had enough gumption not to stay in NE and "work for slave wages".
Tell me, then, who built the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central, the B&O, as well as the Union Pacific and the Santa Fe? And it was all slave wages or, as they were known then, "Irish" wages.
Being a gandy dancer or section hand was considered a death sentence, it was so dangerous. If a man announced he was working for a railroad, any railroad, his family made his funeral arrangements.
The Micks earned their place in this country the hard way and, as you demonstrate, are still unwanted.
Evi L. Bloggerlady said...
ed, we should have taken Baja and the Colorado River delta. And areas with oil (of course that war predated us looking for it). Remember most of northern Mexico was pretty sparsely populated (New Mexico had more Mexicans than those border states probably did.
Possibly. Had we gotten the original Gadsden Purchase, we'd have had them.
"ed, we should have taken Baja and the Colorado River delta. And areas with oil (of course that war predated us looking for it). Remember most of northern Mexico was pretty sparsely populated (New Mexico had more Mexicans than those border states probably did."
We definitely should moved the border down further from San Diego, say 100 miles. But I don't know about taking Baja, its mostly worthless desert.
It would've made more sense to have claimed both sides of the Rio Grande. Rivers are usually bad international boundaries because the river valley is one economic unit. Of course, when a river is as big as say, the Mississippi, that's different.
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