James Proud - The Little Book of Massive Cock-Ups: A Brief History of Epic Fails

THE LITTLE BOOK OF MASSIVE COCK-UPS

Copyright Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2019

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No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

James Proud has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Disclaimer

All facts are correct to the best of the authors knowledge at the time of going to press.

INTRODUCTION

Everybody makes mistakes, and nobodys perfect. Its no big deal until it is. Sometimes, cock-ups are so momentous that they stand the test of time and are even worthy of recording in the history books. There is no precise equivalent in English for the German word Schadenfreude deriving entertainment from the misfortune of others but if there were, it would definitely apply to this catalogue of catastrophes.

Some of the enormous errors in this book were down to bad judgement; some were the result of laziness or plain bad luck; many are classic cases of hubris and vanity. Whether its misplacing nuclear weapons, passing up on billion-dollar business deals, losing an empire or offending half the worlds population on social media, all of these slip-ups have had far-reaching consequences, some of which are still being seen today.

These top-notch failures are unbelievable, ironic, tragic and often amusing, but they all share an oddly attractive characteristic: they allow us to indulge in the strange pleasure of reliving mistakes we didnt make ourselves.

HOWLER AT THE MOON

DATE: SOMETIME IN THE 1970s

Weve all seen the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong making his small step onto the surface of the moon in 1969, yet apparently, we are lucky to have seen it at all. The famous moonwalk was shot using a format that provided high-quality images, but which could not be transmitted directly to television sets. By the time the signal had been beamed from the moon and converted for broadcast via a radio telescope in Australia, the final image quality was much degraded.

In 2006, NASA decided to use modern technology to enhance the original images sent from the moon, so that the historic moment could be seen in the best possible quality. But when they started looking for the rolls of film that they assumed were in their archives, there was nothing to be found. Three years later, NASA admitted that the film stock had probably been reused to save money they had taped over one of the greatest moments in human history for the sake of a few dollars.

NASA was forced to dig out old copies of the original television broadcast and enlisted experts to enhance them as best they could, though the final result is not quite as clear as it might have been.

TOWERING ERROR

DATE: 1173

In the late twelfth century, the wealthy trading city of Pisa, Italy, broke ground with the construction of a 60-metre-high tower to house the great bells of the Piazza dei Miracoli cathedral. It was to be one of the finest structures in Europe, but instead became the Continents most famous folly in both senses of the word. The Pisan soil was too soft for the towers shallow foundations, meaning that the structure was already tilting to the north by the time the second storey was built. By then it was probably too late to rectify, and so they carried on with the construction. Two hundred years later, the bell tower was complete. Thanks to a recent restoration project to help tilt the tower back the other way, it is claimed that the tower should remain standing for at least another 300 years. The true wonder of this building is that its still standing.

DID YOU KNOW?

In 1934, Benito Mussolini decided that the Tower of Pisa was contrary to his countrys new fascist architecture of straight lines and right angles. The dictator ordered engineers to pump cement under the building to reverse its tilt, but hundreds of tonnes of concrete only succeeded in making the tower even more lopsided.

ACADEMY A-FLAWED

DATE: 26 FEBRUARY 2017

> The scene: The 2017 Oscars.

> The players: Hollywood legends Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

> The role: Announcing the Best Picture winner, the most important prize-giving of the night.

BEATTY: and the Academy Award, for Best Picture

[Beatty hands the envelope to Dunaway for extra dramatic tension or perhaps because he appears confused by what is written on the card]

DUNAWAY: La La Land!

And we are imagining this scene because...? It was not the right answer.

Beatty had been given an envelope declaring the winner of the Best Actress award, La La Lands Emma Stone, not Best Picture. He looked confused because he was; he wondered why Stones name was on the card. The error was revealed after Oscars staff hurried on stage, and La La Land producer Fred Berger finished his speech with the words, We lost, by the way, before the real winner Moonlight was declared.

THE MYSPACE MISTAKE

DATE: 2005

If youre of a certain age you might remember a social media website called Myspace, which was hugely popular for a time in the 2000s. In July 2005, media mogul Rupert Murdochs News Corp bought the two-year-old company for $580 million. One year later, the company was valued at $1.5 billion and had overtaken Google as the most popular site in the United States. It was ten times as popular as Facebook.

In 2012, however, News Corp made the painful decision to offload Myspace for a pitiful $35 million, just 6 per cent of what it had paid for it six years earlier. Murdoch later said that Myspace had been a huge mistake and that his company had mismanaged it in every possible way. That same year, Facebook floated on the stock market, valued at more than $100 billion.

FLIGHT FIGHT

DATE: 1994

The Canadian pilot and South Korean co-pilot of a Korean Air jet carrying 152 passengers were blamed after the aircraft skidded off the runway while landing in Cheju, South Korea, in high winds and rain. The Airbus A300 crashed and burst into flames, but fortunately everybody on board survived by sliding down an escape chute.

It emerged that the two pilots had argued over whether or not to abort the landing, and physically fought over the controls in the cockpit before the plane rammed into a safety barrier. Understandably, both were charged with negligence.