1. World’s most expensive hyphen: NASA
In 1962, NASA prepared to launch the Mariner 1, America’s first interplanetary probe. The mission was meant to get a close up image of Venus. The absence of a single hyphen in the coding of this probe made the mission blast off – into pieces. The dashed mistake cost NASA around $80 million. The mistake occurred when a handwritten symbol lacked an overhead ‘bar’ when input into the software. As a result, the space probe exploded within minutes of its initial launch. This will, hopefully for the last time, be remembered as the “most expensive hyphen in history”.
2. Car DEALership: Force events Direct Marketing Company
Though not as severe as NASA’s probe incident, this unlikely type still resulted in a $50 million payout for a local car dealership. In order to perk recent low-hanging sales, a plan was devised to mail out scratch tickets. A winner would receive $1,000. However, the company butter-fingered each ticket input and made every single ticked a grand-prize winner. Much to the ticket receivers’ dismay, the dealership could not hold up this payout and instead granted a $5 Walmart gift card to each ticket winner in return. The whole situation ended up costing $250,000. ‘Walmart dollars’ but if the dealership had been any bigger, the situation could’ve ended gravely.
3. Fly across the world for less than $100! Alitalia Airlines
Mispriced flight tickets surely shouldn’t be news to you. But, the lack of two digits on a certain airline ticket to fly from Toronto to Cyprus ended in a $7 million loss for Alitalia Airlines. The airline mistakenly offered $3,900 tickets for just $39! Of course, 2,000 people flocked on over to purchase these tickets and the company remained legitimate to their shown pricing.
4. $50…$1500 necklace: Macy’s
You know those retail store flyers you get in the mail listing certain products with respective prices and ongoing sales? A certain retailer mailed out hundreds of necklaces for $47, as said on the flyer. In actuality? Macy’s intended for the $1,500 necklaces to be on sale for $497. Not to mention, these were diamond necklaces with 14-karat gold and silver. A certain customer, Mr. Bernard, though this whole situation was too good to be true and got onboard, as well. Sadly, he received a phone call saying his order was cancelled and an apology for their mistake. Maybe Mr. Bernard could invest in some stocks and buy the necklace for his wife a later day.
5. A stock exchange over 600,000 times more valuable than its marketed price: Mizuho Securities Co.
It was a Thursday morning – not a particularly good Thursday morning for Mizuho. The company wanted to sell shares starting at 610,000 yen apiece (almost $7,500 Canadian) but ended up inversing these values. They sold 610,000 shares for 1 yen each! Even seeing how Mizuho’s order was 41x the amount they could proceed, the Tokyo Stock Exchange went ahead with the order. The company attempted to cancel several times, getting denied on the terms that transactions could not be reverted, even with errors on it. That time led to a $225 million loss (that would be around 27 billion yen)! This stock exchange managed to eat up the entire profit the company made that year.
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