16 of the Most Expensive Mistakes Ever Made

Botched bridge

Probably the last thing an architect wants to hear is that their bridge is called the “the Wobbly Bridge,” but that’s precisely what happened in London when the Millennium Bridge was unveiled in June 2000. It was closed after just two days of use because the number of pedestrians using it (which, by the way, was its purpose) caused the bridge to shake and sway. The bridge’s movements were caused by a ‘positive feedback’ phenomenon and it took two years of transition to stop swaying and to reopen the Millennium Bridge.

School funding fiasco

You ‘re going to be hard-pressed to find a school in the United States that couldn’t use more funding, which is why it was tragic when a clerical error caused the state of New Jersey to lose $400 million in federal funds for education. The money would have come from the “Race to the Top” funding, but the state lost points in its bid for the coveted dollars because it did not provide the appropriate data required, including the 2008 and 2009 school year budget information. Next time you make a mistake of any proportion, you ‘re going to want to know this recommendation on how to bounce back from failure.

Fight or flight

Air travel is pricey for customers looking to book a getaway, but it was in 2006 that Alitalia was left with the bill when a typo on their website for $39 flights from Toronto to Cyprus (it was supposed to read $3,900), probably one of the most expensive typing errors in the world. Two-thousand tickets sold before Alitalia was able to correct the price online. Instead of punishing customers for their error, they decided to honor the cheap tickets to the tune of $7 million.