Everyone makes dumb mistakes, and even if no one else knows about them, they can still keep us up at night. However, hopefully, none of us have ever made an idiot mistake so big that it changed the course of history. In some cases, weirdly enough, a dumb mistake has even gone on to change history for the better, like bringing down the Berlin Wall.
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00:00Mistakes happen.
00:02Sometimes, truly idiotic mistakes happen that result in awful consequences, like centuries
00:07of persecution and racial hatred.
00:09But other times, idiotic mistakes can be a force for good.
00:12Just be glad you didn't cause these problems.
00:14The French Revolution was a bloody period in France's past where lots of unrest led
00:18to lots of use of the guillotine.
00:21Look at that bad boy, hmm?
00:26Isn't that a beaut?
00:28When Louis XVI took a final trip to the dreaded device in 1793, Marie Antoinette followed
00:33a few months later, and France changed forever.
00:36Their deaths kicked off the Reign of Terror and led to thousands of executions and the
00:39rise of Napoleon.
00:41But here's the thing.
00:42They didn't need to die at all, and probably wouldn't have if Louis XVI hadn't made a whole
00:46series of dumb decisions.
00:48It started when thousands of people stormed the Bastille in July of 1789 looking for weapons.
00:53In October, they captured the royals, but they weren't locked up.
00:56Louis and Marie Antoinette both could have walked out the door any time, but they simply
01:00didn't.
01:01It wasn't until around two years later that they finally snuck out, but despite having
01:04years to plan, they planned their escape pretty impractically.
01:08They traveled together in a large, conspicuous wagon laden with things like a complete dinner
01:12service and wine chest, and Louis sent away the one person who probably could have helped
01:17them, his wife's lover, Count Axel Fersen.
01:20Not surprisingly, the royals were captured again after being easily recognized along
01:24the way thanks, in part, to poor disguises and the fact they loved to socialize.
01:28It's not too much, is it?
01:30No.
01:31No.
01:32Then, Fersen organized an escape with help from Sweden's king, broke into the palace,
01:36and hung out with Marie for a day until Louis sent him away again.
01:40Following some other ups and downs, the king was sent to the guillotine about a year later.
01:44By now, everyone knows what a horrible person Christopher Columbus was, and what his arrival
01:48in the New World started.
01:50But he was only there in the first place because he was bad at math, and made errors in his
01:53navigational calculations that gave him a little extra convincing power when it came
01:57to getting finances for his voyages.
02:00Let's start with latitude calculations.
02:02When the ancient mathematician Eratosthenes came up with the standard that one degree
02:05of latitude was about 59.5 miles, Columbus decided he liked the findings of a medieval
02:11geographer from Persia better.
02:13Alphrogonus thought one degree was 56.67 miles, and that's not too much of a difference, right?
02:19Suddenly, Columbus forgot that Eratosthenes was working with a Roman mile, which was 4,856
02:24feet, and for the Persian geographer, a mile was the Arabic mile, which translated to 7,091
02:30feet.
02:32That's a huge difference, and he wasn't done yet.
02:35Columbus then mashed together the numbers and distances of explorers from Ptolemy to
02:38Marco Polo, added a bit of his own estimations, and completely screwed up the location of
02:43the Indies.
02:44By the time he was done, his calculations came with an impressive 58 percent margin
02:48of error, but they sounded good.
02:50He got his funding, and went off to discover the Americas.
02:53To this day, Columbus is still known for his many errors and inadequacies.
02:57Christopher Columbus was the ISIS of his day
03:01Erwin Rommel is a fascinating figure, one of Nazi Germany's most prolific commanders
03:06and someone the International Churchill Society has called a thoroughly decent man, mostly
03:11for his tendency to ignore many of Hitler's most horrible orders.
03:14He was a brilliant general, and briefly headed a unit nicknamed the Ghost Division because
03:18it was so fast, so targeted, and so efficient.
03:21He was also supposed to be a Normandy for D-Day.
03:24In the days leading up to the Allied invasion of the mainland's coast, he went deer hunting,
03:28and he also went into Paris to buy shoes for his wife's birthday.
03:32After looking at the tide tables and the approaching storms, he decided the Allies probably weren't
03:36going to attempt a channel crossing in such unfavorable conditions.
03:40Instead of staying on what would very, very quickly become the front lines of the war,
03:44he headed home to Germany for his wife's June 6th birthday.
03:47The L.A. Times says he was at his country house in Germany when he heard about the invasion
03:51happening hours away.
03:52He got to Normandy as quickly as he could, but one of Germany's most prolific generals
03:56was essentially taken out of the action to attend a birthday party.
04:00The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the defining moments of the 80s, and it only happened
04:05because of two easily-avoidable mistakes.
04:07Tensions were already at a breaking point, and in November 1989, East Berlin Politburo
04:12members decided they needed to make some concessions, if they wanted to keep anything resembling
04:16peace.
04:17They took to the airwaves to make an announcement that was supposed to say there would be an
04:21ever-so-slight relaxation of travel rules, but that they would retain the right to deny
04:25any one passage at any time.
04:27The press conference was completely botched, though, and the reading of the announcement
04:31was garbled, save a few phrases, including that free travel would be, quote,
04:35"...possible for every citizen right away, immediately."
04:38Chaos quickly followed.
04:39The second mistake was even more insane.
04:41When thousands of people converged on border crossings they thought were open, Stasi officer
04:46Harald Jaeger called for backup somewhere around 30 times in a single night.
04:51When his superiors didn't believe him about the mess he was facing, and at one point called
04:55him, quote,
04:56"...simply a coward,"
04:57Jaeger kicked open the doors, allowed people to pass both ways, and started the real fall
05:01of the Berlin Wall, all because his superiors made the stupid mistake of underestimating
05:06just how much of their garbage he was willing to take.
05:09In 1977, New York City lost all electricity for 25 hours, and the consequences were devastating.
05:16Around 800,000 people were reportedly stranded in the subways and elevators, while others
05:20set to looting and pillaging on a medieval scale.
05:23There were about 1,000 fires set, more than 1,500 businesses were looted, and by the time
05:27the lights came back on, there were damages that cost about a billion dollars.
05:31Also, some have credited the blackout as the catalyst that sparked the hip-hop movement,
05:36which is a nice bonus.
05:37And it all happened because someone didn't know what buttons to push.
05:40I am good.
05:41Uh-huh.
05:42I am good.
05:43That's right.
05:44I am good.
05:45No!
05:46That's the button that will kill everyone!
05:50Schneider Electric looked at just what happened on that hot summer night in 77, and it started
05:54with a few lightning strikes.
05:56That's not uncommon, they say, and most substations are prepared for it.
06:00This one wasn't.
06:01After lightning tripped the breakers, Con Ed tried to restart the station's generators.
06:05The problem?
06:06No one was there.
06:07When employees finally got there and started running system-wide procedures to get everything
06:11back up and running, they ran the wrong procedures.
06:14Instead of dumping the necessary 1,500 megawatts of load, they ran one that got rid of only
06:18a few hundred.
06:19The station shut down, and the Big Apple went dark.
06:22About 17 percent of the U.S. viewing audience watched the Challenger disaster live in 1986,
06:27and it was a horrifying moment that shaped how everyone from NASA to the American public
06:31thought about the space program.
06:33Only 73 seconds after liftoff, dreams of space travel became a little less romantic and a
06:37lot more terrifying, and if it wasn't for that disaster, our commitment to exploring
06:41the nearest reaches of space would have been very different.
06:44The Challenger disaster happened for one ridiculously simple reason, because a series of O-ring
06:48seals were never tested in the cold.
06:51The morning of the launch, January 28, 1986, was freezing cold, which led to the failure
06:56of the seals and ultimately ripped the shuttle apart.
06:59And that brings us to the mistake.
07:00It wasn't until 2016 that NASA engineer Bob Ebeling came forward after carrying his guilt
07:06for three decades.
07:07Ebeling and four other engineers had been working at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol
07:11at the time of the launch, and when they heard of the conditions the shuttle was going to
07:14launch in, they tried to stop it.
07:16They argued, very accurately, that the rubber seals wouldn't work in the extreme cold that
07:21the shuttle would explode.
07:22Tragically, they were overruled by both their managers and NASA.
07:26He told NPR,
07:27"...but NASA ruled the launch.
07:32They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they know
07:40what they were doing, but they didn't."
07:44In 1989, the Exxon Valdez dumped 42 million liters of crude oil into Prince William Sound,
07:49devastating the coastline for hundreds of miles.
07:52Thousands of animals died immediately, and the effects are still being felt decades later.
07:56According to research reported in Scientific American, oil that settled into the sound
08:00sediment has shortened the lifespan of fish, birds, and local mammals, and in 2018, Marine
08:06Insight looked at some of the farthest-reaching consequences.
08:09When flooding plummeted, more than 26,000 people had their jobs impacted, and even after
08:14$3.8 billion was poured into cleanup efforts, the oil is still there.
08:18Yes, even after decades.
08:20The majority of area species, including orcas and the Pacific herring, have never recovered
08:25and likely never will.
08:26That's a huge deal, as the Pacific herring is a cornerstone species that numerous other
08:30animals rely on for food.
08:32So why did it happen?
08:33Because the crew made some extraordinarily dumb mistakes.
08:37Captain Joseph Hazelwood was deep in alcohol-induced slumber at the time of the crash, and he'd
08:41left the ship, complete with non-functional radar, in the hands of a third mate.
08:45The third mate was absolutely not trained to take command and drove the ship right onto
08:49a reef he never saw.
08:51They were also severely under-crewed and had strayed from the normal shipping route, all
08:55compounding into a tragic disaster that changed the ecosystem forever.
09:00In 1770, James Cook claimed Australia for Britain, and we all know how well that worked
09:04out for everyone living there.
09:05He wasn't the first European to set foot on the continent, though, and if it wasn't for
09:09a stupid lack of foresight, Australia might have been a Dutch colony.
09:13According to the National Museum of Australia, Dutch explorer Willem Janssen was actually
09:17the first European to make recorded, official contact with Australia.
09:21He landed there in 1606 on a ship that was part of the Dutch East India Company.
09:25Having spent some time along the trade routes in Asia, he was dispatched on a mission to
09:29explore a largely unknown southern landmass to see if the Dutch might be able to harvest
09:33any gold or resources there.
09:35There weren't, but there were some understandably hostile native peoples that made them think
09:39twice about the whole endeavor.
09:40Susan Broomhall, a history professor at the University of Western Australia, says not
09:45everyone thought it was a worthless piece of land.
09:47Some argued for using Australia as a stepping-stone sort of colony along the Europe-Asia trade
09:51routes, and others said it was pretty much perfect for winemaking.
09:55Dutch East India Company officials weren't convinced, decided it wasn't worth the bother,
09:59and left the entire continent up for grabs.
10:02Stop just gesturing around like they're everywhere.
10:04Are they really everywhere?
10:05Why are we here?