Historical Screwups That Will Make You Feel Like a Champ

#1 When Blockbuster Wouldn't Waive A Late Fee

An angry customer at Blockbuster felt the late fees imposed by the video rental store were unfair, but the employee wouldn't waive it for him. That customer went on to start Netflix. Oops!

#2 When Yahoo Passed On Buying Google

Early on in the days of the internet, Yahoo had a chance to buy Google for $1 million. Sure, that's a lot of money, but Google is now worth almost $400 billion.

#3 When Will Smith Decided To Turn Down The Lead In "The Matrix"

Smith believed that Wild Wild West would be a bigger hit than The Matrix. LOL! Sorry Bro! You lost out on a franchise.

#4 When Failure To Turn Off An Oven Resulted In The Great London Fire

A pie in the oven was the cause of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Baker Thomas Farriner got distracted somehow and his bakery on Pudding Lane caught fire, leading to the destruction of over 13,000 houses.

#5 When Mao Zedong Ordered The Killing Of All Birds

In 1958, Mao believed that sparrows would eat all the crops and cause a famine. However, sparrows actually eat a large number of insects, and with the birds gone, the insects destroyed the crops instead. This actually caused the greatest mass starvation in history. BAD CALL.

#6 When Ronald Wayne Sold His Share of Apple, Inc.

The co-founder of Apple left the company after just 12 days, selling his 10% stake in the company for $800. His stake would be worth around $35 billion today. Good call numbnutz!

#7 When A Grad Student Killed The Worlds Oldest Tree

Donald Rusk Currey, a graduate student studying ice-age glaciology in 1964, cut down a bristlecone pine in Eastern Nevada, after which he realized it was likely the oldest living thing on earth.

#8 When Air Canada Crashed Because Of It's Metric System

Air Canada's first-ever Boeing 767 had to glide to a safe landing when it ran out of fuel...because someone didn't convert the number of gallons of fuel it needed to liters.

#9 When An Emergency Flare Triggered California's Largest Forest Fire

A lost hunter shot off a flare in the woods near San Diego in 2003. The result? The largest fire in California history. To date.

#10 When VCats Became Enemy #1 In London

During the Great Plague of London, people suspected that cats were spreading the plague, so they started killing stray cats. However, once the cat population started to fall, the plague got even worse - because there were no cats to kill the real plague carriers, the rats.

#11 When John Fogerty Sold All Rights To Creedence Clearwater Revival Songs

John Fogerty wanted to leave CCR, and to do so, he sold his rights to all the songs in the CCR catalog for a LOT less than the 800 million they'd be worth today.

#12 When Franz Ferdinand's Driver Took A Wrong Turn

Archduke Ferdinand was being driven around in Sarajevo. His driver took a wrong turn, and ended up on a side street, where the man who had just tried (and failed) to assassinate Ferdinand happened to be. The assassin took his second chance and killed Ferdinand and his wife, leading ultimately to the First World War.

#13 When Decca Records Passed On Signing The Beatles

Right before their major breakout, Decca Records passed on a chance to sign the Fab Four. Whoops! They went with another unknown group instead that was fired after 1 year.

#14 When Blockbuster Had A Chance To Buy Out Netflix And Passed

The video rental store chain had a chance to purchase their main competition, Netflix, but didn't. Once they realized their mistake, it was too late - and Netflix took them down. Great call!

#15 When NASA Accidentally Erases Moon Landing Footage

When NASA set out to look for their tapes of the 1969 moon landing in 2003, they discovered that the tapes had been erased to use for other purposes. In order to create a new official version of the moon landing video, they had to track down footage from TV stations around the world and digitally restore it. Bone heads.

#16 When a "Controlled" Burn In New Mexico Became The States Largest Fire

The Cerro Grande fire in 2000 was initially a prescribed burn. However, it quickly grew out of control due to the dry weather and high winds. It burned for over a month, destroyed about $1 billion in property, and left 400 families without homes.

#17 When TWELVE Different Publishers Passed On JK Rowlings "Harry Potter"

When J.K. Rowling was shopping around her novel about a boy wizard, she was turned down by twelve different publishers until Bloomsbury took a chance on the previously-unknown author. She's earned about $1 billion from the series since then. With a prequel coming soon.

#18 When a Man Tossed Out A Computer Containing What He Believed Were Useless Bitcoins

A Welshman named James Howells bought 7500 Bitcoins in 2009 when they were practically valueless. In 2013, each Bitcoin was worth almost $1000, giving him a total value of over $7 million. However, he'd since thrown away the hard drive on which the Bitcoins were stored (not TOTALLY sure how Bitcoins work), and it was buried in his local landfill under mountains of trash.

#19 When Russia Sold Alaska To The USA For Two Cents Per Acre

The Russians thought it was a useless tundra. And while a lot of it IS, kind of, there's also oil underneath it. Precious, precious oil. Take that Putin!

#20 When AOL Bought Time Warner For $182 Billion

...and then spun it off for $36 billion. That's a $146 billion-dollar mistake! There is no photographic evidence of what the CEO of AOL did when he found out how bad a deal it was. But the merge only lasted for about 18 months, resulting in one of the biggest financial blunders ever! AOL is now just a relic.

#21 When Faulty Equipment Made a B-2 Stealth Bomber Crash IMMEDIATELY Upon Takeoff

In 2008, a B-2 bomber was about to take a practice flight in Guam, but as soon as it took off, faulty sensors caused it to crash. Both pilots were safely ejected, but the $1.4 billion plane was irreparable. Way to go Defense Department!

#22 When the Seattle Seahawks Made the Worst Super Bowl Play Ever

In the 2015 Super Bowl, the Seahawks were behind by 4 points, on the ONE yard line (AKA as close to scoring as possible without scoring yet), with a few seconds left in the game. If they'd run the ball, they might have scored. But they passed instead, and lost the game.

#23 When Facebook Didn't Hire The What's App Developers

Brian Actom and Jan Kohum. You might not know their names, but you may have heard of their most famous project, WhatsApp. Facebook rejected the two software engineers for jobs in 2009, and went on to purchase WhatsApp from them for a cool $19 billion just a few years later. Now that's a hard pill to swallow!

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