The Butterfly Effect From Hell: 7 Smallest Errors With Largest Ripple Effects
We all make mistakes. Not necessarily some global decision that can lead to unwanted consequences, or some sort of funny typo in the word “duck”, but it probably won’t cause a World War III. Well, actually it might.
There have been cases in history when seemingly the tiniest, and most unimportant errors cause a whole avalanche of unfortunate events that in turn changed the world as we know it. Okay, maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s better if you’d see for yourself.
Here’s the list of 10 tiniest mistakes that changed the course of history.
A decimal comma that made spinach the super-food
Back in 1870, a German chemist decided to calculate which veggies have the most iron in them. When he was summing up the results, he accidentally put the comma in the wrong place, which lead to spinach having 35 mg of iron, instead of 3,5, making it a “super food”.
Lost key caused the Titanic disaster
Right before its first (and last) cruise, the captain’s second officer David Blair was replaced by a more senior officer Lightroller who himself was bumped by a very senior crew member from the White Star Line’s sister ship, Olympic. In his rush to depart the ship on 9 April, Blair forgot to leave the key to the crow’s nest telephone and took it with him off the ship. He also seems to have stowed the lookout’s binoculars in his cabin! Lightoller was unaware of this when he took over. This was mentioned to the American Inquiry into the Titanic disaster that they had been unable to find the keys or binoculars.
