List of incidents famously considered great blunders: Encyclopedia II - List of incidents famously considered great blunders - The List

List of incidents famously considered great blunders - The List

List of incidents famously considered great blunders - Military

Military disasters commonly believed to be the result of a major mistake or extremely bad decision making.

• 1854 — The suicidal and ill-advised Charge of the Light Brigade in the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. It was based on Cardigan's misunderstanding of, and failure to ask for clarification of Lord Raglan's orders. Tennyson, in his famous poem praising the valor of the cavalrymen, wrote: "'Forward the Light Brigade!'/Was there a man dismay'd?/Not tho' the soldier knew/Some one had blunder'd." Of the action, French marshal Pierre Bosquet said C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre ("It is magnificent, but it is not war.") (Saul David, 1998, p. 13-24)
• 1876 - The Battle of the Little Bighorn (also called Custer's last stand), the subject of a number of books and several films, was a catastrophic failure for George Armstrong Custer, leading to the death of Custer himself and all 210 men who were with him at the time. Many feel that this failure was a result of a series of blunders on the part of Custer, including poor communication, failure to wait for reinforcements, excessive cruelty in his treatment of the Indians, and general overconfidence. Others have argued that Custer was largely the victim of bad circumstance, and that his actions and decisions during the battle differed little from standard military strategy of the time. (Saul David, 1998, p. 236-251)
• 1930 to 1940 - The Maginot Line in France. The Maginot Line is widely considered to be a great blunder because the German armies went around it. However, it should be noted that the German forces did not dare attack the Maginot Line directly; Germany had to invade Belgium and the Netherlands in order to circumvent it, and in the few incidents during World War II where the line was involved it proved to a highly effective defensive fortification. So it can be argued that the Maginot Line was effective for what it was, and that it was the overall defensive strategy of France that was at fault. Thus, many historians feel that France's blunder was not in building the Maginot Line; it was in relying on the line as its only major means of defense.[1] (GBIH)
• 1941 - The Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, (December 8 in Japan standard time). Although the attack apparently was successful with numerous US Navy capital ships sunk and crippled, many military historians see the attack was a long term strategic blunder. For instance, the American aircraft carriers, which were a priority target, were absent and the oil storage facilities, whose destruction could have crippled the Pacific Fleet's operating capacity were untouched. Worst of all, the intended psychological impact to discourage the USA backfired into enraging the American population into waging relentless war against Japan in revenge.
• Adolf Hitler declaring war on the USA immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. In doing so, Hitler played directly into President Franklin Roosevelt's desire to openly join the war against the Führer with full force by giving him a compelling self defense rationale to do so. This led to a grand alliance of the USA, UK and the USSR that would crush Nazi Germany.
• 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu - Prior to the battle, the French forces established a military base in the bowl of a valley and left the heights surrounding the base unguarded since they were considered inaccessable for any military advantage. However, the Vietnamese under Vo Nguyen Giap used those heights to position heavy artillery and anti-aircraft weapons to bombard the base from an unassaible position and ward off air support respectively.
• 1999 - The Kargil War where Pakistan tried to wrest Kargil in Kashmir from India by sending in "infiltrators" and ultimately faced world condemnation. Hailing from the Pakistani paramilitary (NLI & SSG), it was a well planned military operative. However, politically it proved to be counter-productive since no nation believed in Pakistan's version that they were Kashmiri militants fighting against the Indian Army. To make matters worse, Pakistan while denying its links to the fighters, handed out its highest gallantry awards to them. The result was an immediate withdrawal of Pakistan troops and the toppling of the elected government by a military coup, months later.

List of incidents famously considered great blunders - Naval

Naval disasters commonly believed to be the result of a major mistake or extremely bad decision making.

• 1893 – HMS Victoria collided with HMS Camperdown near Tripoli, Lebanon during manoeuvres and quickly sank taking 358 crew with her, including the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. At a subsequent court-martial the collision was found to be due to Admiral Tryon's explicit order. It has been hypothesised that he had confused turning his ships through 90 degrees with turning them through 180 degrees when he considered how much sea room was needed. The former manoeuvre was much more common and required considerably less room.

List of incidents famously considered great blunders - Political

Mistakes and missteps that caused a resignation or significantly contributed to the loss of an election.

• 1963 – John Profumo, the United Kingdom Secretary of State for War, lied to Parliament about his affair with Christine Keeler, a showgirl who was simultaneously involved with an attaché at the Soviet Embassy. When the truth came out, he was forced to resign and the ensuing scandal contributed to the defeat of the government in the 1964 election. (Coates)
• 1978 – Prime Minister James Callaghan decided not to call an election that year despite leading in the polls, but to wait until the next year. The government was blamed for the multiple strikes of the Winter of discontent, and was defeated in Parliament soon after, leading to an election in which Callaghan was defeated by Margaret Thatcher.
• 1988 – Outspoken junior British health minister Edwina Currie told Independent Television News that "most egg production in this country is infected" with salmonella, a statement that greatly exaggerated the problem. Egg sales plummeted and she was forced to resign.
• 1990 – Despite a highly publicized promise in the 1988 election not to raise taxes, U.S. President George H. W. Bush agrees to a tax increase.
• 1992 – The Sheffield Rally by the UK Labour Party, held a week before the UK General Election (1992), was meant to top off a successful campaign for the Labour party; ahead in the polls, it was supposed to convince the electorate that Labour was ready for Government. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. People saw it as pretentious, triumphant when the election had not yet been won, and "too American". Labour lost the 1992 election.
• 1993- During the 1993 Canadian Federal Election, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada , desperate to reverse a losing campaign, commissioned an anti-Jean Chrétien campaign TV ad that appeared to ridicule the Liberal Party of Canada leader, Jean Chrétien for his facial paralysis. That offended many Canadians as a vile insult and the blunder was considered by many the final nail in a disastrous election that saw the PC's reduced to only 2 seats in Parliament, a defeat from which the party never recovered.
• 2004 – After his defeat at the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses, Howard Dean made a speech containing his infamous "Dean Scream". This outburst of passion was considered poor form, and particularly unpresidential. Dean, who before the Iowa Caucus had been the front-runner in the race for to become the Democrat candidate for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, quickly lost much credibility, and within a few weeks was effectively out of the race.
• 2005 In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA becomes notorious for its allegedly slow emergency response, especially in New Orleans. Some accuse FEMA of being responsible for additional deaths due to starvation, dehydration, disease, and violence that, accusers allege, may have been prevented by swifter and better-organized relief action. The director of FEMA, Michael Brown, resigns during the controversy.

List of incidents famously considered great blunders - Business

Misjudgements causing a severe loss of profit, often associated with the failure of an individual product.

• 1958 model year - Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel, a new car model remembered as a spectacular blunder because of its association with the Ford family. The Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, former company president and son of Henry Ford. The vehicle sported a front grill described as looking like a horse collar, and was priced higher than competing companies' models. The Edsel was discontinued early in the 1960 model year. The model failure was responsible for Ford losing nearly half of the $650 million raised by the company in its 1956 initial public stock offering (IPO). The Ford Edsel is such a famous failure that the name "Edsel" itself has become an appellation for something that's irredeemably flawed and thus doomed to failure. [2] [3]
• 1985 - Coca-Cola releases New Coke. The New Coke formula actually beat the old Coke in taste tests, but Coca-Cola's blunder was in failing to realize the immensity of the Coke legacy that they had built up over nearly a century. This legacy was so strong that the mere idea of changing Coke, by this time considered an American icon, – even "for the better" – met with intense, passionate resistance. People felt as if Coke was turning its back on their drinking preferences, their childhood, and even their way of life. "Coke is as basic as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence." "Next week, they'll be chiseling Teddy Roosevelt off the side of Mount Rushmore." Coca-Cola eventually re-released the original Coke formula as "Coca-Cola Classic". [4]
• 1991 - Gerald Ratner made a speech in which he rubbished one of his own company's products and, by implication, their entire range. As a result he lost his job, and the company lost market share and had to rebrand. See Doing a Ratner.
• 1992 - Hoover ran a promotion campaign in the UK, offering free flights to Europe and New York when customers spent more than £100 on Hoover products - significantly less than the cost of the flights. The company had been relying on customers being unwilling to go through the complex application process, but they severely underestimated how popular the offer would be, leading to the company denying customers their flights, and years of bad publicity. Eventually, Hoover was forced to honour many of these deals, at a cost of £48m. Parent company Maytag sold the British division to Italian electrical appliance firm Candy, and all senior staff involved in the promotion lost their jobs.
• 2005 - A trader working for Mizuho Securities Co. part of the Mizuho Financial Group mis-types and sells 610,000 shares for 1 yen instead of the intended 1 share for 610,000 yen in the stock J-Com Co. This represented a sell order for more than forty two times the number of shares on issue. Mizuho Securities managed to buy back about 480,000 shares during which time the price rose to 700,000 yen. The eventual losses are expected to be around 100 billion yen. [5]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The List", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki