1

$125 million for a Grade-school math error

Image: Aaron Lefler

Imagine losing a hugely expensive spacecraft due to a simple mix-up between English and metric measurements . That is exactly what happened to NASA in 1999 when a Mars orbiter designed by Lockheed Martin was lost in space.

The confusion caused a malfunction on the $125 million craft, resulting in the probe’s loss. Although it was unusual for Lockheed to use English measurements for a NASA design (since NASA had stipulated using metric measurements for many years), there were still several instances where the error should have been caught but wasn’t.

2

Toys ‘R’ Us blunder

Image: Taylor Heery

If you think an action figure of a drug dealer isn’t the best idea for a toy store , you’re not alone. Yet, for some reason, Toys "R" Us decided otherwise in October 2014, possibly hoping to cash in on the massive success of the Breaking Bad TV series.

Unsurprisingly, the giant toy retailer was forced to pull from its shelves four collectible dolls based on characters from the AMC hit show, each doll featuring a detachable sack of cash and a bag of meth.

3

Apple Maps' rocky beginnings

Image: CardMapr.nl

When Apple decided to launch its own map application on iOS devices after a conflict with Google in 2012, users quickly realized that the Apple app was not nearly as launch-ready as it should have been .

Locations were mislabeled, roads were missing, and it occasionally steered people in entirely the wrong direction. The problem was eventually, though largely, resolved, but it was an embarrassing misstep for a company known for never launching a product before it was as near-perfect as possible.

4

Bank of America debit card fee

Image: Ali Mkumbwa

Back in 2011, when the backlash against the banking industry had not yet reached its boiling point, Bank of America announced it would charge customers $5 per month to use their debit cards .

It was a bad business decision. More than 300,000 people signed an online petition, and Fox Business Network’s Gerri Willis cut up her debit card on air. The bank pointed to federal regulations as the reason for the charge but ultimately capitulated to consumer demand after a month before the fees went into effect.

5

$33 airline tickets from Toronto to Cyprus

Image: Miguel Ángel Sanz

If buying a business class ticket regularly priced at $2,558 for just $33 sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Except in 2006, when an Alitalia employee accidentally forgot to input two extra zeros when pricing business-class tickets from Toronto to Cyprus.

Due to the exchange rate on that day and the blunder, hundreds of buyers managed to snag fares for just $33. The airline honored those deals, accepting the heavily discounted price for the 509 people who purchased tickets before the error was detected.

6

A $70 million comma

Image: Nattipat Vesvarute

As the folks at NASA and Alitalia have shown us, small errors can lead to costly mistakes. The following blunder comes courtesy of Lockheed Martin , which issued a contract to a customer with a missing comma in the sale price .

The astute customer held the aerospace company to the contract, costing Lockheed Martin $70 million for a C-130J Hercules aircraft in June 1999.

7

Sears misses the ship

Image: Estefania Cortes

A retail giant that faced a situation similar to the one Kodak faced—embrace the new and unknown or cling to the old, successful recipe—Sears sold everything from socks to tires via mail order, shipping across the U.S.

Choosing to stick with the old method, the company ended its catalog and delivery business in 1993 . In 1994, Amazon was founded , filling the business void that Sears had just created. The rest is history.

8

Passing on Microsoft

Image: Jaime Marrero

$60 million might seem like a lot of money to us regular folks, but for someone with very deep pockets like Texas businessman and two-time U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot, it wasn’t all that much.

In 1979, he was offered the chance to buy Microsoft for that sum. However, his final offer to the tech company was just $15 million, and as a result, the Texan missed out on the opportunity to own what would become one of the biggest companies in the world .

9

Blackberry sticks with the old

Image: Thai Nguyen

Another case of a brand sticking with the old instead of embracing the new, BlackBerry was all the rage at the start of the 21st century— until Steve Jobs came along with the Apple iPhone .

While BlackBerry Messenger was extremely popular, with over 80 million users worldwide, the device lacked the new touchscreen functionality and sleek design of the Apple product. From being a market leader, BlackBerry’s market share plummeted to 0.2% by 2016.

10

RadioShack’s downfall

Image: Jelleke Vanooteghem

Not so long ago, RadioShack was a familiar presence on the streets and the go-to place for buying batteries and electronics. But it was that same brick-and-mortar presence, coupled with a reluctance to embrace e-commerce , that ultimately led to its demise .

Eventually, poor profit margins on what they could sell, combined with a loan they couldn’t repay, brought down what was once the go-to place for electronics.

1

The Purple Store – Online (with a location at Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA)

The Purple Store does exactly one thing: it sells purple items. Every single thing in the store is purple . Shirts, socks, kitchen appliances, furniture, jewelry, dog collars, dice, cowboy hats—if it exists and can be purple, The Purple Store has it.

This is the store for the person in your life who is very, very serious about their favorite color, or for anyone who finds the concept of a store with a strictly enforced color policy absolutely hilarious and also kind of admirable.

2

The Museum of Bad Art Store: Somerville, MA

The Museum of Bad Art exists to celebrate paintings that tried hard, fell short, and ended up magnificent for entirely the wrong reasons. The gift shop sells prints, books, and merchandise built around the museum's collection of gloriously terrible masterpieces .

Nobody here is embarrassed: the art is bad, everyone knows it, and that's precisely the point. This is the store for people who believe that effort deserves recognition regardless of outcome, and for anyone who has ever hung a painting in their living room that wasn't quite right and left it there for fifteen years anyway.

3

Marty's Reliable Cycle: Westfield, NJ

Operating since 1946, Marty's Reliable Cycle is the kind of place that shouldn't still exist but absolutely does. It's famous nationwide not just for its vintage bicycle inventory, but for its ceiling-to-floor stacks of cycling memorabilia, spare parts, and decades of accumulated everything that give it the feel of a very organized avalanche.

Walking in feels like stepping into a time capsule where someone hit pause around 1978. Cyclists make pilgrimages here. If you're passing through New Jersey and remotely enjoy bicycles, nostalgia, or both, it's worth the detour.

4

The Sock Drawer: Providence, RI

The Sock Drawer is devoted entirely to novelty and compression socks in every pattern, theme, and level of absurdity imaginable . Cats riding tacos. Flaming hot dogs. Historical figures on argyle. If you can think of it, there’s a good chance The Sock Drawer already has it in stock.

What makes it more than a joke is that it also carries medical-grade compression socks for people who need them, meaning you can solve a circulation problem and walk out with a pair of socks featuring a screaming eagle at the exact same time.

5

Archie McPhee: Seattle, WA

Archie McPhee has been selling rubber chickens, bacon-scented soap, canned unicorn meat, and inflatable Stonehenge for decades, and it shows no signs of slowing down or becoming even slightly more sensible. It is the undisputed gold standard of American novelty shops: the place other weird stores aspire to be when they grow up .

The genius of Archie McPhee is that everything is absurd, but nothing feels accidental. Someone sat down, thought very carefully about what the world needed, and concluded the answer was a horse head mask and a bag of dismembered gummy bears. They were right, and the store has the loyal following to prove it.

6

Wall Drug: Wall, SD

Wall Drug started as a modest drugstore in 1931 in the middle of South Dakota and somehow became one of the most aggressively advertised destinations in America. Signs for it appear thousands of miles away, and the complex has grown to fill an entire block with shops, exhibits, animatronic dinosaurs, and attractions that resist easy categorization. A five-cent cup of coffee is still on the menu.

Nobody drives to Wall Drug because they need something. They go because the signs wore them down over five straight states and they finally gave in. Once inside, the sheer scale of the thing (part store, part roadside attraction, part collective hallucination) becomes impressive.

7

Possumbilities: Fredericksburg, VA

Possumbilities is a gift shop, wildlife education center, and opossum advocacy organization all rolled into one cheerfully strange package. Run by a licensed wildlife rehabilitator named Karen Brace, the store sells opossum-themed merchandise —plushies, mugs, apparel, hand-crocheted baby opossum figures— and features live opossum ambassadors on-site Thursday through Monday.

This is the store for anyone who has ever been told that opossums are ugly and gross and wants to argue the point. Imagine stopping in Fredericksburg on a road trip, wandering into what looks like a small gift shop, and coming face-to-face with a real, live opossum named Stuart. That is a story you'll tell at every barbecue for the rest of your life.

8

Unclaimed Baggage: Scottsboro, AL

Unclaimed Baggage is exactly what it sounds like : a store that buys luggage that airlines have given up on reuniting with its owners—after a full three-month search—and sells the contents to the public . Items are cleaned, tested, appraised, and priced at up to 80% below retail value. New inventory arrives daily, because bags are lost daily.

Over the years, the store has turned up a NASA Space Shuttle camera, an Egyptian burial mask from around 1500 BC, a live rattlesnake, and a puppet from the Jim Henson film Labyrinth . The everyday inventory includes designer clothes, electronics, jewelry, and sporting goods, but the real draw is the promise that you have no idea what you'll find.

9

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop: Seattle, WA

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop has been operating on Seattle's waterfront since 1899 and in that time has assembled a collection of genuine mummies, shrunken heads, narwhal tusks, and oddities that blur the line between souvenir shop and sideshow attraction. You can buy a snow globe or stand two feet from an actual mummified human body.

It’s the kind of place that would be impossible to open today and which survives partly on reputation, and partly on morbid curiosity.

10

The Mütter Museum Store: Philadelphia, PA

The Mütter Museum is a medical history museum housing anatomical specimens, preserved human remains, and things in jars that no one entirely expects to find in downtown Philadelphia . Its gift shop sells anatomical models, medical curiosity replicas, and books that somehow make the whole experience feel educational and gift-able rather than deeply alarming—most of the time.

You can buy a soap shaped like a human brain, a replica Civil War surgical kit, or a calendar featuring unusual medical case studies from the 1800s. It's oddly tasteful given the subject matter, and the store has developed a devoted following.

1

Arizona

Image: Amber BC

There’s a blend that can please almost any palate: the fusion of American comfort food and bold Mexican flavors. If you like this combination, you've probably already tried Arizona's delicious Sonoran hot dogs.

Tucson and Phoenix are the two most recommended cities to try this tasty street food. Here's a description that will make your mouth water: a Sonoran hot dog is a sausage wrapped in bacon, served in a soft, slightly sweet bolillo roll, which is a Mexican-style bread.

And if that wasn't enough, the toppings are equally incredible. You can choose from iconic guacamole, spicy jalapeños, creamy pinto beans, hot sauce, and more!

2

New Mexico

Image: Alyson McPhee

If you're looking for unique and original flavors, we recommend making New Mexico your next destination.

It turns out that the Land of Enchantment is the home state of one of the most beloved dishes in terms of taste: green chile stew. What makes this hearty, comforting dish specialis right there in its name— New Mexico's green chile . This type of chile is less bitter than other varieties and has a perfect balance of heat and sweetness.

Chile is so deeply ingrained in New Mexico culture that the state has an official question related to it: "Red or green?"

3

Texas

Image: Luis Santoyo

If barbecue is your thing, this recipe is gonna be one of your favorites on this list. Be warned: you’ll want to head straight to Texas to try it.

The star dish in the Lone Star State is brisket. You've probably heard of it! Brisket is a cut of meat from the cow's lower chest, which is traditionally smoked low and slow until it becomes tender.

But wait—it’s not a dish for when you're in a hurry: Texas Brisket cooks for no less than 12 to 16 hours!

4

Hawaii

Image: Luke McKeown

Whether it’s music, dance, sports, or food, Hawaii has a lot to offer. One of its most recommended dishes is Huli Huli Chicken.

What makes this chicken dish so special? Let’s take a look. First, the chicken is marinated in a mix of soy sauce, pineapple juice, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger (our mouths are watering just talking about it!). Then, it's cooked over a wood fire, which gives it that special smoky touch. During cooking, the chicken must be turned several times—a technique that gives the dish its name: "Huli" means "turn" in Hawaiian. This method creates pieces perfectly caramelized on the outside but tender on the inside. An authentic delicacy!

5

Alaska

Image: Mandy Bourke

We promise you one thing: you won't regret trying Alaskan smoked salmon! Whether you're planning a trip to the Last Frontier or you're simply a seafood fan, this flavor is for you.

Alaska is famous for its spectacular landscapes, beautiful lakes, vast distances, and, of course, a characteristic flavor: salmon. While many fish and seafood are popular in this northern state, salmon is among the most recommended by those who understand good food. It’s often said that its exceptional taste may be due, in part, to the cold temperature of the water in which this fish thrives.

6

South Dakota

Image: Todd Quackenbush

A dish doesn't have to be complex to be flavorful, and South Dakota's chislic is proof of that.

Chislic typically features cubed lamb, mutton, or beef that's seasoned and either fried or roasted. Its simplicity and versatility make it a dish that can be adapted to suit different tastes and occasions.

The meat cubes are served hot, often accompanied by delicacies such as hot sauce or ranch dressing on the side. Have you tried this recipe?

7

Massachusetts

Image: Dylan Ferreira

If you have a sweet tooth, you'll have no choice but to visit The Bay State. Ice cream is more than just a treat in Massachusetts; the state has a whole tradition built around this tasty dessert.

Massachusetts isn't just the birthplace of many iconic ice cream brands and chains; it also holds the crown for having the highest per capita ice cream consumption in the country. And there’s a simple explanation for this: ice cream there is simply scrumptious! Plus, you can find a variety of flavors rarely seen elsewhere.

8

Connecticut

Image: Nadya Spetnitskaya

If you love both pizza and seafood, you don’t have to choose between them; you can enjoy both at the same time with Connecticut’s iconic white clam pizza.

This unique pizza originated at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, a legendary spot in New Haven. But what makes it special? Well, let’s call it a rebel pizza—it breaks a few of the traditional "rules" you might expect a pizza to follow. Instead of tomato sauce, it has an olive and garlic base , topped with fresh clams , a staple in Connecticut cuisine. What do you think of this recipe?

9

Illinois

Image: Sergey Kotenev

American food offers something for everyone, even blending the best of different flavors into one dish. If meat and bread are your thing, you’ll love Illinois’ Italian beef.

First, a broth seasoned with delicious ingredients such as garlic and oregano is prepared. Then, the thinly sliced beef is simmered in the broth to absorb all the flavor. Once cooked, it's served on crusty bread.

An important part of the dish is its topping options: you can choose between a rich, spicy giardiniera or sweet peppers to add flavor and texture.

10

New Hampshire

Image: Nikldn

Now let’s go with a classic : pancakes with maple syrup. And we’re not talking about just any syrup, but the one from New Hampshire.

The Granite State is known for its pure, high-quality maple syrup, which is a key part of the state’s identity. And what better to pair with this sweet delight than a good stack of pancakes, right?

So now you know: if you want to take your breakfast to the next level, you have to visit New Hampshire. We recommend going in early spring , right at the peak of maple syrup season.