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

What are bills made of?

Unlike other currencies, dollar bills are not made of paper or plastic. U.S. dollar bills are made from a special fabric blend composed of 75% cotton and 25% linen. This mix makes the bills extremely durable and resistant, and they can be folded about 4000 times before tearing.

2

What bills are valid?

Any U.S. dollar bill that was legally printed is valid, no matter how old, as American currency does not have an expiration date. While some bills might not be accepted by businesses of foreign exchange services due to their condition or if they are a discontinued version of the bill, the bills themselves are still valid, and American banks will accept them, though they might take them out of circulation.

3

American leaders

Five bills have a depiction of an American president. The exceptions are the $10 bill, with Alexander Hamilton on the front, and the $100 bill, with Benjamin Franklin. The $1 bill, depicting George Washington, is extremely symbolic: several elements are repeated 13 times as a nod to the thirteen colonies, and it showcases the Bald Eagle and the Eye of Providence as a sign of God watching over America.

4

A change in size

Did you know that dollar bills used to be so big that they were nicknamed "horse blankets"? Original dollar bills were 7.4 × 3.1 inches. In 1929, the Treasury Department reduced the size of bills to 6.14 × 2.61 inches to reduce production costs and materials. Old bills, though still valid, are worth much more as collector items.

5

Uniformity

Besides their value and design, all dollar bills have the same size (6.14 × 2.61 inches), color, and weight (1 gram) , which sets American currency apart from other countries where bills of different values are differentiated by size, color, or both. Why doesn’t the U.S. implement differences among bills? The cost of adapting vending machines, bank drawers, and ATMs to new bill sizes would cost billions of dollars.

6

Hard to copy

Originally, dollars were not green, but black. As time passed, green ink was favored, as it was cheap and did not fade as much as black. The new color also prevented people from using black-and-white cameras to create counterfeit money. Currently, dollar bills are predominantly green, but newer versions also include extra colors, such as pink, orange, or purple.

7

A $100,000 bill?

Have you ever seen a $500 or 1,000 dollar bill? What about a $100,000? Up until 1945, the U.S. Treasury printed $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000 notes , in addition to the values currently in use. These higher-value notes were mainly intended for bank and government use, but were sought by criminals as they made it easier to hide large amounts of money. Even though they were officially discontinued in 1969, these notes are still valid, though rare, and they have a high worth as collector's items.

8

No numbers

Unlike bills, American coins have different sizes and colors related to their value. Originally, gold, silver, and copper were used for coins, but modern coins are made of copper, zinc, or nickel. Besides their size and design, the value of each coin is printed in letters, not in numbers , alongside depictions of American presidents.

9

Liberty for all (the coins)

By law, all American coins must include six specific details : the word ‘Liberty’, the name of our country, the national motto "In God We Trust", the oldest American motto "E Pluribus Unum", the value of the coin, and the year. Each coin also includes a mint mark that shows where it was made: "P" for Philadelphia, "D" for Denver, "S" for San Francisco, and "W" for West Point.

10

A global currency

The American dollar is one of the most powerful currencies in the world, acting as a backbone for international trade and finances. It is estimated that two-thirds of the physical dollars in circulation are outside American territory. Besides the U.S. and its territories, eight sovereign nations have the U.S. dollar as their official currency, with several more accepting it as legal tender.

1

George Wilson (1830): The man who refused his own pardon

In 1829, George Wilson and his accomplice James Porter robbed a U.S. mail carrier in Pennsylvania. Both were convicted in May 1830 on six counts, including putting the carrier's life in jeopardy, and sentenced to hang within weeks.

Porter was executed on schedule. But Wilson's influential friends petitioned President Andrew Jackson, who granted Wilson a formal pardon in June 1830, saving him from the gallows. Then Wilson did something that had never happened before in American history: he refused it.

The case was so unprecedented that it reached the Supreme Court in 1833, housed at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., as illustrated above. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the pardon couldn’t be valid without acceptance. However, Wilson was never executed. He served his prison sentence and was eventually pardoned a second time by President Martin Van Buren in 1841.

2

Richard Nixon (1974): The only president ever pardoned

On the night of June 17, 1972, five operatives were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Investigations revealed that President Richard Nixon had known about the cover-up and actively participated in it. Facing near-certain impeachment, Nixon became the only U.S. president ever to resign from office, stepping down in 1974.

Just 30 days later, his successor Gerald Ford announced from the Oval Office that he was granting Nixon "a full, free, and absolute pardon" for all offenses against the United States committed between 1969 and 1974. No charges had even been filed. The decision was widely condemned. Many historians believe it cost Ford the 1976 presidential election to Jimmy Carter. Nixon accepted the pardon but never admitted criminal guilt, expressing only "regret" for how he had handled the situation.

3

Iva Toguri D'Aquino (1977): The woman they called "Tokyo Rose"

Iva Toguri D'Aquino was a Los Angeles-born 25-year-old visiting a sick relative in Japan when the attack on Pearl Harbor stranded her there in December 1941. The Japanese government declared her an enemy alien and coerced her into broadcasting on Radio Tokyo's Zero Hour program.

This was a Japanese psychological warfare strategy that utilized English-speaking women, eventually all referred to collectively as " Tokyo Rose," to broadcast demoralizing messages intended to weaken Allied troop morale. After Japan's surrender, journalists identified Toguri as one of the voices.

A jury convicted her of treason in 1949, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served six years. After a 1976 CBS 60 Minutes segment revealed key witnesses had lied, President Gerald Ford granted her a full and unconditional pardon in 1977, on his final day in office. It remains the only presidential pardon ever granted for a treason conviction in U.S. history.

4

Jack Johnson (2018): A champion pardoned 72 years after his death

John Arthur "Jack" Johnson was the first Black man ever to hold the world heavyweight boxing championship. In May 1913, a jury convicted him under the Mann Act (a federal law against transporting women across state lines for "immoral purposes") for traveling with his white girlfriend, whom he had since married.

Johnson skipped bail, fled to Canada, and fought two world title defenses in Paris before losing the belt in Havana in 1915. He surrendered to U.S. authorities in 1920 and served nearly a year in Kansas. He died in a car crash at age 68 in North Carolina in 1946.

After years of bipartisan lobbying and a call from actor Sylvester Stallone, President Trump signed Johnson's posthumous pardon in the Oval Office in 2018, 105 years after the conviction.

5

Samuel Mudd (1869): The doctor who set the assassin's leg

Hours after John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., one April night in 1865, Booth arrived at the Maryland farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd with a broken leg.

Mudd set the fracture and gave Booth shelter. When investigators linked Mudd to Booth, including through prior meetings in 1864, he was tried by a military commission and convicted of conspiracy. Sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, he was sent to Fort Jefferson, a remote military prison on an island 70 miles west of Key West, Florida.

In 1867, a deadly yellow fever outbreak killed the prison's doctor. Mudd stepped in, treating patients and helping contain the epidemic. A petition signed by 299 enlisted men and officers was sent to President Andrew Johnson praising Mudd's courage. Johnson granted Mudd a full and unconditional pardon in 1869. Mudd was released on March 8 and returned to his Maryland farm. His conviction was never overturned; the pardon freed him, but the guilty verdict stood.

6

Marc Rich (2001): A fugitive pardoned on the last day

Marc Rich was a billionaire commodities trader indicted in 1983 on 65 counts, including tax evasion, wire fraud, and trading oil with Iran during the 1979–1981 hostage crisis. Before facing trial, Rich fled to Switzerland, where he remained a fugitive from U.S. justice for 17 years.

On January 20, 2001, his very last day in office, President Bill Clinton granted Rich a full pardon, bypassing the standard Justice Department review process. T he pardon ignited one of the biggest controversies of Clinton's presidency. Rich's ex-wife Denise had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.

A federal investigation led by prosecutor Mary Jo White was launched but ultimately found no criminal wrongdoing by Clinton. Clinton's own Justice Department had recommended against the pardon. Rich died in Switzerland in June 2013 at the age of 78, never having returned to the United States.

7

Patty Hearst (2001): From kidnapped heiress to bank robber

Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, in 1974. She was taken by a radical militant group called the Symbionese Liberation Army.

After weeks in captivity, in which she was kept in a closet, blindfolded, she appeared in a bank surveillance video holding a rifle and participating in the robbery of a bank in San Francisco. She was captured in September 1975. Her defense argued she had been brainwashed and acted under duress. A jury rejected that argument, and she was convicted of bank robbery in 1976 and sentenced to 7 years.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1979 after she had served approximately 22 months. She was released and married her former bodyguard. In January 2001, President Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon in the final hours of his presidency.

8

Vietnam Draft Evaders (1977): The biggest blanket pardon in U.S. history

On his first full day as president in 1977, Jimmy Carter signed Proclamation 4483, granting an unconditional pardon to all Americans who had violated the Military Selective Service Act in the span of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The government estimated that approximately 210,000 men had been formally accused of draft violations , while hundreds of thousands more had never been charged. Many had fled to other countries, roughly 90% to Canada, where they had been welcomed as legal immigrants.

Carter had campaigned openly on the promise, calling it necessary to heal a nation still divided by the war. The pardon did not extend to military deserters. Veterans' organizations were furious. Despite the backlash, an estimated 50,000 of those eligible chose to remain in Canada permanently, never returning home.

9

Scooter Libby (2007 / 2018): The spy scandal at the heart of the White House

Lewis "Scooter" Libby served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration. In 2003, the identity of Valerie Plame (a covert CIA officer) was leaked to journalists, apparently in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had publicly challenged the administration's case for the Iraq War.

Though Libby was not charged with the leak itself, he was convicted in 2007 of four felony counts: obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and making false statements to the FBI. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000. Later that same year, President Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence, calling it "excessive," but left the conviction, fine, and probation intact; he declined to grant a full pardon. Eleven years later, in 2018, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon, completely wiping Libby's record clean.

10

Roger Clinton (2001): The president's half-brother

Roger Clinton is the younger half-brother of President Bill Clinton. Roger was given the Secret Service code name "Headache" during his brother's administration. In 1984, Arkansas state police ran an undercover sting operation that caught Roger selling illegal drugs to an informant. He pleaded guilty in 1985 to charges of conspiracy to distribute drugs and served approximately one year in federal prison, completing his sentence in 1986.

14 years later, on his last day in office, President Clinton granted Roger a full pardon, clearing his criminal record. The pardon drew relatively little public outrage compared to the Marc Rich case.