They recognized the potential danger born with their breakthroughs
We all make mistakes, including the misspelling of words. But while most of our typos and misspellings don't have serious consequences, sometimes missing or altering a letter or word can really mess things up. This has been the case in a number of occasions throughout history, and you'll get to know all about them in this gallery.
Curious to find out what the most famous typos and misspellings in history are? Click on!
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is an iconic monument. The original craftsman however made a mistake when carving the word "Future." He carved an "E" instead of an "F," so it read "Euture." Part of the letter was later filled and the mistake rectified.
Spinach is rich in iron…but how rich, really? In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf misplaced a decimal and recorded spinach's iron content as 35 grams instead of 3.5 grams.
The mistake contributed to the popularity of spinach, with characters such as Popeye the Sailor Man fueling up on the leafy green vegetable. It took 67 years for the mistake to be discovered, and it wasn't until 1937 that the nutritional value of spinach was reevaluated.
The Mariner 1 space probe was launched on July 2, 1962. It was supposed to be NASA's first interplanetary probe, programed to fly past Venus. Shortly after it was launched, it went terribly off-course and the mission had to be aborted to avoid the probe colliding into a residential area.
A typographical error in a computer equation was the culprit. A missing overbar on the letter "R" allowed for incorrect instructions to be sent to the probe. The missing "R̄" cost NASA US$18.5 million.
The name "bonobo" is believed to come from a misspelling on a shipping crate from a town called Bolobo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a result, these primates have been known as such since 1954.
During the writing process, James Joyce dictated parts of the book 'Finnegan’s Wake' to his friend, novelist Samuel Beckett. While doing so, someone knocked on the door and was told to "come in." This vocal invitation made its way into the manuscript after Joyce decided to include it in the text.
A rare first edition of JK Rowling's debut novel has the word "philosopher" misspelled as "philospher" in the title on the back cover. A copy sold for £68,800 (US$83,555) at auction back in 2019.
The original constitution has Pennsylvania spelled in two different ways, including one with a single "n."
Pennsylvania is also spelled as "Pensylvania" on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
The first European to (officially) visit the island of Madagascar was the famous explorer Marco Polo. It's believed that Polo was looking for Mogadishu in Somalia at the time, so a number of mispronunciations and misspellings led him to call the island Madagascar.
Prior to Polo, Arab cartographers had it down as Gezirat Al-Komor, or "Island of the Moon," but the name Madagascar stuck.
The neighborhood of Marvin Gardens in the popular board game Monopoly is actually a misspelling of "Marven Gardens."
Banner Travel Services placed an ad in Yellow Pages (remember those?), but a typo ended up attracting another type of customer. The ad was supposed to list them as experts in "exotic" destinations, but instead it read "erotic" destinations.
The name Cedric is actually a misspelling of the Saxon name Cerdic. The roots of the misspelled name can be traced back to Walter Scott's 1819 novel, 'Ivanhoe.'
In 2010, the production of 1.5 million 50-peso coins was approved by the then-director of Chile's minting department, Gregorio Iniguez. The only problem was that the country's name was misspelled as "Chiie." Iniguez lost his job after the incident.
The famous British newspaper has had a long history of typos and misspellings. So much so that the satirical magazine Private Eye even nicknamed it 'The Grauniad.' Famous examples include blaming unrest in Todmorden on "writers" instead of "rioters."
Other example includes misspelling the word "misspelled" as "mispelled" more than once. The Guardian even published a list of the best and worst typos in celebration of its 200th anniversary.
When Larry Page and Sean Anderson were brainstorming for an index website back in 1997, the name "googolplex," came up, but it was then shortened to "googol." Luckily, while looking for availability of the domain, Anderson typed "google" instead. They both liked the typo, registered it, and you know what happened next…
Between June and July 1991, approximately 12 million people across the US lost their phone services. The reason? An error in the software caused by a typo. Apparently someone typed a "6" instead of a "D" and all hell broke loose.
'The Pasta Bible' was published by Penguin Australia in 2010. The book contained a rather racist mistake that led to the destruction of hundreds of copies. The book recommended seasoning the dish with "salt and freshly ground black people."
In 2009, the then-British Prime Minister Gordon Browne wrote a condolences letter to the mother of a Grenadier Guardsman who died in Afghanistan. The man was named Jamie Janes, but the PM misspelled his name as Jamie James. British tabloid The Sun then tried to shame Brown on the first page…but they too misspelled the soldier's name, calling him Jamie Jones.
The 'Wicked Bible,' also known as the 'Sinners Bible' or the 'Adulterous Bible,' was first printed in London in 1631.
The publisher missed a crucial three-letter word in the Ten Commandments, and it was a disaster (certainly for the publishers, who were heavily fined by the king). The line in this version of the Bible read "Thou shalt commit adultery."
A 150-year-old bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale was bought on eBay for US$304. The collector was lucky enough to spot it, as it was listed under the misspelled name Allsop's Arctic Ale (with one "p"). The bottle was resold for US$503,300.
MCI had a service called 1-800-Collect that allowed people to make cheaper collect calls. Their competitor, AT&T, responded by launching 1-800-OPERATOR. The problem was that lots of people spelled it "OPERATER" instead of "OPERATOR," so the call ended up being redirected to the MCI network. The company profited handsomely from the misspelling of a single word.
"Dord" is an actual ghost word. It appeared in the 1934 Webster's International Dictionary as a synonym for density. It turns out it was an editor's note "D or d" (as a reference to writing the letter "D" in upper or lower case) that was included as a word by mistake.
The Swedish hockey player had his name misspelled for five years. Grossmann is spelled with two "n," but the NHL spelled it as "Grossman," with a single "n."
Two Washington Nationals baseball team players entered a game in 2009 wearing misspelled jerseys. The jerseys read "Natinals."
The former basketball player often had his name misspelled as "Dwayne." In fact, Dwyane's parents actually intended to name their son Dwayne, but he was mistakenly registered as Dwyane.
Sources: (Mental Floss) (Top Tenz) (Insider) (BBC) (Review Studio) (HuffPost)
History's most unbelievable cases of typos and misspellings
From the Bible to the Constitution
LIFESTYLE Words
We all make mistakes, including the misspelling of words. But while most of our typos and misspellings don't have serious consequences, sometimes missing or altering a letter or word can really mess things up. This has been the case in a number of occasions throughout history, and you'll get to know all about them in this gallery.
Curious to find out what the most famous typos and misspellings in history are? Click on!