15 Historical Screwups That Will Make You Feel Like a Champ
These 15 severe screwups will haunt these people forever.
Published 10 years ago in Facepalm
4
When Mao Zedong ordered a mass killing of birds. In 1958, Mao believed that sparrows would eat all the crops and cause a famine. However, sparrows actually eat a large number of insects, and with the birds gone, the insects destroyed the crops instead. This actually caused the greatest mass starvation in history. BAD CALL.
10
When Londoners started killing cats that they thought were carrying the plague. During the Great Plague of London, people suspected that cats were spreading the plague, so they started killing stray cats. However, once the cat population started to fall, the plague got even worse - because there were no cats to kill the real plague carriers, the rats.
12
When Franz Ferdinand's driver took a wrong turn. Archduke Ferdinand was being driven around in Sarajevo. His driver took a wrong turn, and ended up on a side street, where the man who had just tried (and failed) to assassinate Ferdinand happened to be. The assassin took his second chance and killed Ferdinand and his wife, leading ultimately to the First World War.
13
When the Seattle Seahawks made the worst Super Bowl play ever. In the 2015 Super Bowl, the Seahawks were behind by 4 points, on the ONE yard line (AKA as close to scoring as possible without scoring yet), with a few seconds left in the game. If they'd run the ball, they might have scored. But they passed instead, and lost the game.
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