The 20th Century: Loser Style

Ant wrote to us with Wired's depressing end of the century list. Reasoning that all of these "best of the eons" lists need to have an ugly relative, they commisioned the folks at Ig Nobel to come up with a list of notable failures.

Comments

"Wrong Way" Corrigan

[richieb]

Wired got this one wrong! Corrigan was a pilot who wanted to fly across the Atlantic, but the Civil Aviation Authority (the previous FAA) would not issue a formal permit for takeoff.

So instead he said that he was flying to California, with CAA's permission, and then after take-off he just flew to Ireland.

Afterwards, to keep the CAA off his back he said "oops, I made a mistake"...

...richie

Several of these "Screw ups" are poorly explained

[.havoc]

Bhopal:
Union Carbide plamed for India's poorly educated workers refusing to follow safety proceedures and guidelines. UC paid dearly and mostly kept thier mouths shut.

Challenger:
Several Engineers had tried to stop the use of the material in the O-rings. Several Engineers had tried to stop the launch that morning. Some NASA bearucrat pushed the launch through for internal political reasons.

Another Shoot Down:
All of the bodies recovered from the water had been dead for more than 24 hours. Very little blood was present in the water. Suspected to be a ploy by the Iranian goverment to turn up the international Heat on the US. The approach of the "Irianian Jetliner" was wavetop and full throttle -- very un-jetliner behavior. It also failed repeatedly to respond to hails.

Cold Fussion:
To date, the results of Fleischmann and Pons have been replicated by 20-30 researchers -- Including Chemists at Texas A&M and Arizona State. There's something else going on here.

Y2K Bug:
I agree with the previous post about the cost of the Y2K bug.