MISTAKES
And upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity …
—Luke 21:25
3501 GM Recalls
One of the costliest mistakes ever made was by General Motors which had to recall 4.9 million vehicles to check for faulty carburetors and exhaust systems. The postage alone for sending the registered letters cost more than four million dollars.
3502 Wrong-Way Traffic
The California state highway department is trying a new way to stop wrong-way freeway drivers who are blamed for eight percent of fatal freeway accidents. For example, near Sacramento, wrong-way drivers entering an exit ramp get a loud horn, a 12-inch red light, and an instantly-illuminated sign reading: “GO BACK—YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY.” The warning devices are set off by a detector buried in the pavement and sensitive to autos coming the wrong way.
3503 $1-A-Year Subscription
Mistakes are often costly in any business. A New York newspaper once published an advertisement of a magazine that was just being established. By the error of printer and proofreader, the cost of a year’s subscription was given as ten cents. The price given in the “copy” for the advertisement was one dollar a year. Thirty thousand readers of the newspaper sent in their dimes for a year’s subscription, and the newspaper had to stand good for the mistake. The one little error cost them twenty-seven thousand dollars.
3504 Do-It-Yourself, If You Dare!
Television, a British magazine, gave its readers instruction on how to put together colour television sets. About 2,000 do-it-yourself fans spent hundreds of hours each putting the sets together. Not one of the homemade sets worked, and the magazine now admits making a series of major errors in the instructions.
—Prairie Overcomer
3505 Missing Ingredient In Recipe
Time-Life, Inc., is renowned for publishing factual magazines and books. But the company’s famous cookbooks came out with an embarrassing error in a Chinese recipe. In a recipe for almond cookies, the printer accidentally left out one ingredient. The proofreaders didn’t catch the error, and dozens of letters from angry almond cookie makers deluged the Time-Life offices.
3506 Eating The Toads
When the International Publishing Corporation of London, England, discovered a printing error that might prove fatal in one of its children’s books, it asked wholesalers and retailers to return unsold copies and alerted the public with regard to the mistake.
The book, The Look and Learn Ninth Book of Wonders, transposed a caption in an article on mushrooms and toadstools, thus apparently assuring the reader that the death cap toadstools in the picture are harmless. Actually, anyone eating the death cap toadstool has only a one-in-twenty chance of survival. “On no account should the book be presented to a child,” the company warned.
3507 Still In Error
A newspaper in Kansas, trying to square up a mistake that had occurred in a previous issue, carried the following item:
“We wish to apologize for an error in the wedding story in last week’s issue. Due to a typesetter’s mistake we said. “The roses were punk.” What we intended to say was, “The noses were pink.””
3508 Hoping For A Mistake
Liddell Hart, the British military expert, likes to tell the story of the young man who spent one entire week going from store-to-store in New York changing a dollar bill into two half-dollars, the half-dollars into four quarters, the quarters into ten dimes, the dimes into twenty nickels, and the nickels into one hundred pennies.
After he had the one hundred pennies, he began reversing the process, until he again had a dollar bill. After he had gone through this strange procedure three times, Hart ventured to inquire what on earth his purpose was.
The young man lifted an index finger and smiled craftily. “One of these days,” he explained, “somebody is going to make a mistake—and it isn’t going to be me.”
3509 Stumping The Experts
Digging in the Greek Grave Mound at Moundsville, West Virginia, in 1838, workmen came upon a chamber containing prehistoric relics, one being a stone tablet inscribed with hieroglyphics which defied translation and were the subject of controversy for 92 years.
At least 60 linguists studied the characters and claimed to have identified them as Runic, Etruscan or some other ancient language. But the hieroglyphics were not actually deciphered until 1930 when an American chanced to look at them from an unusual angle and saw that they were English letters which spelled out “Bill Stump’s Stone, October 14, 1838.”
3510 Bank Reconstructs Shredded Checks
When the janitor of the First Security Bank, Boise, Idaho, accidentally put a box of 8,000 checks worth $840,000 on a trash table, a nightmare occurred.
The operator of the paper shredder dutifully dumped the contents into his machine, cutting them up into quarter-inch shreds and dumping them into a garbage can outside the bank. “I wanted to cry,” said the bank supervisor.
Most of the checks had been cashed at the bank and were awaiting shipment to a clearing house. Their loss would result in a bookkeeping nightmare because most of them were still unrecorded. The bankers could not know who paid what to whom.
Solution: reclaim the shredded pieces and reconstruct each check. And so, fifty employees worked in two shifts for six hours daily inside 6 rooms shifting, plucking, matching and pasting like finalists in a jigsaw puzzle Olympics.
—Time
3511 Tragic Wrong Turn
Two men and a youth—Arnold Dobson, Harold Most and his son Harold, Jr.—perished in the blasting summer heat of the Death Valley area. Sheriff deputies found their bodies seven, fourteen and seventeen miles from an abandoned car. “They were kind of strung out like a black line. The heat turned them black,” said deputy Red Landergram.
In leaving their stranded car to seek help, the three had tragically headed in the wrong direction, going toward a ranch house they had passed thirty miles back. Just a mile in the other direction was a grove of willows and a spring!
3512 Guarding Wrong Bridge
In the State of Washington two soldiers were cited for special honors. They were heroes, and were cheered. But mingled with the cheers were a few loud laughs.
In the Western Army war games, Private Glenn Sollie and Private Andrew Bearshield of the Fifteenth Infantry had been ordered to make their way to a bridge, and guard it. They were told to stand on duty at the bridge until relieved.
The two were faithful soldiers. They went and they guarded—and guarded. They stuck to it for three days and three nights without food and without blankets. Then they were—no, not relieved, they were found! They were guarding the wrong bridge. The two brave warriors had lost their way and taken their battle stations at a bridge seven miles away from the one they were to guard. They might still be there, if the Fifteenth Infantry had not sent out a detail to look for them.
I suppose the two heroes might have been sent to the guardhouse for going to the wrong bridge, but they also deserved military honors for guarding it so long. They got the honors—plus a laugh or two.
—Selected
3513 Normal Pregnancy, After All
From my college days, I remember one dramatic scene. A female patient was on the operating room table just going under the anesthesia. A hundred medical students, interns, and nurses watched with bated breath as the chief surgeon stated what he was going to do. This was a classical case of ovarian tumor, he explained, and he was going to remove it. In the process of establishing his diagnosis, other diseases had been considered, such as tuberculosis, diseases of the intestine and liver, of the kidney and urinary bladder. All of them had been discarded; the present case was almost a textbook description of a tumor of the uterus, probably benign.
As the students and junior surgeon watched, he made his incision with his usual flourish. We marvelled at the certainty of his every move, at the purposeness of every step. To us, that chief surgeon seemed the epitome of medical knowledge, the man who could not err, neither in diagnosis nor in surgical technique.
But after working for a few minutes, he stopped. There was a hurried conference between him and his assistant. With a motion of his hand, he stopped the anesthesiologist. He gave a command to his assistant, got off his stool, and left the operating room. It remained for the assistant to close the wound and terminate the day’s lesson. Facing us, he spoke three words, “Diagnosis, normal pregnancy.”
—Selected
3514 Hasty Reply
During a lesson in a medical college the other day, one of the students was asked by the professor, “How much is a dose of (giving the technical name of a strong poison).” “A teaspoonful,” was the ready reply.
The professor made no comment, but the student, a quarter of an hour later, realized that he had made a mistake, and straightway said: “Professor, I want to change my answer to that question.” “It’s too late, sir,” responded the professor, curtly, looking at his watch; “your patient has been dead fourteen minutes.”
—The Indian Witness
3515 Big Enough for Mistakes
After haggling for hours over which type of water main to install, the town council of Pacific Vista seemed hopelessly deadlocked.
“I suggest,” said one member, “that a committee be appointed to confer with the city engineer at Los Angeles to find which type he had found most successful; if we can profit by another city’s mistakes, I think we should do so.”
Leaping to his feet and angrily shaking his fist, an opposing councilman shouted, “Why should we have to profit by the mistakes of Los Angeles? Gentlemen,” he said, pounding the table violently, “I contend that Pacific Vista is a big enough town now to make its own mistakes!”
—Selected
3516 Six Mistakes Of Man
The Roman philosopher and statesman, Cicero, said this some 2,000 years ago, and it is still true. The six mistakes of man:
1. The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
3517 Epigram On Mistakes
• The man who is incapable of making a mistake is incapable of anything.
—Lincoln
• The biggest mistake is the fear that you will make one.
• Money is never so well spent as when you get cheated out of it—for at one stroke you have purchased prudence.
—Schopenhauer
• It’s wise to apologize to a man if you’re wrong—and to a woman if you’re right.
—Calgary Albertan
• A fault denied is twice committed.
—Spanish Proverb
• The only complete mistake is the mistake from which we learn nothing.
• Experience is a wonderful thing. It helps you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
• Mistakes will happen but must you give them so much help?
• From an American Marketing Association Newsletter: “It has been brought to our attention that last month we labeled a picture “Herb Breseman,” while the photograph was of Bob Fernald. However, since the article was about Ed Macdonald—disregard the whole thing.”
• Don’t fear mistakes. Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first automobile. Edison once spent $2,000,000 on an invention which proved of little value.
ADMITTING MISTAKES
3518 Support Needed When Wrong
The British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was criticizing the editor of a London newspaper for not giving him sufficient support. The editor of the paper claimed that he always supported Melbourne’s party when he thought it was in the right.
“We don’t want the support when we are in the right,” retorted Melbourne; “what we want is a little support when we are in the wrong.”
3519 Parliamentarian’s Admission
One day Robert Peel arose in the House of Commons, and in the presence of an indignant party and astounded country proudly said: “I have been wrong. I now ask Parliament to repeal the Law for which I myself have stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace; where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty.”
Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as “traitor,” “coward” and “recreant leader.” Nor did he forsee that in losing an office he had gained the love of a country.
3520 Why Moody’s Descended From Platform
One night when Mr. Moody was leading the singing and Mr. Sankey was playing the organ, Moody looked over to Sankey and said: “Excuse me; I see there a friend coming in to the meeting. I offended him today downtown, and I want him to forgive me.” Mr. Moody walked down from the platform, and the other man got up from his seat and walked out into the aisle and met Mr. Moody about halfway, and said, “Mr. Moody, I forgive you heartily.”
Moody went back to the platform, and an eyewitness said, “I never saw such a meeting; it was wonderful.” That is why God so richly used Mr. Moody. He kept a conscience that was void of offence toward God.
—Moody Church News
3521 Washington’s Greatness
At Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1775, General George Washington discovered that his army was completely out of powder. He sent Colonel Glover to Marblehead for a fresh supply. When Glover returned that evening he found Washington pacing up and down before his headquarters. Without returning Glover’s salute, Washington demanded:
“Have you got the powder?”
“No, Sir,” replied the colonel.
Washington used some rather severe language, winding up roughly:
“Why did you come back, sir, without it?”
“Sir,” said Glover, “there is not a kernel of powder in Marblehead.”
Greatly disturbed and chagrined, Washington walked up and down for a few minutes and then turned to Glover: “Colonel Glover, here is my hand, if you will take it and forgive me. The greatness of our danger made me foget what is due to you and to myself.”
3522 Lesson From Edison’s Plant Fire
Thomas A. Edison’s plant was on fire. As he helplessly watched it burn, taking his costly experiments up in flames, he called his son Charles. “Come!” he said. “You’ll never see anything like this again!” Then he called his wife. As the three stood gazing, Edison said, “There go all our mistakes. Now we can start over afresh.” In two weeks he started rebuilding the plant, and it was not long before he invented the phonograph.
—Gospel Herald
3523 “Error Someplace”
One month not long ago my wife made a real effort to balance her checkbook. Instead of throwing away her canceled checks as she usually does, she matched them with her stubs. After one whole morning, she handed me four sheets of typewritten figures with items and costs sitting neatly in their respective columns. I checked her total with the bank statement—and it balanced! Then, out of curiosity, I went over her list of items: Milkman—$11.25; Cleaners—$4.60; and so forth. Everything was clear except for one item reading E.S.P.—$24.56.
“What does E. S. P. mean?” I asked warily.
“Error Some Place,” she answered.
—Ladies’ Home Journal