However, there’s something related which is less horrific, but can be just as destructive: accidents. I’m not talking about manslaughter (or “murder in the third degree”, in some jurisdictions), I’m not even talking about car crashes, I’m talking about mistakes.
We all make mistakes – that’s why every keyboard comes with a backspace. Of course, even though we may make mistakes or have accidents that we didn’t foresee, some of those mistakes are still our own fault. I think my favourite example is a story my father retold me from an episode of Dr Phil, where a couple insisted they were cursed with bad luck because, for example, on their wedding day the wife was hospitalized because after being just married, they drove away on a Harley Davidson, and her wedding veil train got caught in the bike chain and badly injured her neck, and in response, Dr Phil said:
“That’s not bad luck, that’s just dumb.”
Today, I want to present to you a list of mistakes which weren’t dumb, in fact not only were they not that person’s fault, I’d even say that there’s mistakes you and I have made before. They’re common mistakes, what could possibly go wrong? Well, today I’ll tell you what can go wrong, and how people were not only hurt, but killed en masse, by one person making a simple mistake.
A RUNAWAY DOG
I love dogs, and I think an important part of owning a pet is training
them well, and keeping them safe. Unfortunately, some people aren't as
good at training dogs, and sometimes, dogs can be harder to train than
others. So, I understand that sometimes when walking your dog, if you
drop the lead they may try to escape, or maybe they'll run off to try to
chase a random bird or squirrel. Or, it may even be because they're
playful, meaning that they think your attempts to chase them are part of
a game of keep-away, encouraging them to keep running, to keep the game
going. So, I get it, dogs can sometimes run off, meaning you'll have to
look for them, or go running after them. It's annoying, but it happens.
If you're not careful, it could start a war. On October 18th—hey, that's my birthday!—1925; on the border of Greece and Bulgaria, both sides had patrols keeping a keen eye on the border. These two nations had been in several conflicts before, from the Second Balkan War, to the First World War on the Macedonian front, tensions were high.
According to some reports, a Greek soldier who was patrolling the Demir Kapia pass at Belasitsa lost control of his dog and it got away from him, so he chased after it. However, the dog ran into disputed territory, and so as the soldier chased after it, Bulgarian sentries on the other side saw this soldier running towards them, interpreted it as a threat and shot him dead. The Greeks saw this as the Bulgarians drawing first-blood, and so they demanded an apology. Bulgarians explained the situation, bit the Greek government demanded an apology, and on October 22, they occupied the town of Petrich, to enforce their demands. This lead to fighting that killed almost 200 people, three-quarters of which were Greek, before Greece complied with Bulgarian demands and stopped the conflict from escalating further... and all because one Grecian soldier let the dog out.
Now, I have to add, I do my best to verify these stories, and I left several off this list because they turned out to be untrue (I couldn't verify any stories where a typo killed someone, unfortunately), but this story is always told with the preface that reports are disputed; it's probably a "he-said/she-said" situation, since this was the start of a war between two countries, it makes sense that stories would differ. But, several historians do refer to this as "The War of the Stray Dog" specifically because of this story, and the alternative, that Bulgarians randomly decided to kill a Greek soldier for no reason, doesn't make as much sense to most people.
HITTING YOUR HEAD ON A DOOR FRAME
I think we've all done this at some point. Whether it's due to stepping in or out of a door you're not used to, or having grown in height, we all hit our head from time to time. It tends to hurt, because brains are important and fragile (that's why they're wrapped up inside a skull).
You may think the worst thing that could happen is that you may hurt yourself really badly, and considering the context of this list, perhaps you could walk into a door and die.
What's the Worst that Could Happen?
You could walk into a door and die, leaving France without a king in the midst of debt & war. Charles the 8th, or "Charles L'Affable", was the king of France from the 30th of June 1470 until 7th of April 1498, but it came to an abrupt end because on the 7th of June, he went to watch a "court tennis" match at the Château d'Amboise, and on his way there, he struck his head on the lintel of a door. Although it doubtlessly hurt quite a bit, he seemed to recover, and he watched the match. However, at around 2 o'clock, as he was returning from the game, he fell into a coma. Nine hours later, he was dead.
This alone is a tragedy, as any death is, but a single death isn't usually enough to create a catastrophe. What makes this catastrophic is that this was a king, a beloved king (as his name attests), but more importantly, King Charles' children died before he did, meaning he left no male heirs to take the throne, so it was up to his second-cousin (once removed) Louis the 12th to step up and rule France. This left King Louis, and France, in strife as Charles was a rather liberal spender, and whilst his legacy benefitted France in the latter part of the Rennaissance, it left his successor with a great amount of debt. The country was also in the midst of some military campaigns and a fair amount of social disarray. Having to take over a country is difficult enough at the best of times, but it's more difficult considering that Louis opposed the monarchy, in no small part considering he fought for the feudal coalition against the monarchy during the Mad War, a series of hostile manoeuvres opposing the authority of French royalty, and had been imprisoned for his part in the conflict. Ironically, this made him a better king as he lowered taxes, left governers to govern themselves, and reduced spending. However, due to his heritage, Louis felt entitled to the Duchy of Milan, having already attempted to conquer it in 1494 in the Siege of Novara. After settling some of Charles' earlier military campaigns, Louis began the Second Italian War-also known as "King Louis XII's Italian War" sending the French army into Milan to finish what he'd tried and failed to do with his own army, four years prior. This war subsequently lead to the Third Italian War, and countless deaths...
Of course, some of these connections are more tenuous - most kings fought wars back then, and it's not really possible to quantify how many more or less would have died, had Charles continued his reign - but, losing your noble ruler, "appointed by God", because of a short doorway, has to be a nasty shock.
LOSING YOUR KEYS
I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I lose anything. When I lose my stuff, I feel like I’m losing my mind. It has to be somewhere, it was in my hand at some point and I didn’t throw it into the sun. But, it’s something we all do, and I feel like keys are a huge one. Most people have lost their keys at one point of their life. Car keys, house keys, locker keys or shed keys, it’s incredibly annoying.
But, that’s usually all it is, it’s just annoying. For most people, the worst case scenario is that you might be late for work, or you might lock yourself out of your house. It’s annoying, maybe even a little embarrassing, but it’s nothing that you should concern yourself over.
What’s the Worst that could Happen?
Over 1,500 people could die in the ocean... on April 10th 1912, Reginald Lee, a lookout working for the Whitestar Line, saw an obstacle in the path of their ship and alerted the bridge that they were in danger. Captain Edward Smith ordered the ship to turn to starboard to avoid a head-on collision, however they were too late to avoid a collision entirely. Just before midnight the iceberg scraped against the side of the ship, causing severe damage to the hull which lead to the ship taking on water. Just under three hours later, the ship sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. For those of you who haven’t caught on yet, that ship was in fact the RMS Titanic. But, wait, what does this have to do with keys?
Well, Reginald Lee and Frederick Fleet were the lookouts on duty on the night that the Titanic collided with the iceberg, and their report was too late to give the captain enough time to avoid the iceberg completely. But, it wasn’t all their fault... it was actually because of Officer David Blair. Blair was the Second Officer aboard the Titanic, but it wasn’t his fault either, because he was the Second Officer... for about a week. However, at the last second – one day before setting sail – Captain Smith decided to appoint Henry Wilde as his Chief Officer. This meant that Chief Officer William Murdoch was demoted to first officer; First Officer Charles Lightoller was demoted to second officer; & Second Officer David Blair was demoted to “out of a job”, and so he had to gather his things and get off the ship. Much later, he realized that he still had a key in his pocket, the key to a cabinet in which a pair of binoculars were kept for the lookouts, which meant that Officer Lightoller, his replacement, didn’t know where the binoculars were. During the British inquiry into the Sinking of the Titanic, when asked if he would have been able to see the iceberg with binoculars, Frederick Fleet is reported stating “We could have seen it a bit sooner”. When asked to clarify as to how much sooner, he replied: “Well, enough to get out of the way...”
PUSHING ON A "PULL" DOOR
I think we've all done this once or twice. You walk to a door, grab the handle, and it rattles ineffectively as you try to open it, only for you to realize it has a little sign telling you how to open it. It can feel like an embarrassing mistake, but I want to make it clear, it's not YOUR mistake... it's the door's. On average, people walk through dozens of doors in a day - you shouldn't need an instruction manual - we use context clues and experience to open doors, and if you can't pull a door open, why give it a handle, when all it needs is a push plate?
These unintuitively-designed doors have been given the name "Norman Doors", named for Don Norman, the engineer who highlighted this simple design failure. It's a simple mistake, but it can be quite embarrassing, or on a bad day, might hurt your face if you walk into a door.
What's the Worst that Could Happen?
You could kill almost 500 people... in 1947, Boston Massachusetts, there was a popular night club called the Cocoanut Grove; it often had celebrity visitors, the owner had mob connections and knew the Mayor at the time, it was a popular place, in spite of (or, perhaps because of) the gaudy, fake tropical decor. On November 30, during Thanksgiving Weekend, the club was overcrowded (double their legal capacity, according to sources) when an electrical fault in the air-conditioning started a fire which quickly set the flammable palm-trees ablaze. The panicking patrons did the logical thing, running for the exit doors, unfortunately none of these doors were easy exits. The people on the dance floor ran for the front entrance, but as that was a revolving door, the panicked mass of patrons couldn't easily co-ordinate their way through the spinning obstacle; jamming the doorway, and when the door inevitably broke, this caused a backdraft that quickly engulfed the crowd with flames, killing several, and blocking the entryway with bodies and flames. Several of the secondary exits were locked, likely to prevent party-crashers from sneaking past security.
The patrons in the Broadway Lounge had a clear, unlocked exit - however, the first few who reached the exit pushed on a door designed to be pulled, and the door didn't open. Before they could realize their mistake, more people followed them, causing a crowd crush, preventing the door from opening at all, and trapping them in with the flames.
The club's employees, who were familiar with the building, easily escaped through service doors, and when they realized how many people were still inside, some of the wait staff managed to unlock one of the locked exits, finally providing an escape room for patrons, but it was too late for most. 492 people died as a result of the fire.
TAKING A WRONG TURN
I think it's fair to say that everyone's gotten lost in their car, at least once. Even along familiar roads, at a different time of day you may not recognize your surroundings; or, you may be distracted and focusing more on operating your car or driving safely rather than making your way to your destination. When I was learning to drive, I did it a few times, and it was very frustrating. Even with GPS these days, you might miss a turn, or your GPS may have an outdated map. Unless you're in an over-structured city, or a suburban sprawl of fractal dead-ends, you can usually just go around the block and get back on track. It happens, sometimes, to the best of us. It's not usually a big deal.
What's the Worst that could Happen?
You could start World War 1. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia; When six members of a Bosnian Serb student revolutionary group, called "Young Bosnia" heard that the Archduke would be in town, they decided to assassinate him. The group spread out over the planned path of the Archduke's motorcade, three pairs of assassins armed with guns and bombs. The Archduke was lucky, as most of these would-be assassins were completely incompetent. The first two failed to do anything at all, allowing the motorcade to pass. As they passed the third pair, one of the men threw his bomb at the Archduke's car (the third in the motorcade) but the bomb bounced off the back of the folded soft-top, and landed in the road. Unfortunately, the timer went off as the fourth car in the motorcade drove over it, disabling the car and wounding up to twenty people. The rest of the motorcade then sped quickly to their destination, to get away from their would-be attackers.
The bomber was arrested after a failed suicide attempt (and was beaten mercilessly by the crowd), and the Archduke was shaken by this assassination attempt, but he composed himself, and decided that after opening the museum, he and his wife would visit the victims of the bombing. However, this plan wasn't properly communicated to the drivers. This meant that when they returned to their motorcade and drove back along the same path, the first two drivers accidentally turned right, to head to their next destination, rather than go straight to the hospital. When he noticed this, the governor sharing the car with the Archduke called to the driver to stop, but as he did, the car stalled. Little did he know, on that very corner, one of the would-be assassins was waiting. With the car dead in its tracks, he stepped up and onto the footplate of the car, and shot the Archduke and the Duchess.
The assassin then tried, and failed, to shoot himself, but was quickly detained by police. Unfortunately the Archduke's wound haemorrhaged, and both he and his wife died in hospital, the next day.
Because of this, tensions between Serbia and Austria increased dramatically, leading to the July Crisis, which inevitably lead to the outbreak of World War 1 and the rest, as they say, is history. And it all, possibly, could have been avoided, if the drivers had never taken a wrong turn down that street...\
– – –
In Conclusion, this was a fun exercise, and I find it absolutely fascinating... one mistake that, if it had been avoided may have changed the course of history. However, even I can't pretend that this kind of thing is actually incredibly common. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that every one of these had extenuating circumstances: A runaway dog in a warzone; a person hitting their head who was a king amidst a military campaign; losing cabinet keys from a ship that was travelling too fast; pushing a pull door in a nightclub with horrible fire safety & stalling your car after extremists have threatened - and attempted - to assassinate you. I don't want anyone reading this to become horrified that they will kill or be killed just for making a small mistake.
Until Next Time, I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I hope you enjoyed this. Tomorrow, I hope to conclude my little exploration into war crimes, and I look forward to seeing you then.
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