Stupid Engineering Mistakes

[Caged Anger]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/start.html?pg=9

:D

[FUS1ON]

4. Northeastern US power grid, 1965
A single protective relay tripped in Ontario, overloading nearby circuits and causing a cascade of outages that left 30 million homes without power for up to 13 hours. A fragile, redundancy-free design ensured that it would happen eventually. After decades of repairs and upgrades, it happened again in 2003.

And nine months later, a bunch of babys came into this world.

[NastyDawg]

And nine months later, a bunch of babys came into this world.

Can't play no games or be on the net so can yeah blame em!

[JIMINATOR]

Self-taught engineer William Mulholland built this LA dam...
lol, now that is a recipie for disaster....

[NightBreed]

6. Firestone 500 tires, 1970s
These steel-belted radials allowed water to seep under the tread, which caused the belting to rust and the tread to separate, typically at high speeds.

Wow..I'd forgotten about those..
Damned looking thing I ever saw a tire do; the tread was Z-shaped instead of straight just before it separated...

[Caged Anger]

my personal favorite...
7. Purity Distilling Company tank, 1919
You gotta keep your molasses somewhere – how about a rickety tank 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter in the middle of Boston? The structure was painted brown to hide the leaks. Eventually it burst (possibly exploding from fermentation), sending waves of molasses up to 15 feet high into the city and killing 21.

How do explain that to the insurance company? "Yes sir, bob was drowned in a swirling tidal wave of molasses..."