"To err is human, " as they say. Every day we make minor missteps that, although innocent, can cause great damage to our business. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) recently had to bear a £ 1 billion loss, which is about £ 5.3 billion.

All of this was caused by a failure in the corporation's information system, which wiped out thousands of transactions on Monday and left many customers without access to their accounts.

But the worst is yet to come: According to The Sun, the culprit for the “failure” was a third-party employee who tried to interrupt the software upgrade process of a machine. Unintentionally, he bumped into some key that caused all the financial chaos.

Anyway, this is not the first time this has happened. Anyone who has had contact with Murphy's Law knows that when something has the slightest chance of going wrong, it will go wrong. Check out some examples compiled by Mirror.

1. Hubble telescope: minimal deformation, absurd expense

Soon after being sent into space in the 1990s, scientists realized that the Hubble telescope had a serious problem: the images captured by the equipment came out of focus and full of freaks.

Hubble primary mirror being polished (Image source: NASA)

The cause was the primary mirror, which had been constructed in a different shape than expected and had edges about 2.2 microns flatter than expected. To give you an idea, the thickness of a hair is usually 60 to 80 microns. However, although tiny, the fault repair mission cost £ 300 million, which is almost $ 1 billion.

2. NASA and the International System of Units

The American space agency suffered another major loss in the 1990s. When a spacecraft specializing in studying the climate of Mars tried to enter the atmosphere of the Red Planet, it was shattered, destroyed by friction between ship and atmosphere. The reason: confusion between the metric systems used.

Artistic design of the lost NASA spacecraft (Image source: NASA)

As many know, the United States and part of England do not use the International System of Units (IS). Instead of measuring distances in kilometers, for example, they measure in miles, inches instead of centimeters etc. But for science, IS is recommended, as people around the world may want to work with their calculations.

In the case of the Mars Climate Orbiter accident, the probe was instructed in the international system, but the insertion maneuver was calculated in the British system. Result: a 253 million reais spacecraft being completely unusable.

3. Typo and a million contract

A single comma can cause a lot of confusion in the business world. JPMorgan Chase recently entered into a contract with a professional who would pay him about $ 3.1 million a year (more than $ 6 million). Everything would be great, were it not for the fact that this value is 10 times more than the professional should receive.

JPMorgan Chase Headquarters in Dallas, Texas (Image source: David R. Tribble / Wikipedia)

Not surprisingly, the bill went wrong because of a typo that placed the comma in the wrong place, causing the salary to jump from 600, 000 to 6 million reais annually. The former employee tried to sue the company after it terminated his contract but lost the case.

4. Forgotten zeros, less money

And speaking of typos, an American insurance company ended up making the most expensive typo in history. Prudential has loaned £ 100 million to a US shipping company, which secured the loan with its fleet. Therefore, the insurer expected to earn about $ 185 million reais. However, during the writing of the contract, three zeros were left out and the company was entitled to only $ 185, 000.

5. Exchanging the balls in the stock exchange

A Japanese broker managed to cause a loss of nearly $ 460 million to the company he worked for by misinterpreting an order. Instead of selling one share for 610, 000 yen ($ 15, 400), the Mizuho Securities employee sold 610, 000 shares for 1 yen each, which is less than a penny.

6. Bumbling hunter burns down 2, 300 homes

Sounds like fisherman's story, but it's hunter's. Losing his friend during a hunt, adventurer Sergio Martinez decided to use a flag to find his partner in a California forest. What he did not expect, however, was that this harmless equipment could cause a fire that destroyed 2, 300 homes and killed 15 people. The fire lasted 11 days to control and spread over 1.1 million square meters.

The fire caused by the Sergio Martinez flag (Image source: NASA)

After all that, Martinez spent six months in jail and was sentenced to pay 960 hours of community service, plus a fine of $ 9, 000 in refunds. We couldn't figure out if he found his friend after using the flag, but we hope so.

Sources: The Sun, Mirror