Spanner In The Works / Real Life

• World War I:
  • Germany intended to go through neutral Belgium in order to attack the French. It probably would have worked if not for the Belgian resistance delaying them.
  • In the long run, Britain, which had no intention of entering the war until Germany invaded Belgium. With Britain intervening, this meant that Germany had to deal with the Royal Navy, which was massively more powerful than its own. The one time the German Navy tried to fight the British head on, the result was a strategic victory for the British. This resulted in Germany instead turning to unrestricted submarine warfare, and that resulted in the United States entering the war! In a nutshell, if Germany hadn't invaded Belgium, neither Britain or the U.S. would've gotten involved, and thus it's quite probable Germany and Austria-Hungary would have won if their only sizable enemies were Russia (which collapsed in revolution), France, and maybe Italy.
  • Hell, even Italy was a toss-up, as it effectively waited to see which side would give the best offer until 1915. Italian designs on Austrian territory probably gives the edge to the Entente, but without the British involved the Central Powers might have had a chance.
  • On a slightly lesser note, Britain would also coax Portugal to enter the war on August 7, 1916, and this started with the capture of a decent chunk of the German merchant fleet, which happened to be stationed in Lisbon at that time. This meant that not only could Germany not properly attack Britain, they could also not protect themselves against the US.
• World War II
  • Some historians believe that Italy's campaign in Greece was one of these. Specifically, while it was ultimately successful, Italy's initial failures in that campaign forced Germany to divert troops to help out and occupy the Balkans, which in turn delayed Germany's ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union by several months. On the other hand, other historians say the delay wouldn't have mattered, and that Operation Barbarossa was flawed from the very beginning.
  • Between May 10th and May 14th, 1940, the Dutch shot down 43% of German planes deployed over the Netherlands, including 51% (220 of the 430) Junkers JU-52 transport planes. This may or may not have influenced the Battle of Britain and/or a potential airborne attack on the UK. The Dutch proved to be a tougher nut to crack than the Germans imagined in general. The Germans expected the Netherlands to fall within a day, which caused Hitler to issue his 11th war directive which was "The resistance of the Dutch army is stronger than expected. It must be broken as soon as possible."
  • The Bismarck was sunk because a Fairey Swordfish (a biplane that was very much outdated by then) was able to score a lucky shot in the rudder under appalling weather conditions: this shot jammed the ship's port rudder into a turning action, giving the Royal Navy the time it needed to reach the ship and attack. The Germans chose to scuttle the ship to avoid its capture.
  • Hitler himself. If he hadn't meddled with everything, thereby wasting resources (like the V2 — great for propaganda, useless in warfare), the Germans might actually have had a chance. And that's not even counting that brilliant idea of violating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invading the Soviet Union. Late in the war (1944-45) this became fairly explicit: The British cancelled plans to assassinate Hitler because they believed any replacement leader would've been much more competent, extending the war.
  • The Philippines. Even though bad luck and the Idiot Ball had ruined any chances the Filipino-American force had of successfully turning back the Japanese, the defense of Bataan and Corregidor ultimately fucked up the Japanese war plans by holding on much longer than any other Asian country aside from Nationalist China, almost FOUR whole months, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Corregidor. Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Dutch East Indies (which was 6x bigger than the Philippines) had capitulated earlier. And then, there's the various guerrilla movements harrying the Japanese occupiers, providing the Allies vital intelligence and liberating all but 12 provinces from the Japanese.
  • During the Battle of Midway, the first three Japanese carriers were lost because a group of lost dive bomber squadrons suddenly stumbled upon the Japanese carrier group while it was rearming all its planes, making them extremely vulnerable. This group wasn't even traveling together, it was three separate squadrons that all stumbled across the carriers almost simultaneously, right after the Japanese fighters protecting the fleet had been drawn off by the (failed) attack run on the fleet by Torpedo 8, a squadron from the USS Hornet that had become separated from their fighter escort by poor visibility.
    • There was also the failed attempt by the submarine USS Nautilus to torpedo a Japanese ship at the start of the battle. This led to the Japanese destroyer Arashi to stay behind to try and depth charge the sub for some time before steaming back to the fleet (The Nautilus survived). It just so happened that a squadron of dive bombers from USS Enterprise happened upon the destroyer in the midst of a dwindling fuel reserve and followed the ship back to the main Japanese fleet.
  • Taffy 3 at the Battle Off Samar. The Japanese had managed to draw off the bulk of the American forces, including all their fast battleships, off in a wild goose chase after their carriers (which had too few planes to really be a threat), while two other task forces went their separate ways to attack Leyte Island. The Southern force met the USN's older battleships in the Battle of Surigao Straight, while the Center Force (consisting of the vast majority of Japan's surface combat power, including the gigantic Yamato) ran into a small escort group consisting of a few destroyers and slow escort carriers- who then proved to be the angriest and most audacious ships the USN had. Their desperate and spirited Last Stand ended up convincing Admiral Kurita that he really was fighting the main US fleet, and he withdrew.
  • The 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge. The German Army launched a counteroffensive through the Ardennes, which they had used to great effect four years prior during the invasion of France. However, they didn't expect to run into stiff resistance in the town of Bastogne, where the 101st had dug in and caused the Germans to devote more troops than they should have to retake it. They also refused surrender, with their commander, Anthony McAuliffe, famously responding to their messengers seeking their surrender with "Nuts!" This also bought time for General Patton, who had anticipated the German counteroffensive, to rush in with reinforcements to relieve the 101st and beat the German army back.
  • One possible ally to the Axis could have been Spain, but it decided to remain neutral, in part due to its close relations to neighbour Portugal, which decided to also remain neutral. Therefore, by not doing anything, Portugal kept the Axis from gaining another ally in Spain. ^note It's also said that Francisco Franco demanded so much in exchange for joining the Axis, after meeting with him, Hitler said that he'd choose having three or four teeth pulled out over dealing with Franco again.
  • The Nazi's spy network fell apart due to a lot of spanners. The first German spies sent to Britain were poorly trained Eastern Europeans with little loyalty to the Nazi regime. These early captures told the British exactly how the Nazis contacted their agents abroad, and the British used that knowledge to capture and turn the more competent spies sent later in the war. For communication, the Germans developed the famous Enigma codes, which they thought could never be cracked as the codes were reset every day. The British developed computers at Bletchley Park that could decode the messages the same day they were sent. To speed up the decoding process, the British used messages that were consistently sent out every single day that had a known answer. For example, one German radio operator watching over the same bit of uncrossable desert would always send out the same message every single day, "Nothing to report."
  • The Allied forces built this concept into their instructions for what their soldiers were to do if captured by the enemy. The primary objective was for them to escape, but part of the idea was also that even if the escape attempts failed, it would cause the Germans to have to assign additional manpower to guard the prison camps, which would mean having to spread those resources thinner somewhere else to make up for it. This idea was part of the concept behind the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, and is a large part of the reason why that operation is considered a success despite only three people ultimately evading capture.
  • A lot of the problems with Germany's so-called incredibly powerful tanks (supposedly the most advanced of the time, but which somehow broke down almost constantly and were forever having to be repaired) are believed to have been caused by deliberate sabotage.
  • This also happened in factories as demonstrated by this story from WW2. Turns out when you run your factory war efforts entirely on the work of slaves whose families are under constant threat of death, if not already carted off to death camps, then your workers won't be especially interested in doing a good job.
    “This is all we can do for you now.
    Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea.”
• Santa Anna's plan to finish off the Texas Revolutionaries at San Jacinto on April 22, 1836 was ruined by Sam Houston's decision to attack first a day earlier, despite the Mexicans outnumbering the Texans 1,400 to 900. Santa Anna also sealed his own fate by diverting too many of his soldiers and failing to post lookouts while his army rested — not to mention supposedly getting seduced by the "Yellow Rose of Texas" Emily Morgan. The Mexicans surrendered to Sam Houston's assault after just 18 minutes of fighting.
• If it weren't for an accidental case of fatal food poisoning one fateful Fourth of July, the Civil War might have been averted. Zachary Taylor tried his entire sixteen months in office to prevent the slavery issue from splitting the country apart, with extremists from both sides of the issue in Congress, but before he could do anything about it he succumbed to acute gastroenteritis brought about by consumption of raw fruit and iced milk during a fund-raising event for the Washington Monument on the nation's birthday. Naturally, conspiracy theorists almost promptly went wild about the circumstances surrounding his death, alleging that his poisoning was a deliberate assassination attempt on the part of pro-slavery Southerners, and would continue to pass that theory around well into the 21st century; it doesn't help that, as of 2010, there still wasn't definitive proof that he was or wasn't a victim of assassination.
• After the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck planned to undermine the recently crowned Frederick III by using the Kaiser's own son Wilhelm II as a pawn in a move to retain his own power. The scheme fell apart when Frederick III died from laryngeal cancer little more than three months into his reign and the young Wilhelm II ascended to the throne. Thanks to Bismarck's manipulation, Wilhelm did grow up full of disdain for his parents' opinions on government except for the bit about the position of the chancellor being too strong and how it should be modified in favour of a more powerful Emperor. In fact, one of Wilhelm's top priorities was the removal of Bismarck whom he saw as the biggest obstacle in implementing this policy. An increasingly desperate Bismarck ran the gamut of options trying to cow the young Kaiser into falling into line and let him do as he pleased only to fail time and time again. At wit's end, Bismarck threatened to quit, a ploy that worked with Wilhelm I only for the Kaiser to accept his resignation. Having double-crossed pretty much every one of his allies on his way to absolute power, Bismarck was left with no support, and thus his political career was effectively done for.
• John Wallace's stranglehold of influence on Meriwether County in Georgia was ended in 1948, with his plot to kill Wilson Turner in said county. Wallace had his sheriff drain the gas tank and let Turner out of jail, in an attempt to kill him in Meriwether County. It failed when Turner's truck had enough gas to cross into Coweta County, where Wallace killed Turner and the death was investigated by a cop Wallace had no influence over.
• Developers of the perl programming language have stress-tested new versions by having it parse /dev/random as input. Bugs that had resulted in segmentation faults were discovered this way. Throwing shit at the fan and seeing what happens is a fairly common way of stress-testing, usually known as fuzzing.
• A Canadian fraudster used a complicated scheme involving disappearing ink and forged cheques to embezzle thousands of dollars from the banks at which he held accounts. It's difficult to explain briefly, but it involved him writing a cheque to transfer funds from an account he held at one branch to the account he had at another bank. The scheme depended on his cheques being cashed at the first bank on a Friday, then the ink disappearing over the weekend, and processed at the second bank on Monday, which would give him more money in his first than was deducted at his second. Unfortunately, on one occasion the fraudster had the bad luck of dealing with a rookie teller who didn't know how the cheque was supposed to be cashed, and didn't start working on it until Monday. The boss noticed the discrepancy, accused the teller of writing the information wrong, and called the police on her. The police discovered that the check had actually been written partially in disappearing ink, and the fraudster was quickly nailed.
  • Another fraudster reprogrammed a bank's computers to periodically shave ten cents off every account and apply it to the account under the last name on the list alphabetically. All went well until a Mr. Zydel opened an account and got confused as to why his bank balance kept inexplicably increasing. Zydel did the honest thing and reported it to the bank, who investigated it and had the fraudster arrested.
• "His Accidency", John Tyler. To explain: "He was a longtime Democratic-Republican who was elected to the Vice-Presidency on the Whig ticket" (from his description page). As this makes him a Whig In Name Only, one wonders about his drinking habits.
• A couple of fraudsters decided to make large amounts of fake $20 bills, and in turns they bought food with those at McDonald's and other stores which worked so well they earned several thousands of dollars from the exchange money. Around half a year later they went to Las Vegas and gambled for a week without getting noticed... until one day a woman who had the weird habit of ripping the upper-left edge from the bills noticed the paper was white inside (they did not use enough ink). The couple wanted to leave but was quickly taken by security and in their apartment they had four more boxes filled with fake money.
• The Democratic-Republican party had a long-term publicity ploy set up around Aaron Burr, which involved intentionally inducing Burr to pull a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal. Part of this set-up involved putting Burr, who had no money and almost no power, in charge of campaigning on their behalf in the election of 1800, but not giving him any help or guidance; the plan was for Burr to become frustrated with them for giving him an Impossible Task, and walk out on the party. Burr, however, didn't even realize he was being set up to fail in the first place, and instead of getting frustrated, invented a whole new form of electioneering (the methods we use today, in fact) to get around his lack of money and resources. This absolutely terrified the Democratic-Republicans, as it absolutely obliterated their plan, forcing them to forego the original plan in favor of putting everything they had into utterly destroying (and eventually trying to kill) Burr. Even with all of their effort, Burr did so much accidental damage to the party's plans that their leader, Thomas Jefferson, had to get help from Alexander Hamilton to prevent Burr from getting all the way to the presidency.
• A version from The American Civil War: on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Lee devised a strategy to attack both flanks of the Union army simultaneously in hopes of overwhelming them before they could be reinforced by the center. General Sickles from the Union ignored orders and moved his corp out in front of his fortified position to engage the enemy, a move of staggering stupidity that got his corp massacred. However, this delayed the main Confederate assault on that flank by several hours, destroying any chance the Confederacy had of launching the attacks simultaneously. As a result the attacks went on separately, and were beaten back separately. This in turn led to Lee gambling desperately with Pickett's charge the next day, a disaster that effectively destroyed Confederate momentum in the war. While people often "what if" this battle, it is pretty generally agreed that Lee did not do a very good job of commanding the battle in general, and there were far, far more problems than this one.
• Thomas Blood's plan to steal the British Crown Jewels failed only because the elderly caretaker's son came back on leave from the navy at precisely the right moment. Seriously.
• Vanessa Williams thought she'd never be able to live down the nude photos that appeared in an issue of Penthouse and cost her her Miss America title. Then it was discovered that the centerfold was underage, and the issue was banned along with most of the centerfold's filmography up to that point (with the exception of Traci, I Love You) as well as the porn industry ostracizing the centerfold in question entirely. Williams was supposedly relieved to see all those nude photos of herself go bye-bye over an underage centerfold appearing in the same issue as said photos.
• This happened to Tennessee in their 2010 college football match against LSU. UT had the game won when LSU stupidly didn't have a play ready for a third-and-goal with seconds remaining and no timeouts, resulting in a botched snap that looked to end the game. But UT trumped it with a boner of their own—specifically, a last-second personnel change that resulted in Two Many Volunteers on the field (four guys came on while three ran off, and then one of the three ran back onto the field). The illegal participation penalty forced the down to be replayed (American football games can't end on a defensive penalty), giving LSU time to settle down and organize the game-winning play. You can watch the last moments of the Dumbass Miracle here.
• Related to sports, Bill Simmons' "Levels of Losing" have as the seventh "The Monkey Wrench", where a bad decision by either the coach or the umpire costs the victory.
• Political parties in America are this, believe it or not. The government was set up so that all three branches (executive, legislative, and judicial) would be more or less in opposition to each other. The rise of political parties put an end to that in a hurry. Indeed most of the founding fathers were completely against political parties, but viewed them as a necessary evil that would naturally arise despite their best efforts.
• In Major League Baseball, you have the Steve Bartman story. In 2003, the Chicago Cubs were a very good team whom many picked to win the World Series (and finally break the Curse of the Billy Goat). And during the National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins, it seemed like this would be a reality. The Cubs built a 3-0 in Game 6 and ace pitcher Mark Prior was retiring batters with ease, working a three-hit shutout through the first 7 1/3 innings. Then Marlins shortstop Luis Castillo hit a deep foul ball that sailed towards the edge of the stands, a ball that Cubs outfielder Moisés Alou had a shot at catching for the second out of the inning. Instead, a Cubs fan (Bartman) interfered with the play by reaching out his hand to catch the ball. This angered the Cubs (Alou was very visibly frustrated after the play), who complained to the umpire for a fan interference call. The umpire ruled against them, stating the ball had left the playing field when Bartman touched it (if it hadn't, Castillo would have been called out). The most upset was Mark Prior, who completely lost his focus and began giving up hit after hit. He was taken out of the game and replaced, but the relief pitchers, also unfocused, gave up nothing but walks and hits. The Marlins scored 8 runs in that single inning, and ended up winning that game, Game 7, and eventually the World Series that year.
  • It does bear mentioning that Bartman isn’t completely to blame for this. Other people to blame were shortstop Alex Gonzalez, who had a fielding error which allowed the Marlins to score their first runs, and relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth, who issued two intentional walks to Marlins players after they tied the game - a horrible decision which many overlook, as both walked players would score as well. But, unfortunately, the Cubs fans chose to blame Bartman, and he faced such scrutiny that he has become a very reclusive figure to avoid their wrath.
  • Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The Cubs would finally win the World Series 13 years later, and give Bartman a World Series Ring. Bartman has also been invited back to Wrigley Field, but it’s been advised that he be left alone.
• The 9/11 attacks could have been much worse if not for a major spanner. Four planes were hijacked; the fourth, which never reached its target, was probably intended to crash into the White House.^note Or maybe not, Pres. Bush wasn't even in Washington at the time and this wasn't a secret, so even if the target was originally the White House it might have been changed at the last minute. The Capitol building seems like the most likely alternate target, but we'll probably never know. During the early planning stages it was suggested by one member of Bin Laden's inner circle that they try and attack a nuclear power plant to get a plane crash and a dirty bomb in one go, which Bin Laden rejected because he felt things might "get out of hand". Yes, there were some things too over the top for even Osama Bin Laden, though this probably wouldn't have worked anyway as nuclear plants are designed to withstand a direct hit from a jet However, the terrorists did not take into account the possibility of passengers attempting to retake the plane. The aircraft crashed a hundred miles or so from its target, and although lives were lost, it would have been far worse if the White House had actually been hit.
  • The passenger revolt would likely not have happened if not for another complication. By the original schedule, there would probably not have been time for the passengers to even learn of the other attacks, as many indicators suggest the terrorists planned to hit every single target at about the same time. But United Flight 93 was delayed in takeoff and thus was still a ways out when the other targets were hit, giving its passengers time to realize what was happening and make the decision to try and retake the plane.
• Not Always Working (and sister sites)
  • These videogame store employees leave a PlayStation 4 box filled with junk by the door, just to see if anyone would attempt to steal it. Upon returning to work the next day, the manager sees the prank box is gone and laughs, telling the assistant manager about the joke. The assistant manager gets angry — turns out the assistant manager had told his friend to just take the box, believing it to be an actual PS4 system. This prank done out of the blue would eventually expose that that assistant manager had been stealing money from the registers and stealing games from the store's shipments. The assistant manager was promptly fired, entirely because of a prank that was in no way intended to catch his thievery.
  • This jewelry store customer wants to buy a necklace, but the store needs to request another location send them the necklace. The next day, the necklace in question hasn't been sent because an employee had bought it. Some investigating proves that the other store's night supervisor has been purchasing jewelry with his employee discount, and then selling it to customers just above the discounted price to make money off of it. And has been doing so for five years, and only figured out because a customer happened to want his latest target.
  • This pizza delivery guy does some cleaning around the store and sees some disconnected cables, thinking he knocked them loose. He connects them and realizes it was the security cameras. Shortly after, the pizza parlor is supposed to be closed because of it not making enough money, only for the delivery guy to mention that the manager of the location had been Stealing from the Till. The manager had disconnected the security cameras and been stealing for years, but the owner had no physical proof. Until the delivery guy pointed out that he had connected the cameras, so there was now a week's worth of camera footage showing the manager stealing. The manager was fired and arrested for grand theft.
  • This sysadmin had been embezzling millions of dollars from his employer for years and retired early. When his successor joins the team, but fails to receive the fake inventory list the sysadmin had been using to justify his budget requests, the successor makes his own list and budget request that ends up a much lower amount than previously. Management became suspicious and began to investigate the matter, realizing the embezzlement.
  • This company refuses to pay their manager $10,000 in overtime, so he takes them to court. He ultimately loses the case, but the resulting investigation of the company uncovers a massive amount of various categories of fraud going on in the company, having to pay more than ten times the amount they owed the manager in fines, one of the execs' wife divorcing him and cashing her share of the company, and the company finally going bankrupt. All because they refused to pay a comparatively low amount to an employee that may or may not have been owed to him.
• A security guard named Frank Wills was doing his rounds one night when he noticed a piece of tape on a door to prevent it from latching shut. He removed it and continued on his merry way. Later, he returned and saw that the tape had been replaced. He called the police, who caught a group of five burglars in the building. The building was the Watergate Hotel, and the burglars were caught bugging an office leased by the Democratic Party. The resulting investigation and coverup blossomed into the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Nixon to resign, and added a new suffix to the English language.
  • The burglars had a sentry named Alfred Baldwin stationed in the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge across the street, and he had been instructed to alert them if any complications arose. Unfortunately for them, Baldwin got distracted watching Attack of the Puppet People on the TV in his lookout and failed to notice the police arriving. By the time he did attempt to alert the burglars, it was all too late.
• The Communist dictatorship in the Socialist Republic of Romania might have had two of these towards its end:
  • By 1989 the Romanians were already very, VERY fed up with Nicolae Ceaușescu's government as a whole, his cult of personality and the terrible economy, so when the Hungarian-Romanian pastor and politician László Tőkés openly started criticizing the people in power on TV and the government threatened to kick him out, his parishioners from Timișoara tried to stand up in his defense... and the already pissed-off populace sided with him, pouring their long-repressed anger in their protests. In a short period of time the civil unrest spread from Timișoara to the rest of the country and especially to Bucharest, ultimately kicking off the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
  • The other one? The TV show Dallas. The Communist dictatorship at the time aired the show believing the show's theme of greed, excess and corruption would make the people disgusted with capitalism. Instead, it had the opposite effect: the people loved the show thanks to the main character, the greedy yet charming J.R. Ewing, wished to have the cool and rich things the Ewings had, wondered why couldn't they have same thing as well... and this eventually led to the overthrow of the Communist regime. The show was so popular in Romania that, when J.R.'s actor Larry Hagman visited the country in the 1990s, many people thanked him for freeing their country.
• Many criminals have found their elaborate attempts to hide undone by viewers of TV shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. In one case of the latter, a criminal hiding his identity and working at a construction said to a co-worker, "I'll probably have some problems today," after a segment on him aired the previous evening.
• A small research team at West Virginia University was very lucky and got a grant to live-test diesel cars as part of a study. During road tests of Volkswagen vehicles, they noticed that the cars were producing more emissions than they were supposed to be. They published their findings and blew the lid on the Volkswagen Emission Scandal.
• Some scandals can prove to be beneficial in the long term. Case in point: Wallis Simpson, an American woman who King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry in 1936, ended up inadvertently sabotaging any Fascist influence Edward might have had on the United Kingdom just prior to a crucial point in its history.
• In 1980's Poland, a female crane operator named Anna Walentynowicz was fired from her work at Gdańsk's Lenin Shipyard for participating in a syndicate, less than a year before her retirement. The shipyard workers from Gdańsk, already known for strongly opposing the Communist rule in Poland, took Walentynowicz's side, went on strike... and soon became the first members of a certain union group named Solidarność/Solidarity, led by the then-electrician Lech Wałęsa, which would later be instrumental in the fall of Communism in Poland and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc.
• The Branch Davidian incident in Waco, Texas started because of this trope. Reporters were tipped off that a raid by the ATF was going down at the compound and were sent to cover it. One reporter got lost in trying to find it and was approached by a station wagon, the driver wanting to help. Unwittingly, the reporter told the person that they were looking for the compound and that a raid was happening. As it turned out, the driver of the station wagon was one of David Koresh's inner circle, who warned the others of the raid.
  • The ATF also lost the element of surprise when a dispatcher for American Medical Transport, the ambulance provider in Waco, notified the media after she received a request from the Feds for standby ambulances.
• Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, but he really fucked up his own dictatorship when he had three very popular female opposition leaders, the Mirabal sisters (Patria, María Teresa and Minerva)^note (and their surviving sister Dede), murdered. Even when he tried to Make It Look Like an Accident, the crowds immediately guessed the truth and began protesting, plus the American government wasn't exactly happy either and allegedly began actively supporting the opposition. In less than a year, Trujillo himself was murdered.
• The November 5th, 2017 massacre at a church in Sutherlands Spring, Texas, could have been a lot worse had it not been for a concerned neighbor. He had heard the gunshots at the church, went to investigate, grabbed his own rifle and confronted the gunman, wounding him. He even gave chase when the shooter attempted to drive off, which led to the killer's death. Farther back up the chain, it turned out the killer was banned from gun ownership, but someone in the Air Force screwed up his dishonorable discharge paperwork, so the NICS check didn't flag him.
  • Another, similar shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ, also in Texas, ended with only two victims. Because one of the armed ushers happened to be a firearms instructor and ex-reserve deputy sheriff. If Wilson didn't get him, he said five or six members of the congregation were also armed. It's possible the Sutherland Springs shooting led to the armed ushers.
  • The Greenwood Park Mall shooting ended 15 seconds after it started, before it "officially" became a mass shooting, because of one random man who happened to be concealed-carrying, despite the mall's ban on guns. A man who made a shot several firearms enthusiasts and one firearms instructor called "impressive".
• Operation Merlin was a plan devised by the CIA under the Clinton Administration to slow down Iran's nuclear program. The idea was, through a defecting Russian scientist, give the Iranians a copy of a "fatally flawed" nuclear warhead design so that it would cripple their program. They chose the Russian TBA-480 Fire Set component to sabotage due to its highly advanced design. However, the entire thing fell apart when the scientist noticed flaws in the designs and went and corrected them, most likely accelerating Iran's nuclear program rather than crippling it.
• Steve Bannon's endorsement of Roy Moore in the 2017 special election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions's Alabama Senate seat proved to be a prime example of the alt-right movement grabbing the Idiot Ball with its bare hands when his Democratic challenger, Doug Jones, became the first Democratic Senator from "reliably Republican" Alabama in nearly a quarter of a century. Even the Washington Post's resident alt-right-aligned journalist, Marc Thiessen, raked Bannon over the coals for the effort, calling what he did in Alabama, in a nutshell, nothing short of an objective Epic Fail.
  Marc Thiessen: Stephen K. Bannon and his alt-right movement have helped accomplish something no one in a quarter-century has been able to do: get a Democrat elected in the state of Alabama. Alabama is one of the most reliably Republican states in the country. The last time a Democrat was elected was in 1992, and no Democrat has won more than 40 percent of the vote in a Senate race there since 1996. The closest election in recent memory was in 2002, when Jeff Sessions won reelection by a razor-thin margin of 19 points. Sen. Richard Shelby has won his last three elections by 35 points, 30 points and 28 points, respectively. So it takes a special kind of stupid to pick a candidate who can lose to a Democrat in Alabama. Not just any Democrat, but an uncompromising pro-abortion Democrat.
• The New England Patriots insist that Malcolm Butler was this for them for Super Bowl LII. Put simply, Butler was benched for a rules violation, and many fans believed that the Pats lost without his talent.
• During the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix which was the finale for the 2008 Formula One season, Ferrari driver Felipe Massa would win the World Driver's Championship if he wins the race and his rival, Englishman and McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton finished sixth or lower. During the race, Massa basically just led the field while Hamilton barely fights for the title-winning position. Light rain came at the final stages and many drivers pitted in for intermediate tyres. After that, the rain gets heavier when it was 2 laps remaining and Massa was still leading while Hamilton was in sixth. Crucially, on said lap, Hamilton lost 5th place to the Toro Rosso driven by future 4-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. After Massa finishes the race in first, everything seems lost for Hamilton until both him and Vettel caught up to the Toyota of Timo Glock. Glock, who didn't made the stop earlier (he gambled for slicks, hoping for the conditions to stay dry enough for it to work), was running so slow that Hamilton passes him at the last corner in the final lap. Hamilton finishes fifth, just enough to win the title. Ferrari was still celebrating even after Hamilton passes Glock and only for the joy turned into disappointment after Hamilton finishes the race. That's right, if the rain doesn't gets worse, then Massa would be crowned as the Driver's Champion. It also gives us one of Formula One's most memorable commentary lines:
  Martin Brundle: Raikkonen's third, and... IS THAT GLOCK? IS THAT GLOCK GOING SLOWLY?
  James Allen: IT IS, IT'S GLOCK! OH MY GOODNESS ME! HAMILTON'S BACK IN POSITION AGAIN!
• Marcos Perez, the title character of the Frontline/Independent Lens/Voces documentary "Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore", was deported on a traffic violation because his wife's cell phone ran out of batteries when the police contacted her about the violation.
• At least one gun shop had filed for bankruptcy due to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. A few shop owners bought into the hype created by the National Rifle Association that if Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected president, she and the Democrats would start taking guns away. Thus, they ordered a surplus of guns in the event that her election would lead to a surge of gun owners seeking to own guns before laws limiting them were enacted. Instead, Trump was elected and this left owners with too many guns to sell, leading to their dissolution.
• Fox News accidentally ruined Donald Trump's attempt to declare victory in the 2020 General Election. According to reports, Trump had planned to declare victory if it looked like he had a clear lead despite the obvious problems that would occur should his opponent Joe Biden pull ahead. However, before Trump could do that, Fox News unexpectedly declared Biden the predicted winner of Arizona long before anyone else. This meant that all Biden needed was one more state to be declared the predicted winner of the Presidential race and left Trump with no way to get 270 Electoral Votes. Trump tried to strong-arm Fox News to recant that decision, but they refused.
  • This was especially notable since Biden's initial lead in Arizona had shrunk to almost nothing later in the night, and it was days until Biden came out as a definite winner with 0.3% advantage.
  • If not for Rudy Giuliani's ego, Trump might have named Sidney Powell as his Special Counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud on the part of the Democrats.
• If the first debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon had only been broadcast on the radio like previous debates had, Nixon would have most likely flown ahead in the polls and potentially become President - even Nixon's detractors could admit that he had a powerful voice, and public support for Eisenhower meant that a fellow Republican had a very good shot at retaining the White House. However, this debate was the first televised debate, which Nixon was completely unprepared for; compared to Nixon's borderline sickly and slouched appearance, JFK stood up straight and carried an air of confidence unlike any that had been seen before. This killed Nixon's public support right out of the gate, and JFK went on to win the election.
  • This might not actually be true though, as seen here.
• In early 2021, several short sellers took interest in GameStop's and BlackBerry's stocks, meaning they had to go down for them to make money; given the downward trend in the brands' shares at the time due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this seemed to be a surefire bet. What said investors didn't count on, however, was Reddit, of all things, spurred on by Elon Musk, buying a bunch of stocks to make GameStop's value go up, spiking it to nearly triple the norm. As a result, the investors had to keep buying stocks to cover their losses...which only meant the stocks went higher. "Stonks", indeed.
• When Nesta Carter was busted for doping during the Beijing Olympics nine years after the fact, he inadvertently ruined Usain Bolt's "triple-triple" for the 2008-2016 Summer Olympic Games.
• On July 26, 2022, it was revealed that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had been privately lobbying his more hardline conservative members, particularly controversial Justice Brett Kavanaugh, into sparing Roe v. Wade, suggesting that had he done so, he would have flipped and protected it 5-4. However, the reveal of the draft opinion scuttled those plans and Roberts sided with the other conservative Justices.
• Sega was rescued from being shut down thanks to this trope. Ravaged by the failure of the Sega Dreamcast, it seemed that Sega was on its way to being shuttered. Instead, Isao Okowa, late president of Sega's then-Majority Shareholder CSK Holdings, loaned them $500 million of his personal fortune to pay off their debts then waived the loan entirely on his deathbed. This allowed Sega to exit the console-making business and transition into a third-party developer.
• The Stopwatch Gang were a trio of Canadian bank robbers who were renowned for robbing over 140 banks in the 1970s and early 1980s. They earned their nickname for the careful planning and timing of their robberies, and were renowned for never firing a shot. The FBI eventually caught them after a robbery in San Diego when several things went wrong:
  • The robbers wore band-aids on their fingers to disguise their prints. Unfortunately, one of the gang member's band-aids fell off during the robbery and he left his fingerprint on the garbage bag he was using to carry the money.
  • One of the robbers took the Gang's disguises and other equipment to be thrown into a dumpster so it could be buried in a garbage dump. He planned to only toss the bag when the garbage truck came, but when a cop car drove by he got scared, tossed the bag in the dumpster and drove off. Later, a couple searching for cans found the garbage bag when they were poking through the dumpster. They turned it over to the police when they saw its contents. The FBI found the robber's fingerprint on a garbage bag.
  • The FBI didn't know who the print belonged to, but the friend of one of the Gang members gave the FBI their names in exchange for leniency when he was arrested for dealing drugs. The FBI then acquired the robber's fingerprints, and the Gang's arrest soon followed.
• On November 14, 1957, the Apalachin Meeting was a Criminal Convention of the American Mafia held at the ranch of mobster Joseph "The Barber" Barbara in the New York village of Apalachin, outside Binghamton. Aiming to assert his authority as Chairman of the Mafia Commission, it was called forth by Vito Genovese, who wanted to settle mob-related disputes and discuss the growing drug trade. But things went awry when a local cop became leery of the parked expensive cars at the ranch, causing the mafiosi to flee for the nearby wooded areas. While more than 60 mobsters were nabbed, their convictions were reversed as there was no evidence of wrongdoing before the meeting was broken up. Even then, it exposed the Mafia to public scrutiny for the first time. Also, FBI head honcho J. Edgar Hoover was forced to dedicate resources against the Mafia despite previously refusing to acknowledge its existence.
• When John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, Yoko Ono told the hospital staff to not inform the press so she could break the news herself to her young son Sean. What she didn't know was that Alan J. Weiss, a news producer at New York's WABC-TV (the flagship station of ABC) had been rushed into the ER right before Lennon had, after Weiss had an accident on his motorcycle earlier in the evening. Weiss got to a phone and relayed the news to the station. Word quickly spread until it reached Roone Arledge, then the head of both ABC News and ABC Sports. He in turn told the news to Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford, commentating a game between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots on Monday Night Football; the two debated whether to do this or not. Ultimately, Cosell went ahead and famously announced the news during the game.
• Korean Gatcha players unwittingly exposed financial fraud! GRAC, South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee, had given the game Blue Archive an 18+ rating at the end of 2022 despite players pointing out that there was nothing in the game to warrant that rating. A petition was started and gained 5000 signatures, catching the attention of lawmaker Lee Sang-Heon, who started an audit and investigation of the GRAC, revealing they were using the funds to illegally mine bitcoin.
• The Philippines is this to China. China, for a variety of military and political reasons, has wanted to invade Taiwan for a while and has recently been making more aggressive moves in that direction. The Phillipines are located just south of Taiwan, so China's been butting into their waters as well, and the Phillipines protested the actions and started outright defying "requests" from China (ordering the former to remove BRP Sierra Madre for "illegally" using it as an outpost on the Spratly Islands) in response. The AFP opening a naval base in North Luzon at 2023, coupled with the US Navy having an outpost stationed in strategic areas will ensure that China's grand goal of invading Taiwan will become an unlikely reality.
• In early 1983, Nintendo and Atari began negotiations to release the Famicom outside of Japan, and a deal was set to be finalized at the 1983 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. Unfortunately for the would-be contract, Coleco showed off their port of Donkey Kong playing on their Coleco ADAM computer at that very show, a violation of a previous agreement between all three companies.^note Coleco had the home console rights to Donkey Kong, while Atari held the computer rights. Long story short, Atari refused to sign the deal at the show, believing Nintendo to be at fault, which combined with The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 and the firing of Atari CEO Ray Kassar amid mounting losses and insider trading allegation, killed any deal between Atari and Nintendo. Legal shenanigans aside, Coleco effectively sabotaged a deal involving their main competitor at the time completely on accident (not that it hurt Nintendo in the long run).
• On March 2024 the extremely controversial influencer Andrew Tate, investigated in Romania for sex trafficking, sent a message to his streamer friend/protégé Adin Ross, inviting him over to Romania for a stream, saying it could be the 'last chance' and implying he was going to attempt to escape the country soon. Adin read the messages out-loud, live on stream. Andrew Tate was soon after arrested by the Romanian police, completely foiling any plans he could have had.

---