Code Curiosities

In 2003, the entire power grid of the northeastern United States and Canada collapsed — 55 million people lost electricity — because a software alarm silently crashed and nobody noticed for over an hour. We dig into how...

In 2023, the FAA's NOTAM system — an obscure but critical flight-safety database that traces its roots back to Cold War-era teletype machines — crashed overnight and held every American airplane on the ground until the...

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a blockbuster paper claiming that countries with debt above 90% of GDP see their economies collapse — a finding that quietly became the justification for a decade of brutal...

On January 1, 2000, while the world was busy panicking about Y2K, a completely different time-related bug was quietly lurking inside millions of Cisco routers — and it went off like clockwork two years later on New...

In 1962, a single missing hyphen in a line of code caused NASA to deliberately blow up a rocket 293 seconds into flight — torching $18.5 million and years of work in one spectacular fireball. We dig into the Mariner 1...

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper that world governments used to justify years of brutal austerity cuts — and the whole thing hinged on a mistake in Microsoft Excel. We dig into how a single copy-paste...

Everyone remembers the panic: planes falling from the sky, nuclear missiles launching themselves, ATMs eating your life savings. None of that happened, so Y2K became history's punchline — a mass hysteria over nothing...

In 2012, a single copy-paste mistake in a Microsoft Excel formula helped trigger one of the biggest trading losses in Wall Street history — JPMorgan's infamous 'London Whale' disaster. We dig into how a humble...

In 1999, NASA lost a $327 million spacecraft because one engineering team was using metric units and another was using imperial — and nobody noticed until it was too late. We dig into the Mars Climate Orbiter disaster...

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper that became the intellectual backbone for global austerity policy — affecting millions of lives across Europe and beyond. The only problem? Their flagship conclusion...

In 1983, a Soviet early-warning satellite system reported that the United States had just launched five nuclear missiles — and one man had about three minutes to decide whether to believe it. The answer came down to a...

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper that convinced governments worldwide to embrace painful austerity cuts — and it all rested on a single Microsoft Excel formula that skipped a few rows. We dig into how a...

In 1962, NASA lost a $18.5 million Mars-bound spacecraft because a single hyphen was missing from a line of hand-transcribed code — and the fallout reshaped how humans write software forever. This week we dig into the...

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper that became the intellectual backbone for austerity measures across Europe — policies that reshaped millions of lives. The only problem? A grad student later discovered...

In 1991, a software bug involving a clock that drifted by less than a third of a second killed 28 American soldiers in Dhahran — and the Pentagon had known about the flaw for months. This week we dig into how a rounding...