This book looks at all types of one-of-a-kind events and anecdotes: historical lapses, verbal blunders, misprints, mistakes, silly ideas and, in general, any type of unintentional mishaps caused by people--some famous--in different periods, settings, geographic regions.The author shows us how linguistic mistakes or phonetic problems have led to the names of certain countries, how small programming errors have provoked economic losses of millions of dollars, and how cer tain prolonged gaps throughout history caused Pope John I to put a scholar in charge of calculating year s according to the supposed birthdate of Jesus Christ.