The Hindenburg disaster was an airship accident that occurred on May 6, 1937 in New Jersey. Filled with hydrogen, it caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. The accident caused 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen) among the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), and an additional fatality on the ground.
“Indulge in the nostalgic aroma of Hostess’s delectable treat. This candle ensures a delightful and even burn that fills your space with the enticing fragrance of Hostess’s iconic flavors. Transform your surroundings into a haven of sweetness as the warm glow and triple wicks create a cozy atmosphere reminiscent of your favorite Hostess treats.”
Founded in 1998, Boo.com wanted become the largest online sports e-retailer in the world, planning to set up stores in both Europe and America simultaneously. The company spent $135M in venture capital in just 18 months and went out of business in 2000.
The boo.com website was widely criticized as poorly designed for its target audience of young, wealthy and fashionable people between 18 and 24 years old. The site’s interface was complex and included a hierarchical system that required the user to answer four or five different questions before sometimes revealing that there were no products in stock in a particular sub-section.
Discontinued in 2008, the Yugo was a small car made in the former nation of Yugoslavia that survives in the American consciousness as the ultimate automotive failure. Poorly engineered, ugly, and cheap, it survived much longer as a punch line for comedians than it did as a vehicle on the roads.
Lotus 1-2-3 was the state-of-the-art spreadsheet and the standard throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, part of an unofficial set of three stand-alone office automation products that included dBase and WordPerfect, to build a complete business platform.
During the early 1990s, Windows grew in popularity, and along with it, Excel, which gradually displaced Lotus from its leading position as Lotus had suffered technical setbacks in this period. A planned total revamp of 1-2-3 for Windows fell apart, and all that the company could manage was a Windows adaptation of their existing spreadsheet with no changes except using a graphical interface. Additionally, several versions of 1-2-3 had different features and slightly different interfaces.
The Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank on April 15, 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southhampton, England to New York City. 1496 of the 2224 passengers died making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship at the time. The Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area, but the captain ignored them. It was generally believed that ice posed little danger to large vessels. The Titanic only had enough lifeboats to carry about half of those on board, while the lifeboats were only filled up to an average of 60%. The “women and children first” protocol was generally followed when loading the lifeboats, and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard. Women and children survived at rates of about 75% and 50%, while only 20% of men survived.
Founded in 2013, Beautycounter, a leader in the clean beauty business, raised over $100M and was sold to a private equity firm for $1B in 2021. As the pandemic receded, consumer spending went down and sales slowed across the entire beauty sector. While Beautycounter’s focus on clean formulations was a selling point when it launched, it now faced legions of competitors leading to its demise in 2024.
Launched and discontinued in 2006, ESPN burned through $150M (including $30M on a Super Bowl ad) for its mobile phone and only hit 6% of its sales target. ESPN built a wireless service and special phone so sports nuts could receive score updates, launch GameCast, and browse ESPN.com content. In addition to the $300 cost for the phone, customers had to spend between $65 and $225 per month for content.
Launched in 2004, Febreze Scent Stories was a clamshell device which added new scents every five minutes within a 30-minute disc. They proclaimed: “You can play scents… like you play music!” By making Shania Twain its spokesperson who helped with fragrance selection, consumers incorrectly assumed the device would also play her music.
Launched in 1962, Chevrolet had problems selling the Chevy Nova automobile in Latin America since “no va” means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish.
