Sideswipe: August 6: Typo butterfly effect

Photo / Supplied

A tweet by Trump referred to Prince Charles as "the Prince of Whales", causing much meme-making but no big deal right? Then there was also that time the Australians sent $46 million worth of banknotes into circulation with the word responsibility missing an "i"… Embarrassing more than anything, right? But mistakes can do serious damage. In 2009 an employee at the UK Companies House was scrolling through a list of firms, trying to find a Manchester business called Taylor & Son that had been issued with a winding-up order. Then came the blunder. The employee wrongly selected the Cardiff-based Taylor & Sons (note the plural) and began the process of liquidating that firm. Taylor & Sons was a thriving engineering company that had been trading since the 1870s. It was doing fine, making about £35m a year, yet bad-credit notices were issued. Clients got spooked and cancelled business. Suppliers began queuing up at the firm's six factories to be paid. Soon, Taylor & Sons really did need to fold. Administrators came in, and centuries of reliable trading came to a halt overnight.

Uber-lazy?

A reader writes: "A friend and I were enjoying a drink at a bar in Milford on the North Shore when the two young men at the table next to us finished their drinks and started to leave. One fella turned to the other and asked 'What are you going to do' to which the other replied 'I think go home and order Uber Eats'. Italian, Mongolian and Thai restaurants are next door to the bar, across the road a Malaysian, Indian and another Thai, and just around the corner a Japanese restaurant — all serving takeaways."

Might be a knock-off?

Might be a knock-off? Photo / Supplied

Great strides

"I have just discarded a pair of trousers that were bought in 1967, at the start of a teacher training course, for a subject known as 'movement'," explains Phyll Hardie in the Guardian. "Since then they have been worn for hundreds of miles of walks and thousands of miles of cycling. I have kept the label for posterity's sake: 'St Michael, Nylon S-T-R-E-T-C-H, warm wash, drip dry, warm iron' and perhaps the best bit, no ship miles, because they were made in Great Britain."