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I learned something yesterday! I learned that 2023 minus 1978 is 45. Not 35.

Yes, there was an error in the newsletter yesterday. Twice, I wrote that the year 1978 was 35 years ago.

Fun fact: This single math error generated more replies to the newsletter than almost anything I've ever written!

Most readers were nice about it. A handful ... well, I'm just going to remind myself of that old saying, "everyone you meet in life is fighting a battle you know nothing about."

Maybe you'd like to know how this happened? It was a three-part process:

• First, I made a math error, and I copied it into a second place in the draft of the newsletter.
• Second, I ran the entire draft through ChatGPT, only ChatGPT's AI doesn't know what year it is now, so it didn't catch the error.
• Third, I sent it to my friend and assistant Tom Bennett, otherwise known as "Tom in Maine." Tom caught the error and flagged it for me in an email message! But, I missed it.

Anyway, mea culpa. Fortunately, it's a mostly inconsequential error.

Isn't it ironic that I only made the error because (as I wrote yesterday) because I was thinking about the 1978 New York newspaper strike, after writing about another, much bigger math error: the discovery by a Princeton undergraduate that flaws in the plans for the 59-story Citicorp Center meant it would collapse under hurricane force winds?

(In case you missed yesterday's newsletter, the Citicorp Center folks did a two-month nighttime construction project to fix the building, and kept it secret for years, because the strike meant there were no newspapers to report on it.)

So in keeping with the theme of math errors, and also to keep perspective, let's examine a few other big ones in history.

The Gimli Glider

Thirty-five years ago, in 1983 (I'm kidding, I know that was 40 years ago), an Air Canada passenger jet ran out of fuel on the way from Montreal to Edmonton. Explanation: the pilot and others miscalculated how much fuel they needed to make the journey. (There was a parade of mistakes that led to the miscalulation, but we'll skip the details here.)

In the end, they did an emergency "glide" landing at a closed air force base in the middle of nowhere in Manitoba. There were no injuries, but there were some skipped heartbeats, as the pilots hadn't realized the decommissioned runway was being used for a sports car race at the time of their silent landing.

The Hoover Free Flights Fiasco

I wrote about this one just a few weeks ago, but in case you missed it: Hoover UK, the vacuum cleaner company, nearly went bankrupt after they ran a promotion in 1992, 21 years ago (again, kidding, I know it was 31 years), in which they gave away transatlantic airline tickets worth about $500 in exchange for buying the equivalent of about $400 in appliances.

The president of Hoover Europe and two Hoover marketing officials lost their jobs, and eventually Hoover's European division was sold at fire sale prices to an Italian competitor.

The Lottery Error

This story has since become a movie starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening, but I wrote about it back in 2020. In short, Marge and Jerry Selbee of Evart, Michigan realized that there was a guaranteed way to hack the odds in lottery game called Winfall in Michigan, and later Cash WinFall in Massachusetts.

So that's what the Selbees started doing, to the point that playing the lottery became their full-time job. Over the course of nine years, their estimated total lottery haul was almost $27 million.

The Mars Climate Oribter

In 1998, NASA launched a $327.6 million space probe to Mars. About nine months later, communication with the probe was lost as it either crashed into the planet or skipped the orbit altogether and flew too close to the sun.

How did it happen? A basic, costly math error based on the fact that NASA was using metric measurements, while software developed by Lockheed Martin, which actually built the spacecraft, assumed everyone was still using Imperial measurements. NASA actually took final blame, saying that the agency should have caught the error before the ship took off.

There are a lot of other examples from history, but I'm going to cut it off here; at least the errors above didn't result in loss of life or limb.

And really, it was nice to hear from so many people. If nothing else, at least I know you're reading!

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7 other things worth knowing today

• Former President Donald Trump, his top executives, and heirs were declared completely liable of “persistent and repeated fraud” by a New York judge, and the real estate empire was unceremoniously stripped of its business licenses in New York. The ruling came in advance of a massive trial that seeks to hit them with more than $250 million in penalties for bank fraud. And in a stunning development, the judge has already ordered the complete dissolution of the fabled Trump Organization, which would be sent into receivership to be under the control of a court-appointed officer. Many appeals expected of course, but this is really quite stunning. (Daily Beast)
• New York City is planning to distribute flyers to migrants in shelters and at the US southern border that say the city’s resources “have been exhausted” and they won’t get any help finding work, officials said Wednesday. The one-page flyer, printed in both English and Spanish, warns asylum seekers that “you will not be placed in a hotel,” and that “NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world; you are better off going to a more affordable city.” (Bloomberg)
• The Senate passed a resolution Wednesday to make business attire a requirement on the Senate floor. The move comes after backlash to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) directive to scuttle the chamber's informal dress code, which was widely viewed to be inspired by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). (Axios)
• NASA astronaut Frank Rubio didn't set out to break any spaceflight records when he and two Russian cosmonauts launched aboard a rocket more than a year ago bound for the International Space Station. But, that was before a piece of space junk pierced the explorers' original capsule late last year, requiring a new Soyuz spacecraft to be rushed up to them for their return journey to Earth. Rubio landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan Wednesday, having spent 371 days in space -- the American record. (NASA)
• The Hollywood writers’ strike is over — and they won big. Here’s what’s coming in the WGA’s new contract. (Vox)
• The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voice mail. (Washington Post)
• After a prolonged period of high inflation and higher interest rates, Americans are just getting by. As of August, 60% of adults said they are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new LendingClub report, unchanged from last year. Related? Costco sells one-ounce gold bars now, and even at just under $2,000, which is a slight premium over what gold is trading for on the NASDAQ, the chain says it can't keep them in stock. (CNBC, KTLA)

Thanks for reading. See you bright and early tomorrow.