Face Palm Moments: Some of History’s Most Embarrassing Mistakes

17. The Soft Drink Colossus

By the early twentieth century, The Coca-Cola Company was America’s – and the world’s – biggest soda manufacturer and seller. While Coca-Cola zoomed to the stratosphere, another soft drink concocted in the same era, Pepsi, languished. Pepsi was first concocted in 1893 by Caleb Bradham, who initially named it “Brad’s Drink”, and sold it at his drugstore in New Bern, North Carolina. Advertised to relieve dyspepsia, it was accordingly renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898. For decades, Pepsi was a niche drink with a tiny market, and was nowhere near Coca-Cola’s league. In short, it posed no challenge to the soft drink giant’s dominance. That began to change in the 1920s. Charles Guth, president of candy manufacturer Loft Inc., asked Coca-Cola for a discount on its syrup, which was used in some of his retail stores’ soda fountains. Coca-Cola refused to give him what he wanted, so he cast around for alternatives.

16. The Arrival of a Rival

Pepsi did not have as savvy a visionary at its head as Coca-Cola’s Asa Candler, and in 1923, it went into bankruptcy. Charles Guth swooped in and bought it for $10,500 (equivalent to roughly $196,000 in early 2025), and had chemists rework its formula to come as close to Coke as possible. Over the following decade, Pepsi was offered to the Coca-Cola Company for purchase on various occasions, but the soda giant declined the offer each time. In hindsight, Coke’s refusal to buy Pepsi – more than once – turned out to be a bad decision that the company came to regret. Charles Guth turned Pepsi around within just two years after he had bought it, and transformed it into a profitable enterprise.

15. Overtaken by a Once-Distant Challenger

By 1936, Pepsi sold about half a billion bottles a year, and established itself as the second largest soda company – behind only Coca-Cola. It was right around then that Loft Inc. accused Charles Guth of breach of fiduciary duty, and sued him. Delaware’s Supreme Court ruled for Loft, and established what came to be known as the “Guth Rule” in American corporate law. It prohibits corporate representatives from taking personal advantage of business opportunities that could have been exploited by their employer. Loft seized Pepsi from Guth in 1939, concentrated on the drink, and spun off the non-soda businesses in 1941. The Pepsi brand continued to grow, and eventually merged with Frito Lay in 1965, to become PepsiCo. That new company went on to finally eclipse Coke in sales in the 1980s, and in 2005, PepsiCo surpassed the Coca-Cola Company in market value.

14. How Inaccurate Assumptions Paved the Path for Disaster in Cuba

In early 1961, American-trained Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution trained to invade Cuba and overthrow the bearded strongman and his communist regime. The exiles were convinced – or more accurately, convinced themselves – that Castro lacked widespread support, and that Cuba would erupt in revolt as soon the invasion began. The exiles were also convinced – or convinced themselves – that they would be supported by the US Air Force, and that US Marines would follow right behind them. The aerial cover actually promised the exiles by the CIA was limited support from sixteen WWII era B-26 medium bombers, that were to fly out of bases in Nicaragua. However, that number was halved to eight bombers when the new US President, John F. Kennedy, insisted that the operation be kept minimal.

13. A Failed Invasion

On April 17^th, 1961, over 1400 Cuban exile paramilitaries, divided into six battalions, set sail from Nicaragua and Honduras. That night, they landed on a beach in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The exiles overwhelmed a local militia. However, once word reached Havana, a powerful counterattack, overseen by Fidel Castro personally, was organized. Pinned down, with their backs to the sea, no means of retreat, and no chance to advance into the island’s interior, the exiles were utterly defeated. The invasion had failed, but the next day, JFK made a final gesture.

12. A Farcical Mistake That Drove the Final Nail Into the Bay of Pigs Fiasco

With Castro’s forces now on full alert, any followup strikes by the B-26s would have required fighter protection. So President Kennedy authorized half a dozen fighter jets from the aircraft carrier USS Essex to fly cover over the Bay of Pigs for an hour on April 18^th, 1961, to protect the bombers as they carried out another strike. However, the invasion, which had already gone from failure to fiasco, was destined to conclude with a farce. In a final face palm moment, the rendezvous between the carrier jets and the B-26s was missed: planners had not factored in the one hour time zone difference between Cuba and the bombers’ base in Nicaragua.

11. Hollywood Did Not Know What to Make of Star Wars

George Lucas directed American Graffiti in 1973, and it became one of history’s most profitable films. It cost $1.27 million to make and market, and earned over $55 million at the box office. Re-released in 1978 with Dolby sound, it earned another $63 million, for a combined box office of $118 million – equivalent to $785 million in early 2025. Brimming with confidence, Lucas decided that his next project would be a “western in space“. It became one of history’s most successful movie franchises. The first film, Star Wars: A New Hope, grossed $775,398,007 – which was huge back then. By 2025, the Star Wars franchise had grossed more than $10.3 billion in movie sales alone. It seems obvious now that Star Wars was destined for great success. In the 1970s, however, Hollywood was unsure whether Lucas’s “western in space” would resonate with moviegoers, or bomb at the box office.

10. A Runaway Success

A number of studios passed on Star Wars, before 20^th Century Fox finally agreed to make the film. The studio’s execs were still a bit unsure about the movie’s prospects, however. So when Lucas offered to give up $500,000 of his director’s fee in exchange for complete ownership of merchandise and licensing fees, the studio agreed. It was a costly face palm mistake that 20^th Century Fox came to greatly regret. Upon its release in 1977, Star Wars: A New Hope became a runaway box office success. It also generated massive demand for toys and merchandise based on characters and vehicles. George Lucas had contracted with toymaker Kenner. Like 20^th Century Fox, however, Kenner had not expected the movie to become so popular, or the resultant demand for tie-in merchandise to be so huge. Soon, demand for toys and merchandise outran supplies.

9. Missing the Boat on Merchandising

Seven months after Star Wars’s release, Kenner had to sell empty boxes, with certificates redeemable for action figures once they became available. By 2012, the first six Star Wars films had produced about $20 billion in merchandise revenue. By 2023, after the release of three more sequels and other standalone films and TV series, that figure had jumped to $32 billion. As of early 2025, Star Wars has earned more than $42 billion in merchandise sales. In an epic face palm moment, 20^th Century Fox had ceded all that lucre to George Lucas in exchange for $500,000. One major studio’s loss turned out to be another major studio’s gain. Decades after 20^th Century’s Fox’s costly mistake, Disney bought both that studio and Lucas’s Star Wars empire. So now both the movie the movie and merchandising rights belong to the same owner.

8. A Bling-Tastic Procession

Founded in West Africa, circa 1226, the Mali Empire was famous for its wealth, derived from huge gold deposits, salt, ivory, and slaves. The empire’s first few rulers piled up the gold, until Mansa Musa ascended the throne circa 1312, and began to spend lavishly. His greatest splurge came when he decided to make the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, about 2700 miles away, and do it in style to showcase his magnificence. Musa’s procession included 60,000 men, clad in expensive silk and brocade. Heralds were dressed in even more expensive silks and carried gold staffs, while 12,000 slaves bore four pounds of gold each. More wealth was borne on eighty camels, each with about 300 pounds of gold dust. As they trekked across the Sahara and savannah, Musa freely handed out gold to the poor he met along the way.

7. Ostentatious Spending Doomed This Once-Prosperous Empire

Mansa Musa generously donated to cities along his route, and paid to build a new mosque wherever he happened to stop each Friday – Islam’s Sabbath, equivalent to the Jewish Saturday or Christian Sunday. When he reached Cairo, he was fleeced by merchants who exploited his ignorance of prices. His spending there caused prices to skyrocket, and pumped so much gold into the economy that inflation ravaged Egypt for years afterwards. Musa wanted to showcase his wealth, and he succeeded. A contemporary described his pilgrimage as “a lavish display of power, wealth, unprecedented by its size and pageantry“. However, the lavish pilgrimage nearly ruined his realm and set it on a steep decline. For generations, the Mali Empire had been known for its wealth. Two decades after Musa’s pilgrimage, medieval traveler Ibn Battuta visited Mali, and described it as poor. It fell to the neighboring Songhay Empire a few years later.

6. A Shortsighted Recording Industry Titan

Few wielded more influence in Britain’s music industry than did Richard “Dick” Rowe in the 1950s and 1960s. The head of Decca Records’ A&R (artists and repertoire), Rowe was responsible for finding promising new artists. Although he became famous – or infamous – for an epically bad decision, Rowe was overall pretty good at his job. The artists he signed include The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Cat Stevens, The Animals, and Them, the band that launched Van Morrison. Unfortunately, Rowe’s reputation and name would be forever tied marked with a face palm moment tied to the biggest group he refused to sign. It began on New Year’s Day, 1962, when Brian Epstein, manager of an unheralded musical group, took his young talents to audition with Decca at their studios in West Hampstead, North London.

5. A Star Crossed Audition

Epstein’s musicians had been invited by one of Dick Rowe’s A&R subordinates, Mike Smith, who had heard the band play a few weeks earlier. Smith liked what he heard enough to ask them to do a session at Decca’s studio. The group drove to London all the way from Liverpool, in the middle of a snowstorm, and made it just on time for their 11 AM audition. After their long drive through snow and sleet just to reach Decca Records on time, the members of Brian Epstein’s group were understandably annoyed when the man who had invited them showed up late. Smith, who had apparently partied hard the night before, unnerved the young musicians even more when he refused to let the group use their own amplifiers. Instead, he demanded that they use Decca’s amplifiers, which he deemed to be superior to those used by Epstein’s charges.

4. “Guitar Groups Are on the Way Out“

Epstein’s musicians set up, tuned and strung their guitars, cleared their throats, and performed about fifteen songs before Smith and his boss Dick Rowe. The group was nervous. What with the drive through a snow storm, their host’s late arrival, and the use of different amplifiers, they were not at their best. Still, they felt confident that had done well enough to secure a contract. After the audition, however, Rowe decided to pass on the group and declined to sign them, with the airy remark that “guitar groups are on the way out, Mister Epstein“. That might have been the worst face palm moment in the music business. Epstein and his group left Decca’s studios dejected that their New Year had begun with a rejection. Not so Dick Rowe, who figured that 1962 had started auspiciously for him and his label.

3. Picking the Tremeloes…

The same day he declined to sign Epstein’s group, Dick Rowe had listened to another auditioning band. He liked what he heard, and signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes to a deal with Decca Records. As Rowe recalled later, he had told his A&R subordinate Mike Smith to decide between Epstein’s group and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes: “He said, ‘They’re both good, but one’s a local group, the other comes from Liverpool.’ We decided it was better to take the local group. We could work with them more easily and stay closer in touch as they came from Dagenham.” So Decca chose the Tremeloes. All in all, that was not a bad business decision in of itself, as the band had some success in the United Kingdom. As to Rowe’s failure to sign Epstein’s musicians? That, as seen below, turned out to be an epic face palm moment.

2. … and Passing on the Beatles

Brian Poole and the Tremeloes entered the UK charts in 1963 with a cover of the Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout, and followed it up with a UK chart-topping cover of the Contours’ Do You Love Me. A year later, their cover of Roy Orbison’s Candy Man pleased the Brits, and a cover of the Crickets’ Someone, Someone made it to number 2 on the UK charts. So Dick Rowe had not erred in signing up the Tremeloes. The face palm mistake was his refusal to sign the other band that had auditioned the same day as the Tremoloes: The Silver Beatles, who soon shortened their name to The Beatles. Rowe’s rejection of The Beatles in favor of Brian Poole and the Tremoloes made him and Decca Records synonymous with terrible business decisions and catastrophic commercial misjudgments.

1. Dick Rowe and Decca’s Other Face Palm Moment

Dick Rowe’s rejection of the biggest band of all time – which was bad enough in of itself to enshrine his name in the Bad Business Decisions Hall of Fame – was not his only face palm moment of monumental shortsightedness. Just five years after he refused to sign The Beatles, Rowe turned down another musical icon. In late 1966, Jimi Hendrix arrived in London and instantly created a stir. At his debut in the British capital before an audience whose numbers included Eric Clapton, Hendrix’s guitar play blew everybody away. A bassist and drummer were quickly rounded up to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and they recorded their first single, Hey Joe. Their manager Michael Jeffrey approached Dick Rowe to try and get a record deal, only for Decca Records’ A&R man to pass. So Hendrix ended up at the recently-launched Track Records, instead.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Beatles Bible – The Beatles Audition for Decca Records

Cheat Sheet – Jimi Hendrix Got Turned Down by the Same Decca Producer Who Turned Down the Beatles

Encyclopedia Britannica – Coca-Cola Company

Encyclopedia Britannica – Musa I of Mali

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume III (2002)

History Collection – Treason! 12 of History’s Most Notorious Traitors From Ancient Times to the 20^th Century

History News Network – Failures of the Presidents: JFK’s Bay of Pigs Disaster

Hollywood Reporter, February 12^th, 2012 – ‘Star Wars’: How George Lucas Built an Empire

Independent, The, February 12^th, 2012 – The Man Who Rejected The Beatles

Jones, Howard – The Bay of Pigs (2008)

McDermott, John – Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight (1992)

Motley Fool – How Coke Helped Create Pepsi, and Other Historic Market Moments

Phasr – The Star Wars Merchandise Empire: How George Lucas Revolutionized Pop Culture Merch