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

Khalid Elhassan March 23, 2025 16 min

Mistakes - Cain, by Henri Vidal, in the Tuileries Garden, Paris — Cain, by Henri Vidal, in the Tuileries Garden, Paris. Wikimedia

3. Picking the Tremeloes…

Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Jasmine Records

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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.