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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

2. … and Passing on the Beatles

Brian Epstein, left, and The Beatles. Rock n Bold

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.

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.