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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

16. The Arrival of a Rival

A 1919 Pepsi newspaper advertisement. Library of Congress

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.

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.