Let’s face it, we make lots of mistakes. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re tragic, sometimes they’re downright unbelievable. Contributor Brian Lane resurfaces some of these safety/security blunders.

Current economic and environmental woes have spurred safety concerns for American pocketbooks and property, but not all security problems are caused by decades-long banking ethical ambiguities or state-sized hurricanes.

Sometimes penny pinching or hubris can lead to tragedy, as in the case of H.M.S. Titanic, which was discovered to have too few lifeboats following an unthinkable hull rupture back in 1912. Below is a list of some safety and security blunders that might shed a bit of light on necessary oversight procedures.

Fast Food Goof, Pt. I: Would You Like a Virus With That?
In October 2006, McDonald’s Japan was forced to issue a recall of 10,000 MP3 devices after discovering the customer giveaways were not only loaded with ten free songs, but also the QQPASS Trojan PC virus. McDonald’s was quick to issue an apology and set up a 24-hour help line for affected customers.

Aaahh!
Gun-wielding thieves in Oslo burst into the Edvard Munch Museum on Aug. 22, 2004, and made off with two of the Norwegian master’s most celebrated works, The Scream and Madonna. While their firearms certainly helped, witnesses reported the criminals simply pulled the paintings from the walls, which triggered no alarms. The museum closed to undergo $6 million worth of security improvements, and a concentrated police effort resulted in the conviction of 5 suspects. The paintings, slightly damaged, were recovered in August 2006.

Bathing in Luxury No More
The Kominato Hotel Mikazuki in Kamogawa, Japan, is now missing a bathtub so prized it was only open to guests a few hours a day. An 18-karat solid gold bathtub was stolen in May 2007 from a shared bathroom in the hotel, but the chances of getting it back are unlikely because there were no guards, no witnesses and no video surveillance. A hotel official said, “We have no idea who took [the tub],” which was valued at $987,000.

Fast Food Goof, Pt. II: Would You Like Explosive Potatoes With That?
On two successive days in 2006, workers at a McCain Foods French fry factory in Scarborough, U.K., were forced to evacuate following the discovery of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the First and Second World Wars mixed in with potatoes. The tubers were imported from France and Belgium, the locations of major battles from both wars, and where “iron harvests” of UXO are apparently quite common even today.

Lactose Intolerance
Coming after the 1-2-3 punch of recalled Chinese products last year, when dog food containing melamine, toys coated in lead paint and toothpaste containing antifreeze were pulled from shelves worldwide, the current baby formula crisis has done further damage to China’s international quality control reputation. The company responsible for the contaminated milk has been disseminating baby formula milk powder that contains melamine, a chemical used in plastic and fertilizer production, which has caused more than 50,000 babies to become sick with kidney stones, and a handful of others to die. Chinese authorities have made a number of arrests, and the head of China’s product quality watchdog agency has resigned.

419 Ways to Come Up With the Right Scheme
Plenty of people have been scammed in some way or another, but few countries are “lucky” enough to be so infamous to have a scam named after them. Advance fee fraud, or the “Nigerian scam,” which usually involves a fake church or aid group in Africa looking for philanthropists to help with a business transaction, has caused a lot of grief for people hoping to charitably aid the West African nation. Its success on Craigslist, eBay and other online trading sites is so widespread it has caused vigilante revenge sites to pop up all over the Internet. It should go without saying that e-mail requests asking you to “forward some money” require a good deal of scrutiny.

Top Story: Your Credit Card Numbers
Massachusetts residents received an unwanted bonus with their Sunday newspapers back in 2006, and they weren’t coupons. Rather, subscribers to the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette received their debit or credit card numbers in their newspaper bundles, along with some 240,000 others. Around 9,000 papers were released to up to 2,000 retailers, distribution centers and subscribers on Jan. 26, 2006. Newspaper representatives claim the bank information was inadvertently used as “toppers,” recycled scrap paper wrapped around newspapers.

Resources

Spyware Infection Prompts McDonalds MP3 Recall
by John Leyden
The Register, 16th October 2006

Scream and Madonna – Revisited
Munch Museum, May 23-Sept. 26, 200

Golden Bathtub Stolen from Japanese Hotel
The Associated Press, May 30, 2007

101 Dumbest Moments in Business (#78)
by Adam Horowitz, David Jacobson, Tom McNichol and Owen Thomas
Business 2.0, January 2007

Timeline of China’s Tainted Milk Powder Scandal
The Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2008

Globe and Worcester T&G Customer Credit Info Mistakenly Released
by Robert Gavin
The Boston Globe, Jan. 31, 2006