The stories are creating dreamers and idealists. But the great accomplishments they do not succeed more often than ambitious failures.
Panama Canal
In 1869, the whole world applauded Ferdinand Lesseps at the opening of the Suez Canal. He, who would not think that the next great construction site started, Panamsky's channel, fully ignoring the physicians in the bell (Panama - the yellow fever zone) and engineers (the drawings of Ferdinand caused horror from them).
In twenty years, investors will be curse in Lesseps, put in prison and give anathema. Twenty thousand workers will return to their homeland in coffins (and most will not return even to them), and the word "Panama" will be synonymous with African and sell. Because you need to listen to professionals, not adventurers.
Titanic
Arrange the race across the Atlantic was a favorite entertainment of shipowners at the turn of the century. In 1907, heaving "Mauritania" and "Lusitania" into the water, Kunard Line asked new standards of passenger traffic. The response of competitors from the "White Star Line" was impressed: three Supreme Supreme Ship! "Titanic" was the largest, most luxurious and safest vessel of that time.
April 14, on the eve of the tragedy, Captain Edward Smith received seven warnings about icebergs in the ocean, but did not slow down. After the report on the detection of Iceberg right at the rate, the first officer of the Wild Murdoch fell half a minute, whether to turn away from the debris of ice. "Titanic" was immaculate and fell victim to his flawlessness: who could have come to mind to prepare for the collapse of the most unspecified ship in the world?!
Magino line
By 1936, the French built a four-billion francs on the border with Germany worth three billion francs. Now the Germans will have to go around to attack us, they have shook them! Let first be winning, "Military Minister Mazhino smiled.
- Yes, no question - the Germans thought. Belgium, who abandoned the Allied Covenant with France, received a lightning occupation. The Line Magino, German troops bypassed Ardennes in the north, after which they went to Montmartre and said "Guten Tag". Paris fell earlier than realized what money was buried to the ground.
Palace of Soviets in Moscow
This miracle of the XX century architecture should have become the highest building of the world and the last and main Stalinist high rise in Moscow. To do this, first demolished the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, then the huge pita was pulled out, but, alas, the war began, and it became somehow not to the palaces. Kotlovan did not disappear in vain, and Muscovites have bathed in the open pool "Moscow", of course, the largest in the world. Then the pool was buried, but then you know.
Phobos-sad
Automatic interplanetary station worth 5 billion rubles was to drive to Mars and back, taking with him samples of the Martian soil and conducting a cloud of major research of space on the way. But something went wrong, barely apparatus broke away from the ground. Amateur astronomers have long photographed helpless equipment circling on near-earth orbit. As a result, "phobos-soil" burned down in the dense layers of the atmosphere in January 2012.
E-Mobile
In 2010, the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov declared the imminent appearance of the real national Russian car: a high-tech, beautiful and, most importantly, cheap. Two years later, twenty thousand cars cost from 350 to 500 thousand rubles should have appeared on the streets of Russian cities. But time went, the technologies changed, the prototypes went with difficulty, and then there was still a decline in the car market and the fall of the ruble. Instead of the triumphant presentation of a new car, Prokhorov donates all the documentation on the project to the Russian automotive institute by us. Maybe even though the drawings will not disappear.
Large jump
By the beginning of the sixties, China was a huge, but poor agricultural country. The Great Feed Mao decided to turn the country into the world economy leader. Rejecting sound considerations and a thousand-year agricultural experience, the Communist Party issued a prescription that, where and how to sow and plant. Sparrow offered to be destroyed (so as not to spoil sowing), and the pans and dumbbells to overpay for the needs of the metallurgical industry. The results were big hunger, the death of tens of millions of people, the Luchansky conference and the new economy den Xiaopin. However, afterwards China still hugged forward. Just because it stopped to invent a bike and bought a textbook "Economics for Doodles". If you look at modern China, then the tutorial is undoubtedly useful.