Mark McLaughlin: Clangers that ring through the ages

History is littered with blunders, but even Homer Simpson would be shamed by some of these, writes Mark McLaughlin

AS blunders go it would have been up there with the best of them. A pensioner claimed she had bought the winning 113 million Euromillions ticket only for her husband to throw it in the bin.

A genuine winner may have come forward to claim the biggest jackpot in British history, but every man in Scotland will still get a shiver down their spine thinking about what would happen to them if they inadvertantly chucked away a fortune.

Here for your enjoyment are some clangers we can all be glad we weren't responsible for.

Sacred slip

THE Bible is said to be the incorruptible word of God but He clearly didn't bestow infallibility on the publishers. A 1631 edition made sleeping around compulsory by omitting 'not' in the seventh commandment to read, "Thou shalt commit adultery".

Jesus doesn't come out too well in a 1795 edition when he decreed "Let the children first be killed", rather than "filled". Perhaps God had foreseen these errors from the off. In the first edition of the King James Bible (1612) Psalm 119:161 reads, "Printers have persecuted me without cause". "Printers" was a misprint for "princes".

Housekeeper's howler

SCOTTISH writer and thinker Thomas Carlyle lost his religious faith while studying in Edinburgh, but it wasn't the last thing he lost. In the mid-1830s an illiterate housekeeper mistook the manuscript of his classic book The French Revolution for junk and threw it on the fire. He had to write it again. A similar mishap befell First World War hero Lawrence of Arabia nearly a century later when he left a 250,000 word draft of his memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom on the platform at Reading train station.

Slippery fingers

AS a boy, Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas forgot to post his dad's football pools coupon which would have won him the equivalent of around 1 million pounds. The Spanish World Cup winning captain has surely made up for it since.

Wrong country invasion

THE British Royal Marines were ordered to land on Gibraltar for an exercise in 2002. Confused by bad weather they unwittingly landed on Spain and pulled out their assault rifles and mortars on bemused local fishermen. The MoD said: "It was clearly an embarrassing and unfortunate incident. They made their apologies and left."

Not rocket science

ROCKET scientists are often seen as the greatest minds on the planet, but it doesn't mean they're not prone to the odd gaffe. The Mars Climate Orbiter, launched in 1999, disappeared after a scientist mistook metric units for imperial so that when it came to fire its engines it applied more than twice the necessary amount of thrust. The mistake meant the 80 million shuttle could take off, but then got lost in space.

Wrecking a Picasso

IN 2006 Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn tore a gash in the 1932 painting Le Reve by Picasso while showing it to reporters the day after he bought it for 74 million. He was so animated with delight that he accidentally put his hand through the canvas.

Welsh wonder

SOME gaffes are costly, others just priceless. When road engineers emailed Swansea Council asking for the Welsh translation for a No Entry sign in 2008, they received the following response: "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd". The message, which ended up on the road sign, above, translates as: "I am not in the office at the moment . . .".

Long lens losers

THIS week Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander became the latest official to be snapped holding sensitive documents in full view of the paparazzi. Bob Quick, former head of counter-terrorism policing, resigned after he nearly blew an anti-terror operation in a similar style, while Gordon Strachan seemed to give away his transfer targets on his first day as manager at Middlesbrough.