This Day in Failure: August 30

2008: The Idaho Vandals lose their season-opening football game to the Arizona Wildcats 70-0, while also suffering the indignity of competing while wearing uniform pants that feature a prominent “I” (University of Idaho) logo with “Vandals” in script across the players’ buttocks. “We didn’t realize how noticeable it [the logo] would be until it was on our players,” says Idaho athletic director Rob Spear, citing a “miscommunication” between the school and Nike over the design of the uniforms. Weeks later, the Vandals’ cheerleading squad is pressured into redesigning its uniforms after the university receives complaints that the girls’ recently-debuted two-piece outfits are too skimpy.

2007: Six missles armed with nuclear warheads are mistakenly flown on a B-52 bomber from Minot Air Force Base (North Dakora) to Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana), the warheads unaccounted for during the approximately three-and-a-half hour flight between the two bases.

1996: An attempt to raise a portion of the Titanic’s hull ends unsuccessfully when, one by one, the four lines attached to the recovery ship snap. The 15-ton piece sinks to the sea floor, coming to rest 10 miles from the rest of the wreckage.

1974: An express train traveling from Belgrade to Dortmund approaches a station in Zagreb, Yugslavia, at 60 mph after failing to heed a red signal. The train crashes into the platform and derails, bringing down power lines that electrocute some of the surviving passengers. At least 153 people perish in the accident, which is blamed on the train’s engineers, who receive prison sentences of eight and 15 years.