Notable Clerical Errors
- The attack on Pearl Harbor was allegedly not supposed to be a surprise attack. The Japanese had intended to deliver a note declaring both war and their intentions at Pearl Harbor to the United States prior to the attack, but due to a clerical mishap the note was delivered late.
- 18½ minutes of the infamous "Watergate tapes" were, allegedly, accidentally erased by Richard Nixon's secretary in a clerical error which may have very well changed the course of American history.
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Famous quotes containing the words notable, clerical and/or errors:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)