I posted a comment a while back about a mechanical failure on Apollo 14 that almost doomed the mission. I feel like it's relevant here:

Fun Fact: Apollo 14 almost had to be aborted mid-mission.

Part of the Apollo mission plan was the LM - CSM Docking Manever. After the craft left Earth orbit on its way to the moon, the Command/Service Module had to detach from the 3rd Stage, flip around 180 degrees, reattach to the LEM, then pull the LEM out of the 3rd stage. This is shown in the movie Apollo 13 ("Come on, rookie, park that thing!").

Well, Apollo 14's docking clamps didn't work. Roosa, the pilot, detached the CSM, flipped it over, stuck its nose into the LEM's docking receptacle...and nothing happened. There was a "thunk" as the ships bumped into each other and bounced off. So they tried again. "Thunk." Again. "Thunk." Something was wrong. The spring-loaded clamps meant to catch the two ships together weren't activating.

After almost two hours of futilely bonking themselves into their LEM (possibly causing damage to both ships, though both turned out to be OK), Commander Shepard ordered an extremely risky maneuver. Rather than go in at low speed and depend on the spring-loaded clamps, they would punch in at high speed and, if their timing was right, activate the much heavier, manually-operated clamps. These were the "parking brakes", designed to hold the two ships together after docking, not to be used during docking itself. If the activation was mistimed, they would destroy the docking rings on both ships and force an immediate abort. But there was no other way - there's not much point in going to the moon if you can't dock to your Lunar Module.

So they did it, and of course it worked - their teamwork and calculations were perfect, because astronauts are awesome. So Alan Shepard got to go to the moon and play golf and stuff. But it almost didn't happen. Right on the heels of Apollo 13, NASA almost had to abort another moon landing. Can you imagine how much that would've sucked?

Shepard's story of this failure can be found in his book Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon.

When the American painter Albert Bierstadt arrived in Düsseldorf to take up his studies with his cousin Johann Peter Hasenclever, he was unable to do so because Hasenclever had died during Bierstadt's journey. So Bierstadt decided to turn to another of the famous professors at the Kunstakademie: Karl Friedrich Lessing (or maybe Andreas Achenbach, I'm having trouble remembering at the moment). Bierstadt's early work was of such low quality, however, that his future success in the profession seemed dubious. So, his fellow Americans in the town, led by Worthington Whittredge, decided to spare him the embarrassment of rejection by telling him that Lessing was not taking students at the moment. So Bierstadt packed up his sketching supplies and went on a hiking trip down the Rhine. When he reappeared at the end of the summer he was so much approved that Whittredge was in shock. In fact, his improvement was so remarkable that when he started sending his work back to his hometown of New Bedford, one of the local newspapers insisted that he must be passing off the work of some other painter as his own. Whittredge got Lessing and Achenbach to sign a letter to the editor attesting to Bierstadt's high level of skill. He would go on to be the highest-selling painter of his day, selling paintings for as much as $25,000 (around $400k today) at the height of his popularity.

When people in my area failed they... just blamed everyone else.

I'm researching the American militia in the first months of the War of 1812, looking specifically at the Detroit campaign and the Niagara frontier until early 1813. In those short months, the US war effort suffered one catastrophic defeat (Detroit) and a series of smaller but significant setbacks elsewhere (Mackinac, Ft. Dearborn, Queenston Heights and the aborted campaign up Lake Champlain). Lots of failure to go round.

At Detroit, Hull was the banner-carrying failure of the effort, and was quickly transformed into the emblem of American cowardice and treason. Newspapers excoriated him, based on testimonies made public by his junior officers, who had all, apparently, written the man off in the first stages of the march toward Detroit.

For his part, Hull, at his trial and afterward, found everything and everyone else to blame (not without, imo, some justification). He blamed the militia as a whole (which contradicted his reports written on the march), specific officers of the militia - Lewis Cass and Robert Lucas in particular - and the War Department for its failure to furnish supplies, and to listen to his concerns regarding control of the lower Great Lakes to keep the crossing from Detroit to Sandwich. Cass and Lucas closed ranks on Hull, and the three men battered each others' reputations into the form they thought would most benefit them and their careers. Cass and Lucas got the better end of the deal - Cass succeeded Hull as the governor of Michigan, and Lucas became the governor of Ohio, as well as the first governor of Iowa (an interesting aside, the immediate successors of Lucas and Cass would fight out the short but intense series of barfights and militia posturing known as the Toledo War).

To be clear, all of these men shared some of the blame. Some of Hull's defense was very on point - he was not adequately supplied and the War Department had utterly ignored his requests for naval support on the lakes, and the promised invasion from Niagara, which was meant to support his invasion, had not materialized before his defeat. However, a major portion of his defense was a vapid and tone-deaf assertion that the militia was mutinous and out to ruin his reputation from the start, and he embellished or made from wholecloth several examples of their ill-discipline and mutinous behavior that have more or less been accepted in the historiography as true.

I'd go on about Niagara if there's interest, but I've already written quite a lot.

One of the interesting and tragic side effects of your story is that the capsule used explosive latches and grissom always said that they " just blew on there own"

When designing the Apollo capsule they removed the explosive latches. When the Apollo 1 fire happened, Grissom, White and Chaffe were unable to open the capsule because the pressure inside was too strong.

I study the Battle of Normandy.

Basically, General Montgomery lied about his failures or argued that it was all part of his grand master plan anyways. Claiming (on July 3rd 1944) his failure to take Caen tied down German divisions and let Bradly to take Cherbourg. His July 10th message to Eisenhower and Bradly that things were going entirely to plan on the eastern area and that Caen had been captured (both untrue). Operation Goodwood was halted by Germans but Monty maintained it had broken through (leading to the false headline in The Times 'SECOND ARMY BREAKS THOUGH'. Goodwin failed to achieve its stated objectives. Also he covered his bases by giving a written order to Dempsey before Goodwin stating its limited objectives. If it fails and its up to the Americans to break out, that was the plan, and if it works then more glory to Monty.

He also spent the rest of his life arguing that the failure to take Caen on D-Day was not a massive error.

If you read his book as well, everything goes according to plan and he knows it all. Many more examples but I dont want to bore you.

TL;DR Monty had a problem with the truth and always had to be right about everything

Also as an aside, researching the massive problems the US and the UK had working together in WW2 has made me think that people who talk about a special relationship between the US/UK because of WW2 havent actually studied how that relationship worked.

John Cruso's 17th century Militaire Instructions for the Cavallrie was one of the first English works dealing exclusively with cavalry combat. In the section describing different ways that a band of horsemen should respond to being charged by the enemy, he includes this:

When the enemie is much stronger, and the other partie have neither time nor convenience to put themselves into good order; the Chief shall call with a loud voice, and command every man to save himself: whereupon the souldiers disband into many parts, so as the enemie cannot charge them all: and so (especially in the night) many may escape. But this course is dangerous, and must be commanded with great judgement: howsoever, in all retreats some of the best mounted must be left behind under a good Commander to make the retreat.

Ideally, beforehand the troops would have been shown some location to serve as a meeting point some distance back in case this ever happened, but it just goes to show that at times trying to retreat "in good order" is overrated.