A closer look
Seventeenth-century Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus ordered his shipbuilders to construct the most heavily armed and intimidating warship ever conceived, only to watch the massive vessel violently capsize and sink straight to the bottom of the ocean mere minutes into its maiden voyage. Because the incredibly arrogant monarch kept blindly demanding the addition of more heavy bronze cannons to the upper decks without allowing engineers to properly adjust the hull design, the ship instantly flipped over the very first time a mild breeze hit its sails. This incredibly embarrassing maritime disaster is now widely studied by modern economists as the ultimate historical example of the sunk cost fallacy and the dangers of letting ignorant executives with massive egos override the basic laws of physics simply because they refuse to admit their expensive vanity project is fundamentally flawed
