To quote the immortal words of the great Miley Cyrus, "everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days."

It's true. Nobody really is perfect and not one of us has gone through life without at least a few regrets or accidental errors. Normally, a mistake results in a few days of embarrassment before ultimately moving on having learned a lesson or two. However, there are some amazing exceptions in which small accidents were significant enough to transform history for better or for worse.

The following list is dedicated to the tiny accidents that became monumental, history-defining blunders.

5. Hannibal Barca Murdered Half Of His Own Army By Accidentally Causing An Avalanche

Before there was Ringling Bros., famed Carthaginian military leader Hannibal Barca was the head honcho in the business of elephant handling. After his father lost Carthage to Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal Barca vowed to live a life fueled by a personal vendetta against all things Roman. And what better way to intimidate the enemy than by marching into battle with a few dozen blood-thirsty elephants and pure, unadulterated vigilante fury?

In 218 BC Hannibal set off from Cartagena to Rome leading an army of 50,000 troops, 9,000 horses and pack animals, and 37 elephants directly across the undocumented Alps. In a bold, audacious maneuver that was to become "one of the most second-guessed troop movements in history," Hannibal threw all caution to the wind, driven by the image of those sweet, sweet Roman tears to accurately process easier strategies. Crossing the dangerous, uncharted Alps was to lead them closer into the heart of the enemy, and unfortunately for his troops, "easy" was not a word found in Hannibal's dictionary.

The trek across the Alps was a perilous one--the journey across accumulated a death toll in the hundreds--but it was in the decent down the mountain that Hannibal’s army faced much more strenuous challenges than what they had encountered on the way up. The pathway down was nearly impossible to navigate due to slippery ice and sharp curves. To make matters worse, a devastating snowstorm caused the horses and elephants to become stuck bringing the entire army to a complete halt.

Hannibal, furious at the delay and the possible cost it might have on his element of surprise, marched to the front and slammed his walking cane into the ground to prove that solid ground lay beneath. That single act of hitting the ground, at a place where a mere whisper is enough to trigger a deadly Alpine avalanche, proved more than enough to trigger an enormous slide.

It took four days and probably a lot of "I told you sos" for Hannibal’s army to dig themselves out and by the time he emerged from the Alps, Hannibal had less than half his army intact and only a handful of elephants and pack animals. History shows that Hannibal was still able to defeat the Roman army on the plain of Cannae, but he had insufficient forces to attack Rome itself--his ultimate goal.

In fact it is not unreasonable to suggest that Hannibal’s act of anger that triggered the destruction of most his resources, changed the entire shape of European civilization. Victory for the Carthaginians, essentially an African power, could have led to a different world from the one the Romans did so much to shape. Probably not by much, but a change destroyed by a gratuitous dick measuring contest.

4. One Rogue Line Of Code Almost Completely Destroyed "Toy Story 2" Before Release

Excluding being set on fire whilst watching your family being skinned alive, no greater pain exists than that of hours of diligent paper-writing being tossed down the drain when the computer crashes before saving your work. We've all endured the pain of rewriting papers in college, but for most, graduation means no longer can these sleepless nights of paper writing hurt you. For the fine folks at Pixar, however, one accidental line of code triggered those sleepless writing nights and instantly threw the studio into a highly expensive race-against-time in an attempt to stop the mainframe from permanently deleting the one and only copy of "Toy Story 2" to ever exist before release.

Backing up a bit to the winter of 1998, the production of "Toy Story 2" was in disastrous shape. The then-new decision to revamp "Toy Story 2" from its original straight-to-DVD release into a full-fledged theatrical outing demanded an impossible elevation in quality, while certain unknown, underdeveloped plot elements kept the film from coming together as a whole. The production was crumbling quickly and like great romantic comedy structure, it was the perfect moment for the universe to create an unsalvagable mistake.

In a scene ripped right out of every movie ever, one of the film's technical directors, Oren Jacobs, was staying in the office late one night, combing through footage. In what was most definitely either a spit-take of coffee or mid-bite of a donut/pizza/ham sandwich, Jacobs noticed that frames of the film began disappearing. Quickly. Pixar Co-Founder Ed Catmull recalls,

"First, Woody's hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive."

Shocked, confused and definitey not at all cliche, Jacobs quickly called systems support demanding that someone "pull out the plug on the 'Toy Story 2' master machine." When asked why by the person on the other end of the phone (a not-unreasonable question), Jacobs screamed:

"Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!"

The plug was pulled, but not in time—90% of the film was gone, erased "in a matter of seconds."

With the studio's only release for the year now almost completely destroyed, an investigation was headed, leading to the discovery that an anonymous employee had accidentally programmed the code "/bin/rm -r -f *" on the drives where the film's files were kept. The object of said command is to remove everything from a given location and to remove it quickly. With one line of code, a year's worth of work went right down the tubes, never to be seen again.

Enter Galyn Susman, the film's supervising technical director. After just giving birth to her second child, she had been working from home, taking an entire copy of the film home with her once a week. With a Luxo Jr. lightbulb lamp appearing over her head, Galyn rushed home, securely wrapping her computer in as many blankets and pillows as possible, and carefully placing the only full copy of "Toy Story 2" to exist in the backseat of her car. In Oren's words, the computer was then "carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh."

While work had been lost, Susman's backup files limited the damage significantly. Furthermore, given the size of Pixar at the time--which was still years away from being the company big enough to merge with Disney--her computer may just have saved the firm, at least in the form that we know it. Unsurprisingly, Pixar put into place processes that stopped this from ever happening again. "Toy Story 2" was released to critical acclaim as well as incredible box office success, Pixar Animation went on to become a major tour de force in the industry, and the tale of the rogue code became a grave reminder that stealing from the office is sometimes beneficial in saving an entire company.

3. A Missing Key Could Have Saved The Titanic

Nobody has ever loved anything the way David Blair loved the Titanic. As Second Officer of the Titanic, David Blair had been with the ship when she sailed on her journey from Belfast to Southampton. After walking down its great halls, he pridefully expressed his undying love of such impeccable design constructed by mortal man.

When the White Star Line, demanded a massive reshuffle/rehire when the Titanic's sister ship, the RMS Olympic, became swamped with layovers, Blair was one of the company casualties. Replaced by the Olympic's Chief Officer, Henry Wilde, Blair packed his belongings, lowered his head, and left the ship in a crushing defeat. In this sadness, however, Blair forgot one very important piece of office supplies that single-handedly caused the ship's demise: a key to the locker holding binoculars for the Crow's nest.

To anyone somehow unfamiliar with the story, the Titanic collided with a large iceberg on the night of April 15th, 1912 killing roughly 1,500 passengers. The lookouts at the time of the collision Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee maintained during the inquiries that they were informed they were to have no binoculars during the voyage. When asked whether or not the iceberg could have been visible from farther away, Fleet replied that he would have seen it "a bit sooner". When asked to elaborate, Fleet gave one chilling response-- "Well, enough to get out of the way."

Blair, who must have felt like just a total dick, received a heavy dose of blame for the collision at the resulting court martial. It was an honest mistake made by a man not in the right mental space. And to look on the silver lining, his mistake did inspire James Cameron to cash in on the deaths of nearly two thousand people, so it wasn't all that bad, really.

2. The Germans Lost D-Day Because Of A Birthday Party

In every heterosexual man's life, outstandingly stupid mistakes are made solely at the cost of getting the girl. But for every one hundred drunken texts and poorly-timed pick up lines, one error of epic proportions can be traced back to one poor, sexually frustrated fool. The fool this time being Erwin Rommel, a significantly important general for the German army during WW II.

Away from his dear wife for years, Rommel was beginning to succumb to depression. Even worse, his wife's 50th birthday was approaching and Rommel knew it. After purchasing a pair of shoes for her in Paris, Rommel tried everything in an attempt to return home to her, even contemplating self-injury to get out of combat. It was in this desperation did the answers to his prayers seemingly come in the form of dismal weather, destroying any opportunity of invasion from American forces.

With the weather appearing completely unfavorable for invasion, Rommel took the opportunity to leave his post for the weekend to surprise his wife with a long overdue birthday party. It seemed like the perfect chance with his forces stationed, waiting on the enemy to arrive, Rommel bid farewell to his team, confident that combat wouldn't commence until after he returned. However, deprived of long range weather forecasts due to the loss of ships and weather stations, the Germans were blissfully unaware that the Allies had discovered the weather would moderate for about 24 hours beginning the night of the 5th and morning of the 6th. With the knowledge of this small window of opportunity, Eisenhower called for an attack on Normandy, getting the drop on an army with an absentee general.

Rommel was reached at his home early on D-Day June 6th to inform him of the Allies landing on his unorganized beach. Hitler had limited Rommel and other German commander’s ability to respond to an invasion by keeping the authority to commit the German armored reserve to himself, so when Rommel returned back to the battlefield, not nearly enough troops were reinforced to take back the beach. The forces that Rommel immediately commanded were sufficient to slow the Allied advance but not to throw the invaders back into the English Channel.

The Germans loss of Normandy Beach was a significant blow to the campaign, and it's solely because of one man's love of surprise parties. With Erwin Rommel gone for a birthday, let's hope at least one French trooper made some self-aware crack about letting the Germans eat cake or else this entire invasion was a waste of time.

1. A Technical Error Saved Big Bird From Boarding The Challenger

Imagine the most traumatic childhood experience you ever encountered. Now multiply that by about 5,000 and that would result in maybe half of the trauma all children in 1986 would have experienced watching their beloved Big Bird literally explode on the doomed Challenger ship.

Fresh off the victory of the Space Race, every American proudly looked up to the stars, dreaming of what far reaches of the universe they'd live to see discovered. Aware of this moment, NASA launched--pun absolutely intended--a campaign to get children excited about space travel and the science behind it. To ensure the full attention of children, NASA sought after a recognizable role model that kids would be jumping at the chance to see take off in a rocket ship. The search brought them to The Jim Henson Company.

When offered the opportunity to see one of his beloved creations become the first "citizen" in United States, Jim Henson--being the revolutionary mind he was--was absolutely thrilled at the idea. After pitching the idea to Big Bird actor Caroll Spinney, the excitement increased, a plan was concocted, and "Operation: Send Big Bird To Space" was go for launch.

With extensive testing and simulations put in place, the discovery that Big Bird's suit would simply be too large to fit inside the shuttle made the operation impossible. Knowing Big Bird couldn't fit safely, the invitation was revoked and the decision to go for something less challenging--puns still being intended--came to fruition in the form of teacher Christa McAuliffe.

On January 28th, 1986, The Challenger broke apart after a minute of flight, causing a worldwide trauma that still hasn't healed. Had Big Bird's costume been the appropriate size, children everywhere would have watched in horror as the costume, the character, the actor and the concept of Big Bird all succumbed to the perilous dangers of outer space in a trauma that no amount of Sesame Street life lessons could have healed.

Big Bird almost died. Seriously let that sink in for a moment.