What was your biggest goof, typo, etc.?

Before last Monday, mine was a hammer head that was supposed to read, "Sweet dreams," which, of, course, came out, "Sweat dreams."

Well, last Monday, I ran a pic with our outdoor guy's column. Dug up an old photo a former photog had taken. Opened the cutline and it ID'd the damn birds simply as "turkeys." Turns out, the pic was of turkey vultures, not turkeys. All week, I have been inundated with call after call, message after message and, of course, anonymous posts on the comments section of our website, basically calling me much worse things than "turkey vulture."
Since the last thing I hunted was Bigfoot, I thought people would understand, laugh at me and move on. Every neck in the world has come out of the woodwork, so to speak. It doesn't help that our county leads the entire effin state in turkey kills year in, year out.
Wow, was I wrong in thinking people would move past it! Believe me, if I could, I would fall on my sword for turkeys across the world. But, alas, that wouldn't be enough, either, I'm sure.
I can't help but think back to the incredible Thanksgiving episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and Arthur Carlson's Lincoln-esque quote: "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"
Confession concluded...turns out, the biggest turkey was me...

Anyone care to share their stories? After all, misery loves company, right?

 

I once wrote that someone shit 8 for 10 from the floor.

Fortunately, the copy editor who caught it, fixed it without announcing my fuck-up to the rest of the desk, which was commonplace at that paper. Writers should know that when you're respectful to the guys who read and edit your stories, that can pay dividends...

 

Legendary AP typo...

"Frank Thomas likes to take pitchers deep into the count..."

One of the vowels in count was missing.

Our wire editor told me AP moved no fewer than eight corrections within five minutes or so...

Another fantastic one and this was in a subhead... "How the Top 25 women farted."

 

Some fucker ...

 

That might be the greatest of all-time... The softball photo?

 

One paper accidentally ran Nolan Richardson's mug shot with a story about a different Richardson who was facing a rape trial. The alleged rapist's photo ran with the Arkansas NCAA preview box.

 

Caption on "Take your daughter to work day" photo... "Heather Jones gets first hand job experience from her father on Wednesday."

 

This sounds light compared but I called the Bobby Michael 5K Booby, and of course copied and pasted that for the female winners list.

 

"Death Notices"

Should have been "Birth Notices"

I did not get fired.

 

The "some fucker" and "roasted nuts" are classics, obviously. I have copies of both, in fact.

I'm curious about each one of your own, since this one is fresh on my plate, so to speak.

 

Humorous: Wrote a goalie stopped 31 shits on goal.
Not-so-humorous: Typed up an obit and my eyes ran ahead of my fingers. Gave a World War II a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

 

Best screwup I've seen: An editorial discussing how important it is for parents to be involved in their child's education. At one point, the editorial said (paraphrasing here) "Teachers are only with children for 8 hours a day. The parents are with them the other 17 hours a day. They should be involved in teaching their children."

In other words, an editorial on education that said there are 25 hours in the day.

My own personal one was when the local team was playing another school in the state playoffs that had a very similar name to another school in our area. I wrote a couple of stories that had the other local school's name on it, instead of the out-of-area school. To be fair to myself, my work made the paper, unedited, many times at that small shop, because of a lack of staff. That was one that came back to bite me.