The problem has since been fixed, when workers sandblasted the outside of the trouble areas in order to reduce glare. But hey, if you really want to stay in a building capable of hating you, there's always that one in Las Vegas that shoots a heat ray into its own pool.

Via Ditii.com
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Except for skin cancer. That shit follows you.

That's because there are four catwalks that hang directly over the outfield there. Countless hits that should have rightfully been home runs have instead just thudded off a support structure or landed on a catwalk and rolled off into the waiting glove of an opposing player. And that's if they ever come down at all. Oh, and because the lights are up there, too, the catwalks also occasionally rain superheated glass down on the players below. But hey, we all played with obstacles as kids: the fence posts out past third base, those odd holes in the infield or the occasional ball-eating mastiff that ultimately brought us all together and taught us a little something about friendship.

When all is said and done, the catwalks really lend a kind of childlike charm to the stadium, which we guess is a fair exchange for costing the Devil Rays the pennant that one time.

A team of engineers, architects and builders all got together to work on a solution to the problem, but their findings were kept secret (though eventually it was revealed to be some boring technical crap about lead solder bonding or not bonding properly, or otherwise playing by its own rules like the loose cannon of the periodic table that it is). In the end, the issue was fixed, but only by replacing every single one of the windows at the cost of $7 million. We're assuming somebody had to work in Hancock's garden every day after school until those damages were paid for.

Via Minnesota.publicradio.org
No joke, they actually nicknamed it "The Plywood Palace."

The Embarrassing Failure:

One day engineer Joel Weinstein was looking at the blueprints and noticed something odd: It was a damn skyscraper on stilts. After a few stiff drinks, he managed to mentally get past that terrifying fact and spotted something else of concern: Quartering winds (winds that strike the corners of the building, rather than the flat faces) would cause far more loading force than they'd initially thought. LeMessurier himself looked into it and discovered that instead of the wind joints being welded on, as he had ordered in the design, the plans were switched to bolts during the construction. Which, no matter how much chewing gum you plaster over them to "really stick 'em in there," is simply not the same thing. So how much difference could it make? Well, with the bolts in place instead of welds, experts predicted that on average, New York City was hit by a storm that could topple the building every 55 years. Should the tuned mass damper inside it fail, that rate drops to every 16 years.

Via Wikipedia
"We've been meaning to replace those brown buildings anyway -- just aim for those."

So then what? They ordered the area evacuated at the onset of every storm? Nope. They at least warned people of the impending disaster? Double nope. They sent out a press release stating that the building was in no danger at all, so shut up and stop worrying about it? Triple nop- oh, wait: That's the one. Hey, way to help banks shed their sinister supervillain images, Citigroup. To their credit, however, Citigroup did request that the Red Cross create secret emergency procedures in the event of a collapse. Yep, that's not evil at all: make plans to deal with all the corpses afterward, rather than work on preventing them beforehand.

Construction workers only operated at night (again, in order to keep it secret), hastily welding all the joints every evening, in a deadly race against the impending hurricane season. And they cut it pretty damn close, too: That year, Hurricane Ella headed right toward New York City. The storm would have absolutely created winds fast enough to topple the building, but by a huge stroke of luck, Ella made a last-minute turn back out to sea and the building was fixed without incident.

Via Classic.wunderground.com
"It appears the God of Storms has accepted our sacrificial offer of orphan blood and puppy heads."

But what if things had gone a little differently? What's the worst that could have happened? Citigroup is out an expensive building and maybe a few workers -- but what's a paltry few million and a couple dozen drones to a corporate bank? They can always hatch some more Foreclosure Consultants from the Vault Queen and then it's back to business as usual, right?

Ah, but remember, this building was in the middle of New York City. So if it falls, it's not going to do it all politely with its elbows tucked in. The Red Cross estimated the death toll at a staggering 200,000 people, with 156 city blocks taking further damage.

Via Wikipedia
"Citigroup. Taunting God since 1812."

That's basically the entire island of Manhattan, gone. And all because somebody used the wrong kind of connector. Just something to think about next time you catch yourself replacing that spring with a bent paper clip.

Special thanks to Erik Germ for coming up with the Citigroup entry!

For more ridiculous failures, check out 6 Natural Disasters That Were Caused by Human Stupidity and The 7 Most Disastrous Typos Of All Time.