I have recently become a fan of typos. Now I don’t mean “i before e” or “colon not semi-colon” typos, but rather the catastrophic type of typo that can alter a result, an opinion, or completely and utterly change the meaning of something. “Why this new interest in Typos, Imogen?” you may ask. It’s simple; my entire NAME is a typo. Whhaaattt?? I know, I feel the same way.
For nineteen years I have been living under the assumption that my name, Imogen, was penned by William Shakespeare for his play Cymbeline, a lesser known but fabulous story about King Cymbeline and his messed up family. Recently, however, I have discovered that editors of the Oxford and Norton Shakespeare (so people who KNOW what they’re talking about) believe that the name Imogen is a misspelling of Innogen… ummmm excuse me, INNogen… apparently Shakespeare wanted his heroine to be named Innogen (which was actually a name at the time) but some scribe along the line, right around the time the first manuscripts were printed, misread the two ns as an m and thus, my name was born! My name is a typo. Nowadays Imogen has been adopted as the official name of King Cymbeline’s daughter and it’s creation is credited to Shakespeare, but the fact still remains that I came *this close* to being Innogen Rose Browder… it just sounds funny.
Anyhow, this discovery of my mistaken identity has led me to become a little obsessed with Typos, I mean, why not? Clearly they can lead to some fascinating situations. So, while procrastinating one day (yes, it happens) I came across these rather amusing typos:
Two years ago, Chile accidentally released a 50 peso coin that misspelled the country’s name without the “L” making it “Chiie”. The coins circulated for a year before anyone noticed!! Now they’ve become classic collectors items and a bit of an embarrassment for the Chilean mint.
Bibles throughout history have been consistently full of typos, let’s be fair, it’s easy to misspell a work or switch a comma when a monk is responsible for HAND writing out the entire Bible. The most famous error though is referred to as the “Wicked Bible” (or the King James Bible, 1631) for the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is accidentally written as, “thou shalt commit adultery”… I’m sure this has been used as an excuse by many a serial cheater!
Speaking of adultery (well there's a transition I NEVER thought I'd use), in the 40’s the Washington Post published their newspaper one morning with the headline “FDR in Bed With Coed” when they meant to alert the public to his cold. FDR apparently thought it was hysterical and ordered 100 copies to send to his friends, but by that time the Washington Post had already found and destroyed all copies. It’s Ironic, considering the affairs FDR actually did have…
There are so many more fabulous typos out there but I just wanted to share my newfound love and appreciation of mindless mistakes… sometimes they simply can’t be helped!!