A Two-Million-Dollar Punctuation MarkHow a tiny clerical error changed national law.

It really happened

From the show

It really happened

A seemingly harmless typo in 1872 accidentally rewrote American tariff legislation. When a clerk swapped a hyphen for a comma, all imported fruit suddenly became tax-exempt. Importers capitalized on the mistake, forcing the government to refund a massive fortune over a simple grammar slip.

0:00
3:15