5 Catastrophes We Got Because Phones Are Confusing

5 A Wife Thought She Saw a Pic of Her Husband Cheating, But It Was Just Herself

In 2021, in Cajeme in Mexico, a woman named Leonora was poking through her husband’s phone. Actually, several people were probably poking around their partners' phones, in several places around the world, and over on Juan’s phone were some photos of him with a woman. It took just a glance to see that this woman was younger and thinner than Leonora. 

She got pretty angry. But it turned out that the woman in those photos was actually Leonora herself, from earlier in their relationship, several years and several pounds ago. Well, that’s the sort of mix-up they could go on to laugh at. Except, before she realized the truth, she got a knife and stabbed the guy, and he was lucky he managed to wrestle the knife away from her before she could stab him more. 

The reason we don’t have this couple’s surname is the police withheld it when speaking about this story. That concern for privacy didn’t stop them from releasing Leonora’s photo, though.

After all, Leonora is unrecognizable in photos.

4 Hunter S. Thompson’s Wife Mistook a Gun Cocking for Keys

If you like stories about wives misunderstanding their husbands, with violent consequences, good news — we have another for you. And if you read to the end of the article, you might see a third as well.

Hunter S. Thompson, as you may well already know, shot himself in the head in 2005. On the day of his death, he was talking to his wife Anita on the phone, saying she should come by so they could write a column together. Then she heard him get up and walk for a bit, followed by come clicking noises. 

Those sounded like the keys of a typewriter to her. She figured he must have started writing something and was done with the call. Those were really the sounds of his fumbling with his gun prior to firing it. 

If she'd known what she was hearing, she probably would have said something, but she hung up. Then he shot himself. But at least we all know his ashes were later shot out of a cannon, which was a much more fun shot for all involved.

3 A Hotel Phone Proved Too Confusing to Dial

Kari Hunt had left her husband in 2013 and was planning to divorce him. Still, he was currently still father to their three kids, and since she was leaving town for a few days, he was the guy she had to leave them with. She came to his motel room with the children. 

Then he attacked her, and the eldest child grabbed the phone and dialed 9-1-1. This didn’t work. The nine-year-old dialed again, then a third time, then a fourth time. Then she just called reception, who didn’t understand what she was saying. 

The problem was that when you’re in a hotel, you hit “9” to get an outside line. So, if you hit 9-1-1 on those buttons, the phone interprets that as you connecting to the number “1-1,” which isn’t a phone number at all. 

This mix-up was severe enough that the FCC went on to implement new rules saying all phones like this have to interpret 9-1-1 as actually dialing 9-1-1. It’s not so hard — computers control these phones, so we just need to switch the programming around a little.

Not that this change would necessarily have saved Kari’s life. As Brad himself would later say, “I stabbed her 21 times in five minutes. Even if a doctor would have showed up. there was no way to save her.” Brad is currently serving a 99-year sentence for her murder, “9” being this story’s arc number. 

2 The Slightly Large Phone Bill

Phone bills can cost you a fair bit if you don’t choose your plan just right. In 2013, one customer in France racked up a bill of €117.21. That was a unpleasant amount to pay, as she’d recently lost her job, and this bill may have included extra fees for terminating her connection.

Only, the company didn’t bill her for €117.21. They billed her €11,721,000,000,000,000. That’s more than 11 quadrillion, which is not only too much for a phone bill, it’s a figure too big to describe any real amount of money. It is far more than the total amount of actual money in the world, as well as more than the value of all combined real estate.

When she called the phone company, staff initially refused to believe that any error had occurred. Customer service people follow scripts, and when a caller says they’re being overcharged, the script says to tell them they aren’t. 

1 Bad Texting Software Led to a Death and a Suicide

Ramazan Çalçoban and his wife Emine were arguing over text in 2008. He wrote her a message containing the word “sıkışınca,” but it appeared on her screen as “sikisinca.” 

Those look like approximately the exact same word. But in the first word, those aren’t i’s. That first vowel is the Turkish ı, which doesn’t have a dot on top. That dot on the top of an i or a j is called a “tittle,” by the way, and if a phone doesn’t have Turkish localization software (as phones sometimes didn’t in 2008), it may display an ı with a tittle. 

“Sikisinca” isn’t actually a word in Turkish, but “sikişınce” is, so that’s what’s Emine thought Ramazan typed. Ramazan had typed a sentence that meant, “Whenever you can’t answer an argument, you change the subject,” but with sikişınce, it looked like he’d instead written, “Whenever they are fucking you, you change the subject.” 

As with so many of these misunderstandings, we’d never have heard about this if it ended there. But Emine showed it to her father, who took offense at this accusation that his daughter was having sex with some unspecified group of people. So, when Ramazan came home, he found himself facing his wife, her dad and a whole family of people attacked him physically. 

One of them stabbed him in the chest. He survived this, but he got his hands on the knife next, and he stabbed Emine. She did not survive. Ramazan was arrested for the death and killed himself in prison. 

When you want to talk to your spouse about their habit of changing the subject, just speak to them in person. 

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