This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
In 2009, British businessman Philip Davison Sebrey was celebrating his wife's 50th birthday in the Maldives
when he got a phone call.
The caller asked for a business meeting the next day at 8 a.m.
Philip explained that that would be a little difficult, seeing as he was 4,500 miles away from work on vacation.
What are you doing away at a time like this?
The voice at the other end of the line shouted.
Your company is in liquidation.
Philip thought it was a joke in poor taste.
In an interview with Wales Online, he recalled that the caller assured him that it was no joking matter.
Here's what happened.
A British government agency had reported the demise of Philip's 134-year-old engineering company, Taylor & Sons.
The government agency, known as Companies House, serves as a kind of registrar for British businesses.
It said that Taylor & Sons, created in 1875, was being shut down.
Turns out, a government clerk had made a typo.
The company that was going out of business was Taylor & Son in Manchester, not Taylor & Sons in Wales.
Philip felt sick.
His company had been doing well.
It had some 250 employees.