From a wrongful arrest to a life-saving romance: the typos that have changed people's lives

In our digital world, a misdirected text or simple keyboard error can trigger huge unintended consequences

One day in May this year, Luigi Rimonti left his home in Gateshead to catch a ferry from North Shields, the first stage in a 1,000-mile drive across Europe to Italy. A dapper, energetic 81-year-old, Rimonti had grown up in a suburb of Rome before coming to the north-east of England as a young man. Often, over the years, he had driven back to Rome, insisting to his two adult sons, Gino and Valter, that he preferred to make this long journey by car. They worried about their father on these drives, and this spring, for the first time, they persuaded Rimonti to equip his car with a satellite-navigation device.

Off the ferry in Amsterdam, Rimonti began to have difficulties with the satnav. He stopped in a petrol station: could someone there help him re-input his destination? A stranger obliged. Tap-tap-tap, enter. Rimonti thanked the stranger and drove on - south, he presumed, towards Rome.