Ariane 5 flight 501

KOUROU, FRENCH GUYANA - MAY 13: In this hando...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

On June 4th, 1996, the first Ariane 5,the European Rocket was destroyed by its automated self-destruct system 37 seconds after launch

The root cause of this destruction was a software bug on the navigation system that had been re used from Ariane 4 and not tested enough...

The bug report is available online, his reading is very instructive.

You can find it here.

You can also read the good article in wikipedia.