The skinny second stage broke in half from aerodynamic stress four seconds later, causing the Vanguard to tumble end-over-end before range safety officer sent the destruct command. Cause of the failure was attributed to a spurious guidance signal that caused the first stage to perform unintended pitch maneuvers.

The 2008 financial crisis was Vanguard's sweetest pain. By and large, its equity funds didn't outperform the mutual fund (and ETF) averages--but that counted as a victory, as the same applied to their actively run adversaries. Roughly speaking, all stock funds went down together.