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A white elephant in 19th century Thai art.

A white elephant is a supposedly valuable possession whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) exceeds its usefulness, and it is therefore a liability. The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by traditional Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. To possess a white elephant was regarded (and still is regarded, in Thailand and Burma) as a sign that the monarch was ruling with justice and the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity.^[1] The tradition derives from tales in the scriptures which associate a white elephant with the birth of Buddha.^[2] Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a “gift” of a white elephant from a monarch was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because of the animal’s sacred nature and a curse because the animal could be put to no practical use.

• Bristol Brabazon, an airliner built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC) in 1949 to fly a large number of passengers on transatlantic routes from England to the United States. [1]
• Concorde, a supersonic transport built by Aérospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation, intended to allow high-speed intercontinental travel. Only fourteen examples saw service, though development costs were to be amortized over hundreds of units. [2] However, Concorde made a large operating profit for British Airways.^{[citation needed]} The fate of its Soviet twin Tu-144 was nearly identical.
• Nimrod AEW 3. A failed Airborne Early Warning system. [3]
• SS Great Eastern, a ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. She was the largest ship ever built at the time of her launch in 1858, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refuelling. However, her hold was later gutted and converted to lay the successful 1865 transatlantic telegraph cable, an impossible task for a smaller vessel.^[3]
• The Department of Defense-commissioned Ada programming language came to be known as the "Green Elephant", a play on the phrase White Elephant combined with color code used to keep contract selection unbiased. Ada was designed to be a silver bullet by a DoD assembled committee. However due to the fact that most programmers do not write embedded programs, many find Ada too unwieldy to use and of little benefit. [4]

• Boondoggle (project)
• Megaproject
• Megastructure