Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave DSO & Bar (August 28, 1890 - July 28, 1971) was the Canadian signatory to the Japanese Instrument of Surrender at the end of World War II aboard the USS Missouri. He caused a little known mishap; Colonel Cosgrave inadvertently placed his signature one line too low on the Japanese copy of the documents. He signed on the line for the French Republic. This set off an unfortunate chain whereby each succeeding signer also signed one line too low on that copy of the documents. The Dominion of New Zealand representative, left without a blank to sign, had to have his name and country written in at the bottom margin of the document. Cosgrave did not repeat this error on the American copy. The error was "corrected" by General Sutherland who crossed out "French Republic" and wrote in "Dominion of Canada" then made similar corrections for the rest of the document.[2] Both US and Japanese copies of the surrender are on display on the USS Missouri, berthed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Nice piece of trivia, it's the kind of thing that I love In the midst of studying the big picture, there are lots of small pictures...