Human history, as a whole, is so depressing and meandering it's a weird question to try and answer. Were the great empires a success, or a failure? It depends on if you're measuring monuments built or social justice enacted, and if you're comparing against modern polities or whatever shitty local warlord they replaced. History doesn't really have an end goal, as much as we'd like it to.
Maybe you just meant a personal failure:
Thomas Midgley is one of my favourites, because he's famous for three things: Inventing leaded gasoline, inventing ozone-destroying PCBs, and inventing an accessibility contraption that strangled Thomas Midgley. He did nothing else of note; he's like the real life Bloody Stupid Johnson.
Pheidippides of Battle of Marathon fame is famous for running a long way just to deliver some news first, and then dying from exhaustion. People regularly make the same trip and are fine. He was regarded as a hero, and the races were originally in his honour, but I wouldn't want to be him. Edit: Maybe not a great example, actually. The story names a much longer distance than a marathon, although it's kinda mythical.
Muhammad II of Khwarazm received an envoy from Ghengis Khan, who wasn't bent on invading at all but wanted trade, and decided to steal their shit and kick them out instead. Then he killed the people sent next to ask for a nice apology. You can guess where that went.
The Soviets once tried to sextort Indonesian quasi-communist leader Sukarno with a tape. It did not work, because he was shamelessly proud of his "virility". In at least some tellings he misinterprets the KGB's presentation as a gift, although I doubt he could have been that dumb.
"Thanks bro/comrade!" would be a great way to play this off diplomatically with someone you still want to be allies with, so that could be the origin of that bit.
Let's go with the atomic bomb...if you disagree, consider that we made a weapon too powerful to ever be used again, but nations that have them get taken way more seriously in diplomacy.
And let's be serious, it's pretty much tick-tock, tick-tock before they get used again when they get put in the hands of zealots. Let's be doubly serious, it will be religion that convinces some leader that they are within their divine rights to cleanse the world of their enemies.