Where does the phrase Murphys Law come from?
Murphy’s law is a popular adage in Western culture developed in rocket-sled tests in the late 1940s, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance. “If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way.” It is most often cited as “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” (or, alternately, “Anything that can go wrong, will”). Murphy’s Law is sometimes confused with Finagle’s Corollary which is also known as Sod’s law. In American culture the law was named somewhat sarcastically[1][2] by Stapp’s Team working on Project MX981 at Edwards Air Force Base after Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a development engineer contributing support measurement technology for a brief time on rocket sled experiments done by the United States Air Force in 1949 with inveterate adage collector and the law’s undoubted populizer Doctor/Colonel John Paul Stapp, a former next-door neighbor and friend
