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prov. If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the [U.S]. Air Force in 1949 to test human [acceleration] tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.

Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures connected to [aerospace engineering]. Before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular [imagination], changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong, will"; this is correctly referred to as Finagle's Law. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!

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