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Murphy's Law was born in an US Air Force Base in 1949. It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on an Air Force project designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

Murphy's Law

1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
2. Everything takes longer than you think.
3. If anything can go wrong, it will. (Except when you want to prove this)
4. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
5. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
6. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
7. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
8. Mother nature is a bitch
9. You will always find something in the last place you look
10. The other line always moves faster
11. When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly
12. In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence, and then remains there
13. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong
Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then
14. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse
15. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first
16. Every solution breeds new problems.

Other Observations

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's First Law
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion.

Parkinson's Second Law
Expenditures rise to meet income.

Parkinson's Third Law
Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay

Parkinson's Fourth Law
The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done

Parkinson's Fifth Law
If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it

Parkinson's Sixth Law
The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published

Parkinson's Law of Delay
Delay is the deadliest form of denial

Parkinson's Law of Medical Research
Successful research attracts the bigger grant which makes further research impossible

Parkinson's Law of the Telephone
The effectiveness of a telephone conversation is in inverse proportion to the time spent on it

Parkinson's Law of 1000
An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world

Parkinson's Principle of Non-Origination
It is the essence of grantsmanship to persuade the Foundation executives that it was THEY who suggested the research project and that you were a belated convert, agreeing reluctantly to all they had proposed

Mrs. Parkinson's Law
Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind.

Forsyth's Second Corollary to Murphy's Laws
Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in

The Laws of Computer Programming

Addition to Murphy's Laws
In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right ... something is wrong.

Gilb's Laws of Unreliability
1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.

Bove's Theorem
The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology
There's always one more bug.

Gumperson's Law
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Ellis' Law
The speed at which boiling milk rises from the bottom of the pan to any point beyond the top is greater than the speed at which the humain brain and hand can combine to snatch the confounded thing off.

Harvard's Law, as Applied to Computers
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity and other variables, the computer will do as it damn well pleases.

Cheop's Law
Nothing ever gets build on schedule or within budget.

Pudder's Laws
1. Anything that begins well ends badly.
2. Anything that begins badly ends worse.

Murphy's Law of Research
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Murphy's Law of Copiers
The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.

Murphy's Law of the Open Road
When there is a very long road upon which there is a one-way bridge placed at random, and there are only two cars on that road, it follows that: (1) the two cars are going in opposite directions, and (2) they will always meet at the bridge.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

Murphy's Constant
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Murphy's Corollaries
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
Golf scores are directly proportional to the number of witnesses.

O'Toole's Commentary
Murphy was an optimist.

NBC's Addendum to Murphy's Law
You never run out of things that can go wrong.

Murphy's Technology Laws