Murphy's law
The association with the 1948 incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as "Murphy's law" has been found before 1951 (see above). The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue of "Aviation Mechanics Bulletin" included the line "Murphy's law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way", and Lloyd Mallan's book, "Men, Rockets and Space Rats", referred to: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'." The Mercury astronauts in 1962 attributed Murphy's law to U.S. Navy training films.