Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. That’s a common wording for the epigram we call “Murphy’s Law.” Granted, others have said it somewhat differently.

In her 1953 book, “The Making of a Scientist,” Ann Roe (1904-1991) attributed “If anything can go wrong, it will” to an unnamed physicist whom she’d interviewed. In his 1952 book, “The Butcher – The Ascent of Yerupaja,” John Sack cited a saying among mountaineers: “Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”

Other sources report similar sayings with reference to the speakers’ fields. For example, a noted sailor wrote: “Anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later.”

A stage magician said: “On any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

And on and on. It’s a common notion, always has been. How it happens to get an eponym (someone for whom it is named) is a crazy story.

Capt. Edward A. Murphy, Jr. (1918-1990) was a military officer and engineer involved with testing high-speed rocket sleds in the late 1940s. In two or more sources – one of which is a site called “How Stuff Works” – it’s reported that Murphy was stationed at Edwards Air Force base in 1949 when he uttered the words that led to the statement now known as his “law.”

The words he allegedly uttered strike me as significantly different from those that survived and became immortal, with his moniker appended.

Sticking with HSW’s account, tests were being conducted “to determine … how many Gs – the force of gravity – a human being could withstand.” The resulting calculations would “be applied to future airplane designs.”

A sled simulated “the force of an airplane crash,” traveling 200-plus mph “down a half-mile track, coming to an abrupt stop in less than a second.”

The human guinea pig in the sled, Col. John Paul Stapp, suffered numerous injuries during months of testing. Murphy brought to one such test run “a set of sensors” (another source says there were 16 of them) to attach to the harness holding Col. Stapp in the sled. These sensors would measure “the exact amount of G-force applied.”

After the first test using Murphy’s sensors, the G-read was zero. Each sensor, it seems, had two possible ways of being “connected,” and every one of them had been hooked up wrong.

Blaming a certain technician for this, Murphy said, “If there are two ways to do something, and one of those ways will result in disaster, he’ll do it that way.” Or words to that effect.

Stapp heard the remark, apparently edited it in his head, and later, in a press conference, said his team was aware of “of Murphy’s Law. … ‘Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.’

That was all it took,” says HSW. “Murphy’s Law turned up in aerospace publications and shortly thereafter made its way into popular culture ….”

Sadly, Murphy’s Law has never come up before me for enforcement. If it does, I’ll strike it down. Now, if I could just stave it off in daily life.

Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at [email protected].