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Origin of Murphy's Law

Oddities

In the early 1950s Dr. Paul Stapp M.D. (USAF) had begun experiments to explore deceleration and the limits of the human body. Stapp himself would strap himself into rocket sleds, accelerate to near mach 1 and then decelerate back to zero in mear seconds. In his last runs he would endure up to 47 G of deceleration.

During the project Stapp coined the phrase, "anything that can go wrong will go wrong," naming it Murphy's Law after a member of his team.

Stapp would go on to run the Man High program (the first to put a man over 100,000 feet) and the Excelsior program that culminated in the highest parachute jump when Joe Kittinger jumped from 102,000 feet on August 16, 1960.

Posted:  2004-07-15  10:03:13 PM

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