One of the earliest versions of Murphy’s Law has been attributed to Alfred Holt in 1877, which states:
It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific … Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.
Murphy’s Law is often applied to technology, a road trip, group presentations, the Seattle Mariners.