Everyone has heard of Murphy's first law: "If anything can go wrong, invariably it will." But hardly anybody has even a foggy idea of who Murphy was.

The search for Murphy's notebooks led to a garage in Toledo, Ohio; an inventor's junk loft in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania; and the home of a retired female blackmailer in Sarasota, Florida. It was learned that Murphy had no first name, that he never could hold a job, and that his writings were returned by the post office for insufficient postage.

It seems everything Murphy wrote about had some explanation for why things go wrong. Consider a few more Murphy classics:

- Nothing is ever as simple as it first seems.
- Everything you decide to do costs more than first estimated.
- Every activity takes more time than you have.
- It's easier to make a commitment or to get involved in something than to get out of it.
- Whatever you set out to do, something else must be done first.
- If you improve or tinker with something long enough, eventually it will break.
- By making something absolutely clear, somebody will be confused.
- You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and that's sufficient.