EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- On Sept. 12, 1955, Time magazine named Col. John Paul Stapp as the “Fastest Man on Earth”, in recognition of his achievements as a member of the Army Air Force Aero Med Lab and his contributions to the wider Air Force test community. The high-speed experiments he and his team conducted at Edwards (then Muroc) Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base revolutionized modern military aviation safety and crash survivability. These lessons were later applied to civilian automotive safety as well. His love of aphorisms and adages led he and his colleague to coin the term “Murphy’s Law.” 
A well-educated man who possessed a PhD in Biophysics and a medical degree, then Capt. Stapp entered the U.S. Army Air Force in the fall of 1944 as a flight surgeon. Following World War II, he was assigned to the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field, Ohio, and transferred to the newly independent U.S. Air Force in 1947. The breakthroughs of Stapp’s first assignment focused on high-altitude flight and preventing decompression sickness earned him the assignment of supervising project MX981, which researched human deceleration.
Project MX981 challenged the commonly held assertion that the human body could withstand no more than 18Gs. Better understanding of the effects of G-forces and rapid deceleration were crucial to the development of next generation aircraft safety and capability.
Early testing took place at Muroc Dry Lake from 1947 to 1953, on the 2,000-foot South Base sled tracks. A rocket-powered sled nicknamed the “Gee Whiz”, launched at speeds approaching 200 mph, and a hydraulic braking system halted it in less than a second to mimic the brutal stoppage of a plane crash. Initial runs used a non-cadaver test dummy known as Oscar Eightball. However, once the sled was running consistently, Stapp insisted on a human test subject—himself. Although Air Force officials raised concerns about the risks of human testing, Stapp moved forward with plans to serve as the sled’s test subject. He conducted numerous rocket-sled tests to document the effects of rapid deceleration on the human body.
To guarantee accurate readings, the team wired sensors into the Gee Whiz’s harness. However, on the first test run, it produced zero data. Troubleshooting fell to Maj. Edward A. Murphy, who discovered that the sensors had been wired backward. In frustration, he was paraphrased saying “If there is any way that a guy can do it wrong, he will.” Weeks later, Stapp repeated refined the statement to the famous phrase “Anything that can go wrong, will.”
Stapp’s tests disproved established beliefs on the nature of the human body. Though he suffered cracked ribs, fractured wrists, and temporary blindness caused by burst capillaries, the record-setting tests at Edwards AFB and Holloman AFB saw him travel faster than a .45 bullet and survive a massive 46.2 Gs. His team recorded zero fatalities.
In 1992, he published For Your Moments of Inertia from Levity to Gravity: A Treatise Celebrating Your Right to Laugh, a collection of aphorisms and adages he had recorded in his logbook during his test career. In addition to popularizing Murphy’s Law, project MX981 gave rise to Stapp’s Law, which offers a wry supplemental observation: “The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle.”