The 5 Most Famous Laws in The World
1. Dunning-Kruger Law:
Stupid people think they're smart. Smart people doubt themselves. The less you know, the more confident you are.
2. Parkinson's Law:
Work expands to fill the time available, so longer deadlines often lead to slower completion.
3. Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule):
Roughly 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. Focus on the few things that actually matter.
4. Hanlon's Razor:
People aren't trying to hurt you, they're just being careless. That person who didn't text back? They forgot, not ignoring you.
5. Peter's Law:
Good workers become bad managers. Being great at your job doesn't mean you'll be great at the next level.
And I would add
6. Murphy's Law:
Anything that can go wrong, will, when you least expect and can't afford.
How a Paper Clip saved a $750 Million Plane
It’s easy to forget how intense experimental flying was in the 1960s. The U.S. was trying to understand what happened to big aircraft at the edge of Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound), testing new materials that glowed from heat and shapes that seemed too sharp to be real. Sitting right in the middle of that race was the XB-70 Valkyrie, a six-engine research bomber that climbed like a rocket and flew faster than anything of its size had ever done.
On April 30, 1966, one of those test flights turned into a problem no engineer had imagined. Test pilot Al White and USAF Col. Joe Cotton took off from Edwards Air Force Base on a mission meant to push the Valkyrie to Mach 3 for half an hour. But just after lifting off, they noticed the landing gear wasn’t behaving normally.
A short-circuit froze the nose gear halfway into the compartment, and because the gear was jammed against the door, the tires were shredded. When the pilots tried lowering the gear again, the hydraulic system wouldn’t respond. Even the backup electrical system-meant to save the day-was dead.
That’s not a small issue. A small general-aviation plane such as a Cessna might survive a landing without nose gear, though it would still be risky. The Valkyrie couldn’t. Its shape, its height above the ground, the structure of its underside-everything pointed toward a breakup on landing. So the crew tried what pilots sometimes attempt with stubborn landing gear, making a couple of hard touch-and-gos maneuvers-briefly landing and lifting again to try to free the gear. Nothing worked. They stayed airborne for over two hours, running out of ideas and slowly facing the possibility that they might have to eject, sacrificing the aircraft and possibly not surviving themselves.
Fortunately, the aircraft still had plenty of fuel, so they kept circling. Down on the ground, engineers dug through wiring diagrams and sensor data. After nearly two hours, they found the issue, a failed circuit breaker that had killed the electrical backup for the landing gear. The only way to recover it was to short the terminals manually. That’s a simple instruction if you’re standing in a hangar with a toolbox. But inside a sealed test bomber at altitude, White and Cotton had nothing except their flight gear and a briefcase.
Cotton opened it, searching through papers and notes, and found a small binder-style paperclip. That was all they needed. He put on a glove, reached into the electrical panel, and used the paperclip to bridge the faulty breaker. The crew heard the satisfying click-nose gear locked. A 39-cent piece of office stationery had revived a $750-million experimental aircraft.
