American culture is steeped in military history. Here are some common phrases and concepts that tie directly back to our heritage.

Murphy’s Law

According to Murphy’s Law, if anything can go wrong, it will. Is it any surprise that such a law originated from an Air Force engineer?

No really! The concept was coined in in 1948 at Edwards Air Force Base by Capt. Edward A. Murphy, a beleaguered engineer cursed with incompetent assistants.

Apparently, a contractor working with Murphy used to keep a list of ‘laws’ based on the feats and foibles of the Air Force base. When an assistant wired a transducer wrong and Murphy exclaimed, “If there’s more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way!” it was recorded as Murphy’s Law.

Sideburns

You know that fun facial hair you’re not allowed to have while serving in the military? The one where you only grow hair on the sides of your face, just like Wolverine? Turns out this trend was set by a military man more than a century ago.

U.S. Senator and Union General Ambrose Burnside was renowned for his unique whiskers. After the war, American men shaved off their mustache and chin hair and grew out the rest to emulate his look. To cement the style, men swapped Burnside’s name to create the enduring sideburn.

Face the Music

What we know as the common phrase ‘face the music’ actually originates from an old military tradition dating back to the American Revolutionary War. Before leaving their regiments for good, disgraced soldiers used to be “drummed out” by military drummers. The dishonored soldier would literally ‘face the music’ as he turned his back on the military forever.

The first recorded ‘drumming out’ in the American military dismissed a Revolutionary soldier for committing sodomy. Today the tradition lives on in the Virginia Military Institute, which wakes the campus with the thunders of drums whenever a student commits an honor code violation.

Blockbuster

This isn’t American military history, but it’s history nonetheless. Before the word ‘block buster’ referred to a video rental company, it was used to described 500-pound general purpose bombs lobbed by the British during World War II. The bombs were supposed to take out an entire city block in a single explosion.

While it was true that the bombs caused a lot of damage, they weren’t very aerodynamic and didn’t wipe out entire city blocks in one blow. Now the term refers to wildly successfully films that ‘blow up’ the box office.

Deadline

In modern terms, a deadline is the date and time a project is due. Depending on how big that project is and how much you procrastinated on it, a modern deadline can be fearsome indeed.

But during the Civil War, the deadline was more literal. In prisoner of war camps, there was a line about 17 feet away from the fence that prisoners were not supposed to cross. If they did cross that line, they were shot dead. Hence, deadline.

So next time you start to dread an office deadline, remember this lesson from military history. It really could be so much worse.