another etymological urban legend?

[Laurence Horn]

These come from an e-mail list; the former derivation we KNOW is
wrong, and I assume the latter is as well, although I don't
specifically know this for a fact, and this IS the exact story (or a
paraphrase of it) that Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
offers.  Is it in fact a fable?  (I would have wagered, in a very
small denomination, that "son of a gun" was a euphemistic replacement
for "sun of a bitch", but most such substitutions are alliterative,
so this isn't terribly plausible either.)

larry


===============
Fact:

Why do we say a computer or computer program has a "bug" in it when
it malfunctions?

Because once the problem really WAS a bug. In 1945, a computer at
Harvard malfunctioned and a woman investigated and found a moth in
one of the circuits. She removed it. Ever since, when something goes
wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

<><><><>


Fact:

Where did the expression "son of a gun" originate?

"Son of a gun" has its origins with sailors. When a ship was in port
for an extended period of time, wives and other women were permitted
to live on board with the ship's crew. Occasionally, children would
be born on board and a convenient place for the birth to happen was
between guns on the gun deck. If the child's father was unknown, the
child was entered in the ship's log as "Son of a gun."