Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On December tenth of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four, a rocket powered sled was set up
Speaker 2: on an Air Force base in New Mexico. Over one
Speaker 2: thousand feet of rail were laid out in front of it,
Speaker 2: and on the seat of the sled a man had
Speaker 2: been strapped in. He wasn't wearing a helmet or a goggles,
Speaker 2: and he was about to do something that no man
Speaker 2: had ever attempted before. When the rocket ignited, it propelled
Speaker 2: the sled forward at six hundred and thirty two miles
Speaker 2: per hour. When it came to a halt, the rider dismounted.
Speaker 2: He was bruised and in pain, but unhurt. He experienced
Speaker 2: pressure equivalent to forty times the Earth's gravity, and he
Speaker 2: walked away fine. His name was Colonel John Stapp, But
Speaker 2: when he walked away from his stunt, it was with
Speaker 2: the title the fastest man in the world. The goal
Speaker 2: of these experiments was to determine how g forces interact
Speaker 2: with the human body at extreme speeds. Several years earlier,
Speaker 2: John Stapp had volunteered to be the test subject for
Speaker 2: these experiments because he did not want anyone else's death
Speaker 2: on his hands if something went wrong. Stapp's career, which
Speaker 2: spanned from the nineteen forties all the way into the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, is certainly a wild ride, not unlike many
Speaker 2: of the test flights that he took during his rocketry experiments.
Speaker 2: Born in Brazil, he originally studied to be a musician
Speaker 2: before tragedy sent his life spiraling in a different direction.
Speaker 2: At the age of eighteen, he lost a cousin to
Speaker 2: a senseless house fire, and less than a year later,
Speaker 2: his girlfriend was killed in a car accident. From then on,
Speaker 2: it seemed he dedicated his life to medicine and science,
Speaker 2: a combination that would make his career and ultimately make
Speaker 2: all of us much safer. After getting several degrees, including
Speaker 2: a medical degree and a degree in biophysics, he wound
Speaker 2: up in the Air Force, ultimately getting assigned to their
Speaker 2: Air Development Center, where his experiments with acceleration began. His
Speaker 2: first acceleration test was in nineteen forty seven, and he
Speaker 2: continued writing rocket sleds for over a decade. The data
Speaker 2: gathered during those tests was crucial to aerospace safety as
Speaker 2: well as the development of new rocketry. He set a
Speaker 2: personal goal for himself of one thousand miles per hour,
Speaker 2: which he never quite reached. The fastest he ever got
Speaker 2: was nine hundred and ninety five miles per hour, after
Speaker 2: which the Air Force requested that he retire from testing
Speaker 2: as he was nearing middle age.
Speaker 1: That didn't keep him from innovation, though. While serving in Dayton, Ohio,
Speaker 1: he read a statistic that more Air Force officers die
Speaker 1: in car accidents than in plane crashes. Afterward, he began
Speaker 1: to advocate for safer standards in automobiles, and this advocacy
Speaker 1: would lead directly to the invention of the seat belt.
Speaker 1: And yet, even though he's had a singular impact on
Speaker 1: modern society, he isn't quite a household name. He's credited
Speaker 1: with coining Stapp's Law, an adage from his testing years.
Speaker 1: The saying goes, the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any
Speaker 1: human accomplishment an incredible miracle. But that's not the most
Speaker 1: famous aphorism to come out of his career. No, that
Speaker 1: honor goes to a saying coined during one of his
Speaker 1: earlier rocket sled rides. During a nineteen forty nine experiment,
Speaker 1: a colleague named Captain Edward A. Murphy designed to harness
Speaker 1: rigged with sensors to measure John Stapp's reaction to those
Speaker 1: g forces. After the test, the team checked the sensors
Speaker 1: and to their surprise, the data all read zero. It
Speaker 1: turned out the censors had been installed backwards. Captain Murphy said,
Speaker 1: in frustration, if there are two or more ways to
Speaker 1: do something and one of those results in catastrophe, then
Speaker 1: someone will do it that way. A simplified version of
Speaker 1: this was relayed to the press by John Stapp. He said,
Speaker 1: anything that can go wrong will go wrong, which you
Speaker 1: have probably heard before because it's known as Murphy's law.
Speaker 1: Amid the chaos and uncertainty of war, a single message
Speaker 1: can mean the difference between survival and catastrophe. That was
Speaker 1: a lesson learned the hard way by the British fifty
Speaker 1: sixth Infantry Division in October of nineteen forty three, as
Speaker 1: the Allied forces swept through German occupied Italy at the
Speaker 1: height of World War two. This division of soldiers was
Speaker 1: sent to the small villag of Calvivekia in central Italy.
Speaker 1: The sparse, ancient hamlet had been mostly abandoned for centuries,
Speaker 1: but during the war, its decayed stone buildings had been
Speaker 1: taken over by German troops who were using it as
Speaker 1: a defensive stronghold. The goal for the British was to
Speaker 1: draw out the German forces and liberate the area's few
Speaker 1: residents from Nazi occupation, but that was easier said than done.
Speaker 1: The British troops spent days bombarding the village with bullets
Speaker 1: and artillery, but the Germans refused to withdraw. On the
Speaker 1: morning of October eighteenth, the British sent a request to
Speaker 1: the Royal Air Force for support, but around midday, right
Speaker 1: before the air raid that they had requested was scheduled
Speaker 1: to begin, the commander of the battalion on the ground
Speaker 1: got tired of waiting. He conferred with his lieutenants and
Speaker 1: they decided to make one last effort to try and
Speaker 1: take the village themselves. All at once, the troops stormed
Speaker 1: the village and the show of force was successful, they
Speaker 1: sent the Germans fleeing into the hillside. But as the
Speaker 1: commander walked through the smoky streets of the abandoned village,
Speaker 1: observing his soldiers as they checked empty buildings and cleared
Speaker 1: land mines, he realized that his success had created a
Speaker 1: new problem. You see, they had already requested air support
Speaker 1: from the Air Force, and that air raid was scheduled
Speaker 1: to begin in just an hour. If it went off
Speaker 1: as planned, the British troops currently occupying the village would
Speaker 1: be bombed by their own men. The commander hurried to
Speaker 1: the radio and tried to send a message to call
Speaker 1: off the attack, but he couldn't get through the radio
Speaker 1: signal was too staticky. He knew that there was only
Speaker 1: one other way to get the message to the airfield
Speaker 1: in time, so he summoned one of his most capable
Speaker 1: pilots in the brigade, a soldier they had nicknamed Gi Joe.
Speaker 1: The commander scribbled down a short message on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, rolled it up, and gave it to Gi Joe.
Speaker 1: Moments later, Joe took off, sailing into the smoke filled sky.
Speaker 1: He flew an impressive twenty miles in twenty minutes, and
Speaker 1: as he approached the airfield, the bombers on the runway
Speaker 1: were already getting ready to take off for that raid.
Speaker 1: Gi Joe made a quick landing, and at the very
Speaker 1: last possible second, he delivered the message to the commander.
Speaker 1: The commander unrolled the piece of paper, read it, and
Speaker 1: rushed onto the runway, signaling for the pilots to call
Speaker 1: off the attack. Gi Joe's last minute message saved the
Speaker 1: lives of at least one hundred soldiers in calvi Vekya.
Speaker 1: Three years later, he was awarded the Dicken Medal for
Speaker 1: his actions, which is the equivalent of the Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor for animals. Because you see, Gi Joe wasn't just
Speaker 1: any old war hero, he was also a pigeon. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: This show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
Speaker 1: the show and the people who make it over at
Speaker 1: Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
Speaker 1: to the Official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book avail in
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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.