May 28, 2026 • 8 mins
Sometimes the world needs a risk-taker to step into the gap and make the future a little safer. These two individuals did just that, with curious consequences.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On December tenth of
(00:37):
nineteen fifty four, a rocket powered sled was set up
on an Air Force base in New Mexico. Over one
thousand feet of rail were laid out in front of it,
and on the seat of the sled a man had
been strapped in. He wasn't wearing a helmet or a goggles,
and he was about to do something that no man
had ever attempted before. When the rocket ignited, it propelled
(00:59):
the sled forward at six hundred and thirty two miles
per hour. When it came to a halt, the rider dismounted.
He was bruised and in pain, but unhurt. He experienced
pressure equivalent to forty times the Earth's gravity, and he
walked away fine. His name was Colonel John Stapp, But
when he walked away from his stunt, it was with
(01:19):
the title the fastest man in the world. The goal
of these experiments was to determine how g forces interact
with the human body at extreme speeds. Several years earlier,
John Stapp had volunteered to be the test subject for
these experiments because he did not want anyone else's death
on his hands if something went wrong. Stapp's career, which
(01:41):
spanned from the nineteen forties all the way into the
nineteen seventies, is certainly a wild ride, not unlike many
of the test flights that he took during his rocketry experiments.
Born in Brazil, he originally studied to be a musician
before tragedy sent his life spiraling in a different direction.
At the age of eighteen, he lost a cousin to
a senseless house fire, and less than a year later,
(02:04):
his girlfriend was killed in a car accident. From then on,
it seemed he dedicated his life to medicine and science,
a combination that would make his career and ultimately make
all of us much safer. After getting several degrees, including
a medical degree and a degree in biophysics, he wound
up in the Air Force, ultimately getting assigned to their
Air Development Center, where his experiments with acceleration began. His
(02:28):
first acceleration test was in nineteen forty seven, and he
continued writing rocket sleds for over a decade. The data
gathered during those tests was crucial to aerospace safety as
well as the development of new rocketry. He set a
personal goal for himself of one thousand miles per hour,
which he never quite reached. The fastest he ever got
(02:50):
was nine hundred and ninety five miles per hour, after
which the Air Force requested that he retire from testing
as he was nearing middle age.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
That didn't keep him from innovation, though. While serving in Dayton, Ohio,
he read a statistic that more Air Force officers die
in car accidents than in plane crashes. Afterward, he began
to advocate for safer standards in automobiles, and this advocacy
would lead directly to the invention of the seat belt.
And yet, even though he's had a singular impact on
(03:20):
modern society, he isn't quite a household name. He's credited
with coining Stapp's Law, an adage from his testing years.
The saying goes, the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any
human accomplishment an incredible miracle. But that's not the most
famous aphorism to come out of his career. No, that
honor goes to a saying coined during one of his
(03:42):
earlier rocket sled rides. During a nineteen forty nine experiment,
a colleague named Captain Edward A. Murphy designed to harness
rigged with sensors to measure John Stapp's reaction to those
g forces. After the test, the team checked the sensors
and to their surprise, the data all read zero. It
turned out the censors had been installed backwards. Captain Murphy said,
(04:04):
in frustration, if there are two or more ways to
do something and one of those results in catastrophe, then
someone will do it that way. A simplified version of
this was relayed to the press by John Stapp. He said,
anything that can go wrong will go wrong, which you
have probably heard before because it's known as Murphy's law.
(04:38):
Amid the chaos and uncertainty of war, a single message
can mean the difference between survival and catastrophe. That was
a lesson learned the hard way by the British fifty
sixth Infantry Division in October of nineteen forty three, as
the Allied forces swept through German occupied Italy at the
height of World War two. This division of soldiers was
(04:59):
sent to the small villag of Calvivekia in central Italy.
The sparse, ancient hamlet had been mostly abandoned for centuries,
but during the war, its decayed stone buildings had been
taken over by German troops who were using it as
a defensive stronghold. The goal for the British was to
draw out the German forces and liberate the area's few
(05:19):
residents from Nazi occupation, but that was easier said than done.
The British troops spent days bombarding the village with bullets
and artillery, but the Germans refused to withdraw. On the
morning of October eighteenth, the British sent a request to
the Royal Air Force for support, but around midday, right
before the air raid that they had requested was scheduled
(05:40):
to begin, the commander of the battalion on the ground
got tired of waiting. He conferred with his lieutenants and
they decided to make one last effort to try and
take the village themselves. All at once, the troops stormed
the village and the show of force was successful, they
sent the Germans fleeing into the hillside. But as the
commander walked through the smoky streets of the abandoned village,
(06:02):
observing his soldiers as they checked empty buildings and cleared
land mines, he realized that his success had created a
new problem. You see, they had already requested air support
from the Air Force, and that air raid was scheduled
to begin in just an hour. If it went off
as planned, the British troops currently occupying the village would
be bombed by their own men. The commander hurried to
(06:24):
the radio and tried to send a message to call
off the attack, but he couldn't get through the radio
signal was too staticky. He knew that there was only
one other way to get the message to the airfield
in time, so he summoned one of his most capable
pilots in the brigade, a soldier they had nicknamed Gi Joe.
The commander scribbled down a short message on a piece
(06:44):
of paper, rolled it up, and gave it to Gi Joe.
Moments later, Joe took off, sailing into the smoke filled sky.
He flew an impressive twenty miles in twenty minutes, and
as he approached the airfield, the bombers on the runway
were already getting ready to take off for that raid.
Gi Joe made a quick landing, and at the very
last possible second, he delivered the message to the commander.
(07:06):
The commander unrolled the piece of paper, read it, and
rushed onto the runway, signaling for the pilots to call
off the attack. Gi Joe's last minute message saved the
lives of at least one hundred soldiers in calvi Vekya.
Three years later, he was awarded the Dicken Medal for
his actions, which is the equivalent of the Medal of
Honor for animals. Because you see, Gi Joe wasn't just
(07:29):
any old war hero, he was also a pigeon. I
hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
This show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
(07:50):
the show and the people who make it over at
Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
to the Official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book avail in
bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook, and
if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining
our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the
interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign
(08:13):
up over at patreon dot com. Slash Grimandmild, and until
next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On December tenth of
(00:37):
nineteen fifty four, a rocket powered sled was set up
on an Air Force base in New Mexico. Over one
thousand feet of rail were laid out in front of it,
and on the seat of the sled a man had
been strapped in. He wasn't wearing a helmet or a goggles,
and he was about to do something that no man
had ever attempted before. When the rocket ignited, it propelled
(00:59):
the sled forward at six hundred and thirty two miles
per hour. When it came to a halt, the rider dismounted.
He was bruised and in pain, but unhurt. He experienced
pressure equivalent to forty times the Earth's gravity, and he
walked away fine. His name was Colonel John Stapp, But
when he walked away from his stunt, it was with
(01:19):
the title the fastest man in the world. The goal
of these experiments was to determine how g forces interact
with the human body at extreme speeds. Several years earlier,
John Stapp had volunteered to be the test subject for
these experiments because he did not want anyone else's death
on his hands if something went wrong. Stapp's career, which
(01:41):
spanned from the nineteen forties all the way into the
nineteen seventies, is certainly a wild ride, not unlike many
of the test flights that he took during his rocketry experiments.
Born in Brazil, he originally studied to be a musician
before tragedy sent his life spiraling in a different direction.
At the age of eighteen, he lost a cousin to
a senseless house fire, and less than a year later,
(02:04):
his girlfriend was killed in a car accident. From then on,
it seemed he dedicated his life to medicine and science,
a combination that would make his career and ultimately make
all of us much safer. After getting several degrees, including
a medical degree and a degree in biophysics, he wound
up in the Air Force, ultimately getting assigned to their
Air Development Center, where his experiments with acceleration began. His
(02:28):
first acceleration test was in nineteen forty seven, and he
continued writing rocket sleds for over a decade. The data
gathered during those tests was crucial to aerospace safety as
well as the development of new rocketry. He set a
personal goal for himself of one thousand miles per hour,
which he never quite reached. The fastest he ever got
(02:50):
was nine hundred and ninety five miles per hour, after
which the Air Force requested that he retire from testing
as he was nearing middle age.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
That didn't keep him from innovation, though. While serving in Dayton, Ohio,
he read a statistic that more Air Force officers die
in car accidents than in plane crashes. Afterward, he began
to advocate for safer standards in automobiles, and this advocacy
would lead directly to the invention of the seat belt.
And yet, even though he's had a singular impact on
(03:20):
modern society, he isn't quite a household name. He's credited
with coining Stapp's Law, an adage from his testing years.
The saying goes, the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any
human accomplishment an incredible miracle. But that's not the most
famous aphorism to come out of his career. No, that
honor goes to a saying coined during one of his
(03:42):
earlier rocket sled rides. During a nineteen forty nine experiment,
a colleague named Captain Edward A. Murphy designed to harness
rigged with sensors to measure John Stapp's reaction to those
g forces. After the test, the team checked the sensors
and to their surprise, the data all read zero. It
turned out the censors had been installed backwards. Captain Murphy said,
(04:04):
in frustration, if there are two or more ways to
do something and one of those results in catastrophe, then
someone will do it that way. A simplified version of
this was relayed to the press by John Stapp. He said,
anything that can go wrong will go wrong, which you
have probably heard before because it's known as Murphy's law.
(04:38):
Amid the chaos and uncertainty of war, a single message
can mean the difference between survival and catastrophe. That was
a lesson learned the hard way by the British fifty
sixth Infantry Division in October of nineteen forty three, as
the Allied forces swept through German occupied Italy at the
height of World War two. This division of soldiers was
(04:59):
sent to the small villag of Calvivekia in central Italy.
The sparse, ancient hamlet had been mostly abandoned for centuries,
but during the war, its decayed stone buildings had been
taken over by German troops who were using it as
a defensive stronghold. The goal for the British was to
draw out the German forces and liberate the area's few
(05:19):
residents from Nazi occupation, but that was easier said than done.
The British troops spent days bombarding the village with bullets
and artillery, but the Germans refused to withdraw. On the
morning of October eighteenth, the British sent a request to
the Royal Air Force for support, but around midday, right
before the air raid that they had requested was scheduled
(05:40):
to begin, the commander of the battalion on the ground
got tired of waiting. He conferred with his lieutenants and
they decided to make one last effort to try and
take the village themselves. All at once, the troops stormed
the village and the show of force was successful, they
sent the Germans fleeing into the hillside. But as the
commander walked through the smoky streets of the abandoned village,
(06:02):
observing his soldiers as they checked empty buildings and cleared
land mines, he realized that his success had created a
new problem. You see, they had already requested air support
from the Air Force, and that air raid was scheduled
to begin in just an hour. If it went off
as planned, the British troops currently occupying the village would
be bombed by their own men. The commander hurried to
(06:24):
the radio and tried to send a message to call
off the attack, but he couldn't get through the radio
signal was too staticky. He knew that there was only
one other way to get the message to the airfield
in time, so he summoned one of his most capable
pilots in the brigade, a soldier they had nicknamed Gi Joe.
The commander scribbled down a short message on a piece
(06:44):
of paper, rolled it up, and gave it to Gi Joe.
Moments later, Joe took off, sailing into the smoke filled sky.
He flew an impressive twenty miles in twenty minutes, and
as he approached the airfield, the bombers on the runway
were already getting ready to take off for that raid.
Gi Joe made a quick landing, and at the very
last possible second, he delivered the message to the commander.
(07:06):
The commander unrolled the piece of paper, read it, and
rushed onto the runway, signaling for the pilots to call
off the attack. Gi Joe's last minute message saved the
lives of at least one hundred soldiers in calvi Vekya.
Three years later, he was awarded the Dicken Medal for
his actions, which is the equivalent of the Medal of
Honor for animals. Because you see, Gi Joe wasn't just
(07:29):
any old war hero, he was also a pigeon. I
hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
This show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
(07:50):
the show and the people who make it over at
Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
to the Official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book avail in
bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook, and
if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining
our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the
interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign
(08:13):
up over at patreon dot com. Slash Grimandmild, and until
next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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