Irregular Joe

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 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

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 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,

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 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 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.

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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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 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 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

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