This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

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 Curiosity's.

On December 10th of 1954, a rocket-powered sled was set up on an Air Force base in New Mexico.

Over a 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 goggles, and it was about to do something that no man had ever attempted before.

When the rocket ignited, it propelled the sled forward at 632 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 40 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.

Stab's career, which spanned from the 1940s all the way into the 1970s, 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 18, 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

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