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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio 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 Curiosities.

They say a story changes with the storyteller, and few tales have had more revisions than that of James Jesse Strang, the self-declared king of Beaver Island.

Depending on who you ask, James was either a prophet, a tyrant, a genius, or a madman.

But what's certain is that he carved out one of the strangest footnotes in American history.

Life for James started out conventionally enough.

Born in upstate New York in 1813, he spent time as a lawyer, a newspaper editor, and even as a Baptist minister.

But in 1844, he found something calling him in the words of a brand new religion.

Following the words of founder Joseph Smith, he converted to Mormonism, a faith that was just 14 years old at the time.

Later that year, on June 27th of 1844, Joseph Smith was killed by an angry mob, leaving the Church of Latter-day Saints leaderless.

Many members threw their hat into the ring to lead the religion, including James Jesse String.

James actually claimed that Smith had named him his successor in a letter.

Of course, this was a letter that he only revealed the existence of after Smith was gone.

So most Mormons decided to follow a different leader, a guy named Brigham Young.

While Brigham Young led the majority of the church west to Salt Lake City, Utah, James split off with his own faction.

He claimed an angel came to him in the night, showing him what he called a land amidst wide waters and covered with large timber.

In 1848, he led his followers to Beaver Island, a remote, forest-covered outpost in northern Lake Michigan.

And there, in an audacious mix of prophecy and pageantry, he donned a crown, a scepter, and robes and declared himself king of the kingdom of God and the earth.

The island quickly became a stronghold of James's particular sect of Mormonism.

He banned alcohol, enforced religious laws, and punished dissent.

He declared all the Anishinaabeg Native Americans and Irish settlers who were living there to convert or flee, and by 1852, most of them were gone.

James quickly found that as a newly minted king, his crown was already starting to gain enemies.

Locals accused the Mormons of theft and threats of violence.

Many claimed the Mormons were pirates, luring merchant vessels crossing Lake Michigan to shore before plundering their cargo.

Whether this was true or merely a result of anti-Mormon rumors isn't even clear today.

But what was clear was that James was not a beloved monarch.

U.S.

President Millard Fillmore, alarmed by the stories about the Beaver Island king, dispatched his attorney general to investigate James' sect in 1853.

James successfully defended himself in court against federal charges of counterfeiting, theft, and treason, gaining himself a lot of positive name recognition.

After he won his trial, he parlayed this good press into political power, gaining a seat in the Michigan state legislature.

And still, this wasn't enough to keep James in the public's good graces.

Tensions grew especially high after James embraced polygamy after years of denouncing it.

In fact, James' support of monogamous marriage had been one of the original reasons why so many of his congregation had chosen to follow him over Brigham Young, who had 50 wives.

There were other rumors about why James was unpopular, from firing a cannon into a crowd of Irish settlers to animal sacrifices and stealing followers' wives.

In many of these tales, the legend may be taller than the man, but there was no evidence that he did any of these things.

But the rumor spread nonetheless, and some of his followers began to push back.

James's rule unraveled in 1856.

After ordering the public flogging of two dissenters, one of them, a man named Thomas Bedford, plotted his revenge.

On June 20th, Bedford and two accomplices ambushed James on a dock as he was preparing to board a ship.

They shot him in the back while the ship's captain and crew stood by.

The assassins fled to nearby Mackinac Island, where they were celebrated rather than jailed.

Strang lingered for weeks, paralyzed and in pain, before dying on July 9th.

Without their king, his followers had no protection.

Within days, a mob from the mainland invaded Beaver Island, burning homes and forcibly evicting every last Mormon.

Today, Beaver Island is a peaceful tourist spot.

Few visitors realize that it was once the seat of an American monarchy.

As for James Jesse Strang, his story remains a slippery one.

Half legend, half history, shaped by those who loved him and by those who didn't.

Looking back, the legend of the Mormon king of Beaver Island has some truth to it, but there's no denying that it's definitely a little strang.

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Ever since the dawn of aviation, human pilots have had to face an unshakable reality.

Although aircraft may be the biggest thing in the sky, They aren't the only ones.

If you have ever spent any time reading about airplane hazards, you may have heard the term bird strike.

It means exactly what it sounds like when a bird collides with a plane, doing some degree of damage and forcing a landing.

They're relatively rare these days, but still a present concern among the designers of airplanes.

For that reason, manufacturers test rigorously to make sure that their planes are as resistant as possible to encounters with birds at extremely high speeds.

When a plane is built, it will be taken to a facility that has a chicken gun, an air-powered cannon that fires boneless chickens at stationary aircraft to simulate a bird strike.

Because chickens have higher bone density than most high-altitude birds, if the hull of an airplane can resist this weapon, it is deemed safe to fly.

However, some aerial hazards are too esoteric to plan for, as one test pilot found out in 1956.

The pilot's name was Thomas Atridge.

He was employed to test the combat capabilities of the new Grumman F-11 Tiger jet engine.

It was a plane capable of supersonic speeds, flying faster than 750 miles per hour, a speed designated as Mach 1.

Nobody had ever engaged in aerial combat while flying this fast.

They didn't even know if it was possible.

Attridge took the plane out over the Atlantic, bound for a designated firing range.

His altitude was 20,000 feet.

The plane's four guns were loaded with dummy rounds.

And as planned, he turned into a dive, descending to 13,000 feet feet and firing a four-second burst with the plane's guns.

He paused for a few seconds, and then he dove again, emptying the guns as he went.

So far, everything was going smoothly, but when he reached 7,000 feet, everything went wrong.

The windshield cracked, and then it shattered.

The plane started losing power, its engines stuttering.

Atridge did his best to maintain a level head.

He reduced the speed to 230 miles per hour, turning the plane back toward the Grumman factory.

The engine was weakening with each passing minute, and he had to hold the windshield in place with one of his hands while he flew.

Aside from the very obvious damage to the glass, there appeared to be a hole near the engine, but he couldn't tell what had caused it.

The jet continued slowing before finally stalling out more than a mile short of his landing zone.

The plane caught fire and plummeted the rest of the way into a crash landing.

Attridge was severely injured in the crash, but he managed to pull himself free of the wreckage.

The mechanics were left to determine what had happened to cause the plane to falter so suddenly.

But the answer was simple.

It was the dummy rounds from the F-11's guns.

You see, Attridge had opened fire while in a downward dive, just as instructed, and the bullets had slowed due to intense wind resistance.

By the time he reached 7,000 feet, he was traveling at well over 800 miles per hour, and the bullets that he had fired were traveling closer to 400.

So the jet had caught up with its own bullets, running face first into a handful of non-lethal but still very solid projectiles.

The U.S.

Air Force did wind up using the Grumman F-11 Tiger in the late 1950s and early 60s.

After its retirement as a fighter jet, it would be employed by the Blue Angels for aerial performances throughout the rest of the 1960s.

All in all, a relatively short career for a fighter jet, quickly surpassed by subsequent models.

In a way, you could say this aircraft peaked early.

After After all, the F-11 Tiger is the first and to date the only aircraft that has ever managed to shoot itself down.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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