True story, as heard on "Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" 3/3/97:
Scientists at NASA have developed a gun, whose purpose it is to launch dead chickens. It is used to shoot a dead chicken at the windshields of airline jets, military jets, and the space shuttle, at that vehicle's maximum travelling velocity.
The idea is....to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl, and therefore determine if the windshields are strong enough. British engineers, upon hearing of the gun, were eager to test the gun out on the windshield of their new high speed trains.
However, upon the firing of the gun, the engineers watched in shock as the chicken shattered the windshield, smashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin. Horrified, the engineers sent NASA the results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield, and asked the NASA scientists for any suggestions.
The NASA scientists sent back a one sentence response: