This is from the June Issue of "POWER ENGINEERING" magazine: Scientists at NASA developed a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl and to test the strength of the windshields in collisions at maximum velocity. British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Appropriate intergovernmental arrangements were made and the gun was shipped to England. But when the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof windshield, smashed it to smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin. Horrified Britons sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield, and asked the U.S. scientists for suggestions. NASA's response was just one sentence: "Thaw the chicken."