[1676] in Humor
HUMOR CLASSIC: Let's Play Chicken
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Nov 1 11:17:16 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 11:05:40 EST
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 22:01:04 -0800
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
From: "Ian E. Stockdale" <ies@nas.nasa.gov>
From: melissaw@sugen.sf.ca.us (Melissa Woodrow)
A true-life story from "Meat & Poultry" magazine :
US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a unique device for
testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun
that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately
the speed the plane flies.
The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass
impact, it'll survive a real collision with a bird during flight. It
seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a
windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they're developing.
They borrowed the FAA's chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and
fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, went
through the engineer's chair, broke an instrument panel and
embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab. The British
were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if
everything was done correctly.
The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:
"Use a thawed chicken".
