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Weird fact of the day: British Rail designed an interplanetary flying saucer in 1970

British Rail Flying Saucer (1970)

British Rail, the much missed national rail service, couldn't make a decent sandwich - but that didn't stop them flirting with interplanetary nuclear fusion powered flying saucers. Simply squirt liquid fuel beneath the aircraft, ignite it with a series of lasers, create a nuclear fusion explosion and contain the highly radioactive explosion within a magnetic field. Then you can take 22 people to the moon (probably sustained on terrible sandwiches squeezed from toothbrush tubes). Unsurprisingly this radical patent was seen as a being rather too ambitious, but who knows, perhaps one day science will catch up with the imagination of Charles Osmond Frederick, a 1970s locomotive engineer.

There's going to be lots more weird stuff like this in the book..so order your copy today

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