In 2012, Boeing loaded piles of potatoes on a passenger jet and flew it as part of a critical test, and it had to do with potatoes' relation to humans in terms of water content.

In order to test the effectiveness of its onboard Wi-Fi, Boeing needed planes full of people over a significant period of time. Luckily, engineers found a workaround with potatoes.

Because of their high water content, potatoes absorb and reflect Wi-Fi signals in the same way humans do, so they put potatoes in every seat on the plane and sent them skyward.

The project, Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution (SPUDS), worked perfectly, and led to significant advances in the viability of airborne Wi-Fi.