Polish folks and air travel
Version 1
A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to a western country. They drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and found there was no pilot on board. Terrified, they listened as the sirens got louder. Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be pilot's friends cried out, "Please, please take off now! Hurry!!"
The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple pole in a complex plane."
Version 2
A group of Polish tourists is flying on a small airplane through the Grand Canyon on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide announces: "On the right of the airplane, you can see the famous Bright Angle Falls." The tourists leap out of their seats and crowd to the windows on the right side. This causes a dynamic imbalance, and the plane violently rolls to the side and crashes into the canyon wall. All aboard are lost. The moral to this episode is: always keep your poles off the right side of the plane.