Britain calls it one of its scariest junctions, but the full story is stranger.
Swindon's most famous road junction sits on top of an older way of moving goods across England. What lies underneath it?
An old canal The Magic Roundabout was built over a stretch of the old Wilts & Berks Canal, where a wharf and a stone bridge once stood in an area called the Marsh.
Around the ring's outer edge, cars circle the normal way. Which way does traffic go on the inner circle?
The opposite direction Designer Frank Blackmore made the inner loop run anticlockwise, so confident drivers can take shortcuts while nervous ones stick to the outer ring.
Surveys keep naming it one of the scariest junctions in Britain. What does its real crash record look like?
Excellent safety record Traffic crawls so slowly through its five mini-roundabouts that collisions rarely do serious damage, and it moves more cars than other designs.
When it first opened, its little roundabouts weren't even marked out for good. Who stood at each one to keep watch?
A police officer During the pilot phase, officers watched how drivers coped while engineers fine-tuned the layout.
Locals named it after a popular children's TV show. What did the town eventually do with its dull official name?
Swapped it for the nickname Originally called County Islands, it was renamed in the early 1980s after a campaign by Councillor David Glaholm.
