Little Fish: See You In The Charts

7:07Dan Schreiber:Well, Dan, I need to have a chat with you after the show. Here's another fact. This is a great one. It's from Soam Mukherjee And Soam writes that a plane has recently been found after being lost for 13 years. Okay. It was an Air India flight that went missing in a parking bay at the Kolkata airport. Okay. They forgot they owned it. And it was just there.

7:34Andy Dawson:So they just left it in the parking bay? They just left it in the parking bay.

7:38Dan Schreiber:Air India just simply forgot. It owed£83 ,000 in parking fees.

7:44Andy Dawson:It was just covered in tickets

7:46Dan Schreiber:That's it, it'd be lost beneath all the parking tickets

7:49Andy Dawson:If you're going to hide the plane, that's a good place to hide it You're absolutely right

7:53Dan Schreiber:And it's been there since 2012 Anyway, it's a happy ending Because it's now been taken out And it's going to be used to train engineers

8:01Andy Dawson:Aw, that's nice

8:02Dan Schreiber:So it's having a successful afterlife It probably was wondering, what's happened to it? It wants to be up in the air, like in that film

8:10Andy Dawson:Okay, here is another fact From Russell Langer and Russell says, I don't think I've heard this one on the podcast. Well, you haven't, Russell. It is that the Outer Bridge Crossing, the southernmost bridge between New York and New Jersey, is named after a man called Eugenius Harvey Outer Bridge.

8:28James Harkin:Nice.

8:29Andy Dawson:So good. We love these, don't we? So good. You would hear something and assume that it's an adjective and it turns out to be named after someone. Do we think we've got enough for a book? No. Okay.

8:42Dan Schreiber:Like a till book No Okay I think we've got German chocolate cake Yeah We've got French's mustard Maybe How long are your books Andy? How many words is there In one of your books?

8:54Andy Dawson:Like 80 ,000? 90 ,000?

8:56Dan Schreiber:We'll do a long padding introduction The children's python We did that on a Drop us a line recently

9:02James Harkin:Oh yeah

9:04Dan Schreiber:That's four we've got So I'll ring the publishers And say Just hold fire

9:09Andy Dawson:It's enough for a pitch

9:10Dan Schreiber:it's enough for a pitch that's it

9:14Andy Dawson:1 ,000 things you would think are called the thing for the clearly obvious reason

9:19Dan Schreiber:but actually they're named after a person it's a good name it's a good name

9:22James Harkin:didn't we what was the one James that I think we almost ran on the show which was like the roly-poly was named after someone called Michael roly-poly is it the blanket

9:32Andy Dawson:was it maybe the blanket Thomas Blanket in the 13th century so there was a person called Thomas Blanket and i think so anna and i have argued over this for many years when we get drunk this is all we talk about but i think that probably what happened was there was already a blanket from the french blanc k meaning white or okay from the french meaning white and then this guy thomas blanket who definitely existed came along and popularized the name but i don't think it's named after him

10:01James Harkin:god i'm suddenly having flashbacks of like 2 a.m in some hotel lobby drinking and you and anna absolutely going for it. Cameron tongs, yeah.

10:11Andy Dawson:Yeah, so Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge, his sister Mary Ewing Outerbridge was the person who brought lawn tennis to America.

10:19Dan Schreiber:Oh, that's good.

10:20Andy Dawson:So it had been taken to Bermuda from the British and then the Americans brought it over. In fact, Mary Ewing Outerbridge brought it from Bermuda to America. And when they started doing it, everyone argued about everything about it. So the size of the court the size of the net the size of the racket and the size of the ball was different wherever you played right and so they had to bring it all together and it was actually um eugenius outer bridge after whom the crossing is named who came up with the idea of forming the u.s tennis association oh wow sort of for bring everything together was he called eugenius eugenius eugenius yeah so how's the spelling like eugene and then yeah uh eugene without the e at the end and then ius

11:07Dan Schreiber:because there must have been a moment in his life where he did something stupid and someone got to

11:10Andy Dawson:say you idiot eugenius it's it's like eugenius yeah it's like the reverse nigel farage yeah

11:19James Harkin:that's brilliant um i got a fact that was sent in by mimi there is an unknown animal in the burmese zodiac okay the burmese zodiac is quite interesting is there's a few elements to it one of the main things is that to know what your zodiac animal is is based on not the year that you were born but the day of the week that you were born on okay and um so there are eight animals in this zodiac eight days a week how does that work right they've split wednesday up into two days so you've got wednesday morning and wednesday evening and the animal associated with that is an elephant with tusks and then in the evening it's an elephant without tusks okay yeah um because eight is a

11:58Dan Schreiber:is a very lucky number out there an elephant who's been to the dentist at 2 30 yes and so the uh sometimes i wonder why i bother we all do i think we all do you've just knocked a zero off your settlement payment when i fire you after this

12:19James Harkin:i don't mind because you're so good looking it's fine so anyway um there is a mysterious animal on there so i looked into it i was born on a saturday andy you were born on a saturday yes so we are a dragon according to it um james you were born on a friday so was anna and you were both the mysterious animal which is which is a guinea pig oh wait a minute you said it was something that didn't exist well it shouldn't have existed in the area when they were doing the zodiac it's very confusing they're not sure why it's on there it's had huge debates because this is this is very old this zodiac and yet a guinea pig statue is everywhere in their temples are from south

13:00Andy Dawson:america and there was no way you could get from south america to mayamar at that time i don't

13:06James Harkin:suppose exactly and so there is lots of questions about what it is so a lot of people have looked into it and they found similar animals that are in the area that it could be like the bamboo rat

13:16Andy Dawson:and so on but but it's known any nice animals it does like i feel bad james that we got dragon

13:25Dan Schreiber:and you've got the bamboo rat

13:32Dan Schreiber:here's another one yep this is from edmund galaski and ebon writes i came across this news tidbit about a new proposal. And I recall you discussing past proposals for something similar in 21 or 2022. Edmund's catching up. So Edmund, if you're listening to this in 2033, hello. But basically, it's about a snow tunnel. Okay. You know how you have indoor ski slopes sometimes?

13:59Andy Dawson:Oh, yeah.

14:00Dan Schreiber:But they're a real pain in the bum because they're huge and they're very land hungry and energy intensive and all of this. And it's just like, it's a big pain. well what if you just had a massive hamster wheel of snow and the barrel will be spun to uh about 31 miles an hour and if you're a skier you can just get in and start skiing and ski the hamster wheel down all the time you're constantly skiing down you see yes and if you're new you can latch onto a built-in stability apparatus which is like it couldn't possibly go wrong and lead you to be Dragged around this circle Upside down It is a nice idea It's a proposal But the interesting thing This email came in from Edmund Golasky Golasky He has ski in his name

14:44Andy Dawson:Right Very common ending Yeah There's literally a member of our podcast who has it

14:49Dan Schreiber:Oh yeah

14:51Andy Dawson:And she would be quite good in the hamster wheel Because she's a guinea pig Beautiful Beautiful Right, should we have one or two more? Yeah Yeah, go on then. This one is from Paul Fuller. And Paul says the program McDonald's used to run their electronic menu display at their drive-thrus is called chips.exe. Very nice.

15:13Dan Schreiber:Is that because they do chips? No. Because they do fries. They don't even know it's funny.

15:19Andy Dawson:Yeah, that's true. I think it's not. That's not why they use it. And also, I don't think it's quite true. What was our correspondent's name? Paul Fuller. It's hard to tell because this is like corporate secrets and stuff like that. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on. But I think what it is, is there is a payroll software called Clearinghouse Interbank Payment System, or CHIPS. And I think they put this software on a lot of their computers. And then they use those computers to put the electronic programs on, but the electronic programs are something else. But every now and then this program fails, and then you get an error message and it says chips.exe has failed and people see the chips.exe and they take a photo of it and put it on social media and everyone goes ah ha ha look that's the name of the executing program but actually i think it's just a background program i think that's very that's a very thorough hearkening i love it the truth is i don't know for sure but that's what my research

16:21Dan Schreiber:points to well don't we have an in with zoe hamburger friend of the podcast who like episode one of Little Fish, senior McDonald's executive, she'll pick up a call from us won't she? I'm sure.

16:33Andy Dawson:She won't pick up a call from you because she'll fear that she's being fired. Yeah, absolutely.

16:39James Harkin:That's great research, James. Lovely.

16:41Dan Schreiber:Dan, you have one last one?

16:42James Harkin:Yeah, this was sent in to us by Ian Flower from Seattle, who says this fact is from the same body of water where we employ anti-espionage dolphins. So, you know, we spoke about these

16:55Andy Dawson:off the coast of Seattle? Yeah.

16:58James Harkin:Yeah. Yeah. He's written, we've just had historic flooding and apparently the local ferries are using spy goggles to dodge dislodge debris. And so you heard this from a local NPR station. I had a look into it and it seems correct. Basically there are a bunch of floating logs that are going towards all of these ships. If they get hit, they're going to get really damaged. Okay. So the debris in the water has a different heat signature than the water itself. So what they do is they have a member of the team who stands at the front with infrared goggles on And then yells to the captain, move to the left!

17:31James Harkin:We've got a log directly in front of us The captain's log, brilliant

17:34Dan Schreiber:There you go Well, he'd probably say port, I suspect, rather than move to the left You never know, maybe it's his first day It might be

17:45Andy Dawson:Sorry, I always forget, is left port or is left starboard? It's the same number of letters left is port. That's how you remember it.

17:54Dan Schreiber:Oh, that's really good. I always remember oh, there's no port left. Like if you're having a decanter of port.

17:59Andy Dawson:Oh, yeah?

18:00Dan Schreiber:Yeah. Oh, that is good. But it's confusing because you say there's no port left. I should say there's some port left.

18:06Andy Dawson:Dan, how do you remember the port and starboards?

18:09Dan Schreiber:I don't, which is why so many boats have crashed

18:11James Harkin:when I'm yelling out. Stop putting me on lookout, guys! Jesus! There's a starboard. Who? Is it clearly? Oh!

18:21Andy Dawson:Ryan Bingham's here I think if you say There's a star on board And Dan thinks who's the biggest star Ryan Bingham What does Ryan Bingham's name begin with R What side is the starboard The right That's how you remember it

18:37Dan Schreiber:As long as it's not a real emergency We've got time to go through that every time Right Should we do some friend of the podcast Custodian Let's do it fact dishing out right so um everyone listening if you join our patreon you can go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish uh and you join you get all sorts of stuff you get ad free episodes you get bonus content and if you join at the very top tier you can become a friend of the podcast and we will dedicate one of our headline facts to you so let's dish out a few of those now i'll kick off this is a fact going out to karen mcmillan the 17th century prophet dorothy harling would cure you of your sins by urinating on the afflicted part of your body but would also whip you first.

19:25James Harkin:It's a nice PG fact

19:27Dan Schreiber:to start off. Congratulations, Karen. That's yours forever now. She was known as the perpetual spring for urinating on her followers. So congratulations, Karen. No takey-backsies. That's your fact forever now.

19:49Andy Dawson:um okay here's the next one homosexuality is illegal in sudan but a woman can have a female husband and a child can have a female father uh and that fact now belongs to soul tramp s-o-l-e-t-r-a-m-p presumably an internet name don't know could be a relation of the band super tramp could be yes If you get bitten by soul tramp, you turn into a super tramp.

20:20Dan Schreiber:So I've just looked this up in the archive, and basically there's a tribe called the Newer, and if you're a woman and you can't have children, but you have a father who wants to pass on their property, you marry a woman who then has a child herself, and that child technically, sort of legally, becomes your child. Okay. So that is enshrined in law and society. And this was all about legal structures that people used to get around sort of sex-based problems or difficulties. So we talked about the sworn virgins of Albania. Oh, yeah. They were women, but under the Albanian sort of sacred law, they had the status of men.

20:57Andy Dawson:They lived as men. Okay.

20:58Dan Schreiber:And this was a really common thing for centuries. So it was all that kind of stuff.

21:02James Harkin:Yeah. Here's a fact now for Anna Wilson. the man responsible for the first computer Colossus worked out that the way to stop crashes was to not turn it off and back on again. Basically if you turned it off you were risking damage for when you turned it back on for things to burn out and so on so the best way to have it functioning was just to leave it. Turn it on and just leave it and let it work itself out.

21:29Dan Schreiber:I'm glad I've been doing that for years with my computers that's fine. They're fine.

21:34James Harkin:They're fine

21:36Dan Schreiber:Should we have another one? This one goes out to Kellen With two exclamation marks I don't think you sold it

21:45Andy Dawson:Honestly, I could have, when you said that I could possibly hear the first exclamation mark But I definitely couldn't hear two

21:51Dan Schreiber:I'm going to do it again This one goes out to Kellen And it's the fact that in 2014 Two botanists from Kew Gardens Checked a£1.29 packet Of supermarket mushrooms and found three species previously unknown to science.

22:08Andy Dawson:That's incredible. It's so good.

22:10Dan Schreiber:I think it might have been Waitrose.

22:12Andy Dawson:Oh, well, of course. Of course.

22:14Dan Schreiber:That's the Waitrose guarantee, actually.

22:17Andy Dawson:Isn't that weird? Because you would think those mushrooms, if you don't know what the species is, could conceivably be poisonous. Quite a high proportion of mushrooms are poisonous.

22:27James Harkin:It's not the greatest food to discover new species of in a pack.

22:31Andy Dawson:Okay, I've got one more here. This fact is now under the custodianship of Mark Vent, who was in a recent episode and Dan said, I know Mark Vent. I know Mark, yeah. Yeah. Yes. So, friend of Dan Schreiber, if not the entire podcast. Does Mark also know Ash Gardner? He does, yeah. Well, very good news for you, Mark, because Ash Gardner was the originator of this fact in episode 32. And it was that in 1060 BC, the entire Egyptian city of Pyramases was moved 20 kilometers north. So basically it was by the Nile and the Nile dried up and they had to move the whole city. And Ash, I think, wrote a song about it.

23:14James Harkin:He did. And he also, for those who aren't familiar with his name, he wrote the theme tune for Fish as well. And that's why he was on the show. He also used to slip me the occasional fact, famously, when sparkling water was being transported across from country to country on boats, they would take the bubbles out and then reinsert the exact same bubbles back into the water when they got there. We still haven't checked to see if he's wrong. I think you guys assumed. Nice. Great fact. Let's do another one here. This is for Kay Sutton And the fact is In 1864, one of Charles Dickens' friends Gave him a flat pack Swiss chalet As a Christmas present Very nice Yeah, this is now in Rochester I've seen it, I've been there a few times It came in 58 different boxes And he had to create this beautiful Swiss chalet Where he wrote a lot of novels You've seen it?

24:06James Harkin:Yeah

24:06Andy Dawson:That's so cool 100 % someone else did that for him Did the building Yeah Yeah, probably.

24:12James Harkin:But yeah, his later novels, I think it was his later novels, were largely written in that Swiss chalet.

24:18Dan Schreiber:Well, this is one of my favourite facts about Charles Dickens, because Rochester is in Kent. This is where the chalet is. And I do want to go visit it, actually. But Rochester is also where there's a house, which was the inspiration for Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations. And it's a house that was later lived in by Rod Hull.

24:35Andy Dawson:It wasn't the roof that he fell off, was it? And that's the one he fell off. No. Rod Hull, famous British entertainer who had an emu on his arm.

24:42Dan Schreiber:He was very, very famous in the 70s and 80s. He went up onto the roof to fix the TV aerial.

24:48Andy Dawson:Yeah, he wanted to watch a football match.

24:49Dan Schreiber:Apparently because Giles Brandress told him. Don't think that's true. Okay.

24:56Andy Dawson:I've heard a couple of different entertainers saying that they told him that.

25:00Dan Schreiber:Could have been Brucey, could have been Wogan. But someone foolish told Rod Hull to go up and fix the TV aerial on his roof. And he fell off and died.

25:06Andy Dawson:Yeah.

25:07James Harkin:Miss Havisham's house.

25:08Andy Dawson:I can't believe it's Miss Havisham's house I didn't know that

25:11James Harkin:That should be a little footnote in all future editions Of the book Of Great Expectations Just as you're reading

25:19Andy Dawson:By the way

25:23Andy Dawson:I wonder who lives there now Yeah I'd love to live there

25:27Dan Schreiber:That's such a historical house Timmy Mallet lives there now

25:30James Harkin:The guy who invented the mallet

25:36Dan Schreiber:Sorry to all the international listeners Let's have another fact This one goes out to Johanna Kujvunen I hope I've pronounced your name right And it's that Neuroscientists can tell if you are a musician Simply by looking at your brain And I imagine this is the brain activity Rather than opening up your skull And having a look at the tissue And this is all about neuroscience And how musicians Brainwaves synchronise when they have a duet together And all sorts of stuff And turns out it's in the brain The music

26:12Andy Dawson:Do you think our brains synchronise When we're doing this show?

26:15Dan Schreiber:100%. I do

26:17Andy Dawson:What about when I'm saying an anecdote And you're just completely glazing over And not paying attention

26:22Dan Schreiber:And I'm doing my emails on my phone I have to be in sync because I know when the anecdote ends So

26:32Dan Schreiber:We're apart but together

26:33James Harkin:other yeah yeah yeah where did they say that that does happen with heartbeats with strangers is it

26:39Andy Dawson:during a watching a movie cinema yeah you blink in sync that might be a fact that comes up later

26:44Dan Schreiber:yeah yeah so i can i can actually believe that our uh most intimate uh rhythms would be united

26:51Andy Dawson:during a show recording yeah yeah okay exciting i haven't had a period since anna left

27:04James Harkin:Too much?

27:05Andy Dawson:No I don't think so I don't think so

27:07James Harkin:I'm sure you're not pregnant though Okay here's another one This one is for Richard M During the second world war Jack Warner Of Warner Brothers Realized his studios Were indistinguishable From a nearby aircraft factory So painted a huge sign on the roof Saying Lockheed That way That's very funny Yeah That's very good I love anyone who paints on the top of a roof because it's often used I just love those guys

27:36Andy Dawson:unless it's Ruddhol you love people who paint on the top of buildings I love walks in the countryside, champagne and people who paint on the top of buildings

27:52Dan Schreiber:when is your book coming out dad of a thousand great people who paint on the top of buildings.

27:58James Harkin:I think it's not long after your book on people whose names are what the thing is. He's hitting the shots. I'll see you in the charts.

28:10James Harkin:I remember there was one where someone had painted on the top of a roof as people were landing into LA. Welcome to San Francisco. Things like that. Yeah, that's fun. It's great.

28:23Andy Dawson:The guy from Warner Brothers, he could have you like painted a fake tunnel on the side of a nearby cliff or something

28:34Dan Schreiber:right that that's your lot for this week thank you so much to all those who've joined at the friend of the podcast here that is richard johanna k mark kellen anna soul tramp and karen we're going to be doing another batch of these in a week uh we hope you've enjoyed it if you'd like to see more things that are available on the Patreon on Clubfish, just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. Thanks very much and keep the emails and the facts coming in. They're absolutely brilliant and we love them. Podcast at qr.com. That's it for this time. Bye for now.