In short
“No Such Thing as a Fish” style fact roundup read by Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Ptaszynski, featuring listener-submitted “Fish Inbox” facts plus Patreon “custodianship” shout-outs.
Guests
No external guests appear; the hosts are Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Ptaszynski.
Key claims/examples
- Joseph Palmer (1830) allegedly had a beard attacked by townsfolk; his tombstone reads “Persecuted for wearing a beard.”
- Vermont allegedly transports brook trout to a high pond via chairlift, in buckets (~400 trout each), with a claim they fear heights.
- “Ice yachting”: boats on ice skates with sails; linked to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ellen Roosevelt.
- Left-handers allegedly barred from hairdresser training until the late 1960s; a 1930 story claims a wife’s left hand was bandaged until fingers fell off after sepsis.
- “Raspberry crazy ant” infestation issues, including a claim NASA hired “Tom Raspberry” to address them.
- Karl Marx allegedly first cousins with Gerard Phillips (Phillips toothbrush company).
- King County, Washington allegedly renamed from George King/William Rufus Devan King to Martin Luther King Jr. after decades.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODiscovering the New Fan Site
0:45 to 3:47
The hosts discuss a new fan-created website that maps places mentioned in the podcast.
“And if you zoom in on anywhere, it shows you the place and then you click on it and it shows you what we've said about that place.”
Strange Historical Beard Story
3:47 to 7:21
A fact about Joseph Palmer, a man who was punished for his long beard in 1830.
“and they talk about a place in America as well, in Vermont.”
Trout Transport via Ski Lifts
7:21 to 10:15
The hosts share a fascinating fact about transporting trout using ski lifts in Vermont.
“You know what I would have said before I somehow got the idea that it might be something to do with ice?”
Ice Yachting History
10:15 to 12:51
Discussion on ice yachts as the fastest vehicles before planes, including historical context.
“Because your hairdresser is standing behind you on your left-hand side because they're cutting.”
Left-Handedness in Professions
12:51 to 14:01
A deep dive into the restrictions faced by left-handed individuals in various professions.
“but it's drawn to electronic devices and electrical systems.”
Ants and Teamwork
14:01 to 15:20
Explore the concept of teamwork in ants and a whimsical children's story.
“Unless another lot of ants went into the rocket and these guys are directing them.”
Shostakovich and Jesus Christ Superstar
15:21 to 17:21
Discuss Shostakovich's surprising admiration for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
“An incredibly laboured route to a below-par pun is what we live for.”
Karl Marx and Business
17:22 to 19:39
Delve into the surprising family connection between Karl Marx and a toothbrush founder.
“I do believe the only company that makes Walkmans is Sony.”
King County's Name History
19:40 to 21:04
Uncover the historical naming of King County and its connection to Martin Luther King Jr.
“who was a gold prospector or something but then later on they retconned it.”
Interesting Facts Exchange
21:35 to 24:13
Share quirky facts about eBay, Alexander Fleming, and historical events.
“The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer.”
Show all 12 chapters
Celebrity Mould and Ice Cream
24:14 to 27:51
Discuss the odd history of ice cream recipes and celebrity mould.
“another one from the lower regions and it goes now to Jake McCann.”
Award Ceremonies and Unusual Categories
28:00 to 28:34
Explore the humorous concept of award ceremonies for awards and their categories.
“warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:13Anna Ptaszynski:Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hontomari, I'm here with James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski and we are here to read out the best of your facts that you've been sending in to the Fish Inbox over the last seven days. Hi guys. Hi Andy. Hello. I have a bit of parish business before we start. Yes There is an exciting new Fan site Created by a fishner Fish listener Fish listener He's called Luke Delaney He has built a website It's about fish It's called Place to know.com
0:44Andy Dawson:Place like the fish That's very clever It's very clever We should get him on section naming No I will not have anyone
0:51Anna Ptaszynski:That's mine Place to know It's amazing It's basically a huge map of the world And it contains All the places That we've mentioned on fish over the last 12 years. Wow. And if you zoom in on anywhere, it shows you the place and then you click on it and it shows you what we've said about that place. It's amazing. It's incredible. And there are all sorts of little bells and whistles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've shown you guys.
1:10Andy Dawson:So if you zoom onto Loch Ness, there's like 500 different mentions. Yeah, exactly that.
1:16Anna Ptaszynski:Anyway, it's so good. So anyone listening to this, if you want to check it out, Luke Delaney has built it. Thank you so much to you, Luke. And it is placetoknow.com. That's place with an I like the fish. Very good. Clever. All right. Let's have some facts. Got one coming from North Carolina from someone called Hunter. Weird name. Oh, because it's also yours. Yeah. Of course. Well, he's found an interesting story. He said, have we come across Joseph Palmer, a Massachusetts man who in 1830, his beard was hated so much by local townsfolk that they attempted to shave it off. So there's a difference because, of course, you still can't grow a beard, can you?
1:50Andy Dawson:That's very funny. And also, it's an interesting story.
1:54Anna Ptaszynski:Wow. Wow. One, two. It's a rich start, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For Andrew Hunter Murray. Anyway, so these locals hated his beard. They attacked this guy. They tried to shave it off. And he refused to have it shaved off. And this is a time when I think beards were banned. So he refused to bow to social convention. Apparently, he was part of the transcendentalist movement of New England. I don't know if that's related to his beard keeping. I've vaguely been interested in transcendentalism in my past. And I didn't know that you had to grow a beard for it.
2:25Andy Dawson:So why did you grow yours?
2:28Anna Ptaszynski:it was a mistake listeners won't know the only person here who's got a beard is james
2:32Andy Dawson:oh i have like a goatee beard because that's literally all i could grow would you keep the beard even if they banned them on pain of prison no i wouldn't and in actual fact i feel like even if just the two of you were strong-willed enough to want to shave it off i would be hard-pressed to stop you okay challenge accepted great i just think that like one or two people can overpower one person and an entire village can almost certainly overpower one person even a bearded person yeah you're right it's easier to chop someone's beard off than it
3:04Anna Ptaszynski:is to give them a good close shave though because your beard is close enough to your face that i would i would not want to be wrestling with the razor okay for fear of doing you any injury which i wouldn't want that i don't want that i just want the beard off in this scenario and actually almost all beards are close to faces so it is sometimes eventually they're gonna be difficult So, yeah. Eventually they are. You could do a good chop of the main thing. You could do a trim, yeah, hack at it with a pair of garden shears from a distance if it's a Santa Claus gig. But this guy sounds like he had one of those amazing 15-foot long beards.
3:31He did. And in fact, he's got a tombstone that shows his head and it is a massive beard, bigger than Santa Claus, as I had a look. And his tombstone just reads, persecuted for wearing a beard. Wow. Yeah, he's really attached to it. Anyway, great fact, Hunter.
3:44Andy Dawson:Great fact. That's really good. Yeah. Here is one from Dre Falzerano. and they talk about a place in America as well, in Vermont. And they say that in Vermont, in order to stock trout in the highest stocked pond in the state, they transport them via ski lifts. Brilliant. Cool. Isn't that amazing? What a weird sight that would be if you were just going up to do the red run at the top and you were on a lift with a bunch of trout. That's what I thought. Right. In your head, when I tell you that fact, what kind of ski lift is it? An old school ski lift where you sit in it and you pull down the bar.
4:20Andy Dawson:And then it takes you clackety-clacketing up. Is that it? I think you're trying to be funny here, Andy. No, I think you are being funny. No, no, I'm not. Oh, I thought you were trying to be funny. Because obviously the most logical thing is to put the barrel inside one of those big enclosed glass.
4:36Anna Ptaszynski:This is where we come into a problem, which is that I am a man of the people and I've never been skiing. Whereas you two, hoity-toity types, you know all about the different kinds of ski lift because you're always on the slopes.
4:46Andy Dawson:Well, it's just the thing is like normally I'd go horse riding, but the horses are too cold in the winter. so I have to go skiing. So what's the truth? The trout got a pommelift? No, in actual fact, the trout go in a chairlift, it seems. Yes! What? Because I read a newspaper article about this and it said, you may have seen snakes on a plane, but have you ever seen fish on a chairlift? No, in a box? They put buckets and each bucket's got about 400 tiny trouts in it and they put it next to someone, presumably in a chairlift because it would be mad to send it up on its own. how would they dismount put skis on the bottom yeah exactly well it's always hard to dismount from a it is is it ski lift yeah oh i don't know this you see can i tell you a skiler story i've
5:29Anna Ptaszynski:got a secondhand skiler story okay my friend joe i won't say his surname but you've both met him yeah has been skiing and it was his first time skiing and after he got to the top for his first run down um his girlfriend asked him i had you all right how do you find the lift and he said yeah it was okay bit scary that lift though wasn't it and he had forgotten to put the bar down when he puts you safe and he had just been like hovering over the abyss for the whole journey up that's really horrifying he also got to the bottom of his first round and he forgot to put his goggles on so his eyes were incredibly red that's alright
6:04Andy Dawson:this article that I read about snakes on a plane slash fish on a chairlift gives an extra bit of information and it is that brook trout which is this species of trout are notorious for having a fear of heights. So the more we can do to keep them happy, the better chance they'll have of having a new home at the top. I'm sorry. I'm calling it bullshit.
6:24Anna Ptaszynski:Notorious is doing a lot of very heavy lifting. How can you tell if a fish has a fear of heights? Yeah, it's hard. Is it high if you're closer to the surface? I don't know.
6:34Andy Dawson:I just think that's such a funny line. Incredible. Because it appears to be said quite seriously. You do get flying trout, don't you? Isn't that a kind of fish? or is it just a different kind of fish?
6:45Anna Ptaszynski:Do they have a fear of flying though?
6:46Andy Dawson:Is that what you're saying? Maybe some flying trout are notorious for having a fear of flying. I just imagine one of them being sort of pulled out of the water in a net and going, whoa!
6:57Andy Dawson:That's one absolutely crazy, brilliant fact, Ray.
7:00Anna Ptaszynski:Great fact. Just keeping the theme, I have a fact about a thing in America and evolving ice. So this comes in from Mark Saltvite. Here's the question. Before the invention of planes, what was the fastest vehicle on earth? Well, you have given a bit of a hint, haven't you? I have. I have. I shouldn't have done that, but I have now. You can't take it back. No. It's something to do with ice, I reckon. Might be.
7:23Andy Dawson:You know what I would have said before I somehow got the idea that it might be something to do with ice? Like, do you remember they used to have those sort of log flumes, but they were literal log flumes, as in you're a logger, and you cut down a tree, and you put it in a flume, and people used to sit on those to get home, and they used to go really fast.
7:41Anna Ptaszynski:I thought they were slow log flicks, but I guess they're a fast bit. These ones, yeah. Well, that's a good contender. So Mark says that the answer is the ice yacht. Oh. And I have never even heard of these things before. Basically, it's a boat on ice skates with a sail. Awesome. So the lake or whatever is frozen over, or the bay, and you go whizzing over it on your boat on skates. That's clever. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president, was an avid ice yachter, as was his cousin Ellen Roosevelt. and sadly this century of course a lot less ice than there used to be there are no ice yachts left Ice yachting a tragically dying sport Yeah That's interesting
8:19Andy Dawson:There are plenty of places that have ice though There's no reason why they couldn't do it in Finland for instance Yeah that'd be good It's a faff to get to Finland for most people isn't it Not for Finns No they could keep doing it Maybe they are
8:35Anna Ptaszynski:Mark has let me know that there is a Hudson River Ice Yacht Preservation Society and I think membership is$16 for a year. Okay. It's a bargain. Go on, Andy. I will. I'm going to. You got your badge? I will. I will get it.
8:47Andy Dawson:I think listeners to this podcast must think that we're all absolutely rolling in money, the amount of money that Dan spends on eBay and you spend on these kind of societies.
8:56Anna Ptaszynski:Well, I save all the money on skiing holidays. It's got to go somewhere.
9:02Andy Dawson:That's amazing. It reminds me of those ice truckers that you get in the Baltics, don't you? Love that. it's illegal, I think, for them to wear seatbelts or something. What? Because they're driving over ice roads, but at any stage, the road might just disappear and they go underwater, so you can't wear the seatbelts. No way. You have to be able to get away straight away. That's very cool. That's very cool. It reminds me of the beginning to Frankenstein, which I only recently read, and it's so confusing. Have you guys read Frankenstein? I have, yeah. Don't you find the beginning incredibly weird?
9:33Because you know it's about Frankenstein and his monster, and then it starts in the arctic circle watching someone gallop along on an ice carriage a carriage on ice skates and you think for the first 30 pages am i reading the wrong book yeah um anyway yeah so maybe that must have been a thing yeah um ice carriages what fun okay i've got another fact here from renee westerhausen and this is about left-handedness i love this because renee's done such a deep dive into the british newspaper archive and has found out that left-handers were barred from all these professions. And specifically opens by saying you weren't allowed to be a hairdresser.
10:10So they found out that the Ministry of Labour barred left-handed people from training as hairdressers until the end of the 1960s. There's an article. That's insane. It's mad. All the social change.
10:21Andy Dawson:It makes perfect sense. Why? Because your hairdresser is standing behind you on your left-hand side because they're cutting. And there's another person sat to your left as well. and their left-handed hairdresser will be stood on their right and the two hairdressers will be banging arms all the time.
10:38Anna Ptaszynski:But your hairdresser doesn't stay on one side of you for the whole haircut. They do, yeah. That explains a lot. Just another short back and left, please. Yeah, yeah, great. We didn't mention the beard is actually only on one side.
10:52Andy Dawson:So I could look in the mirror and keep telling my head and pretend that I'm talking to someone else. And you've dressed half of you like a lady as well, haven't you,
11:00Anna Ptaszynski:for your vaudeville show. Yeah. It's nice. It just gets you a bit of company, doesn't it? It just guarantees it.
11:07Andy Dawson:Bit of intelligent conversation for a change.
11:11Anna Ptaszynski:I think that there would be bumping into each other, you're right. But is it that they couldn't make the scissors for them? The left-handed scissors? They were only right-handed barber scissors? It was just that people were generally suspicious. And I did look into the archive as well. And I don't think it was outright banned. And there was a lot of complaints about prejudice in other industries against left-handed people. But sometimes, you know, plasterers, carpenters, tile fixers. Sheet metal workers
11:34Andy Dawson:Definitely, oh my god Can you imagine having sheet metal in your house Made by a left hander The wrong way around You wouldn't be able to put it on the bed at all would you So they go, oh my god And then I found this amazing thing When I was diving into the British newspaper archive Looking for this And I just found the headline from 1930 Husband who in 20 years Had never seen his wife's left hand Which was an incredible story George Eliot's husband it's too big you can't see it when you're too close to it it was a story about this guy who'd married someone who always wore her hand bandaged and he'd been too polite to ask her what's up with your hand and then eventually she died of sepsis in her late 40s and so the doctors came around and said golly why is your why is your wife's hand bandaged and he said i just i don't know i never really asked yeah and he took the bandage off and all her fingers had fallen off oh that had such a sad ending you saw you saw that it's such a funnier story than it ended up being do you know my husband says i have a problem with this i always start really sad stories with a really perky tone yes that's true it was bad wasn't it certainly in this case that's what happened yeah i'm sorry about that oh well anyway james anything cheer us up um can i tell you about the raspberry crazy ant yes because brian has told me about it it's a serious pest along the gulf coast of america but it's drawn to electronic devices and electrical systems.
Read the full transcript
12:57Andy Dawson:Brian had an infestation on his personal laptop and it's called the Raspberry Crazy Ant. Crazy, obviously, because it runs around in a crazy manner. Raspberry, because they were named after the exterminator who reported them Tom Raspberry. Beautiful.
13:16Anna Ptaszynski:Excellent. Having read the original email and thought that's good for you, James, I had misremembered it and thought you were going to say they only go for Raspberry Pi. Those little computers. Oh, that would be good. You know, the little homemade laptop ones. But it's named after Tom Raspberry.
13:27Andy Dawson:Named after Tom Raspberry. And I just looked into them and found that actually NASA has big problems with these ants. Really? Because the ants keep going into the control station. Oh, my God. And Tom Raspberry actually was hired by NASA to sort out the Raspberry crazy ant. Incredible.
13:46Anna Ptaszynski:Wow. Maybe they're trying to take over the space program. Maybe they're trying to get to the moon. That's so obviously what they're trying to do. They're organised. They don't need much air, I'm guessing.
13:57Andy Dawson:They should go to the rocket rather than the control centre if they want to get to the moon, shouldn't they? That's a good point, actually. Unless another lot of ants went into the rocket and these guys are directing them.
14:06Anna Ptaszynski:No doubt. They've got colleagues in the rocket. I don't know if they need a rocket because I've got a children's book at home about what animal can put a star back in the sky and it turns out to be ants because they all are so good at teamwork that they climb on top of each other and the top one can get to the moon.
14:23Andy Dawson:It's just that starts off with quite a nice children's story. What did they all get boiled to death? Someone pouring boiling water on them or something.
14:31Anna Ptaszynski:Here's one from Rodrigo Pimentel. What a great name. I'm just going to read the thing to you, right? As you probably well know, the oldest works of what we call ancient Greek literature were Homer's epic poems, The Iliad and the Odyssey, composed around 650 BC. The earliest literary prose in ancient Greece is widely accepted as being Herodotus' histories from about 430 BC. Now, in episode 55, Anna says that the fire hose was invented in ancient Greece and made out of an ox's intestine. The few sources I could find date this to around 400 BC. It seems like, for the ancient Greeks, it really was, narrowly, prose before hose.
15:11I see, I get it.
15:13Anna Ptaszynski:Okay, yeah. And Rodrigo does say, I'm sorry, at the end of it. Oh, that's a really nice choice for those. Definitely. No way. I think that's wonderful. An incredibly laboured route to a below-par pun is what we live for.
15:32What about a fact here, Joe Handley? Here's one from you. This was brilliant, actually.
15:37Andy Dawson:So, Dmitry Shostakovich, maybe one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.
15:44Anna Ptaszynski:Russian heavy duty. Heavy duty, yes. Second World War inspired. Absolutely, yeah. Bear that in mind. Not a laugh a minute. Could soundtrack your anecdotes, actually. All right, let's be careful about anecdote digs, okay? Whose soundtrack is yours? John Cage.
16:06Shostakovich went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the premiere in 1972. Brilliant. He absolutely loved it. He said it was so good he wished he'd composed it himself.
16:15Andy Dawson:yes yeah and I God I hope Angeloid Webber is listening to this because that's got to be the best moment of his life or actually maybe it wouldn't surprise him isn't that amazing Shostakovich wishes he'd written Jesus Christ Superstar
16:28Anna Ptaszynski:well maybe you come out of it with your feet tapping in a way that you don't out of I can't name any Shostakovich I'm afraid go on
16:34Andy Dawson:piano concerto number three prelude in D well that's I mean gosh I wouldn't even put it in and you'll like Weber's top five. Do you know, neither would I.
16:48Anna Ptaszynski:That's so funny.
16:50Andy Dawson:But maybe Shostakovich never heard Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcast. Okay, here is another one from LucasSH, or LucasSH. And Lucas says, Hi, everyone. My fact is that Karl Marx was first cousins with Gerard Phillips, the founder of the Phillips Company of Toothbrush fame. That's good. Is Philips a famous toothbrush company? Is it?
17:18Anna Ptaszynski:Anna. I think of them as making Walkmans. If you ever brushed your teeth, you wouldn't know. I've got to start.
17:24Andy Dawson:I do believe the only company that makes Walkmans is Sony. By definition. Sorry, you're right. You're absolutely right.
17:33Anna Ptaszynski:They're going to sue me now. James, you have just avoided a crisis level email event in the inbox. That was stunning. I've never been more grateful.
17:41Andy Dawson:so this guy gerard phillips his paternal grandmother was sophie presberg and she was a sister of henriette presberg who was carl marx's mother oh wow um so actually it might be once removed perhaps oh sure um but yeah marx didn't really get on with his mum because he was going off spending loads of money in his student days i think i remember this didn't she she was really pissed off with him about it she thought he was a useless yeah and also she was worried about him and she said you must avoid everything that can make things worse you must not get overheated you must not drink a lot of wine or coffee or eat anything pungent or eat pepper or other spices you must not smoke any tobacco must not stay up late in the evening and you must always rise early wow uh and basically he just kept asking for money asking for money and then they fell out and then in fact no one in his family went to his wedding ouch really yeah i don't know whether he would have been hanging out with the head of the Phillips company because the families kind of didn't hang out together that much.
18:42Anna Ptaszynski:It feels unlikely that he would have been hanging out with big business. Yeah. Or they wouldn't have agreed on much. No. But maybe on dental hygiene. I mean, that should be for everyone. Do you think that's one of those things? They can agree. At family Christmas, stick to teeth. Everyone agrees we all want nice teeth. And we all deserve nice teeth. Blossing for the people. Yes. And if you don't have a tooth, someone else should give their tooth to you. No, stop, Carl. Everyone should have the same number of teeth. I got one last one from Doug Steen from Fort Collins. Very American, the correspondence today.
19:19Anna Ptaszynski:I don't plan it. You'll be staggered to hear. But this is about a place called King County in Washington State. Who do you think it's named after? Martin Luther. Martin Luther. Oh, how interesting. It's named for Martin Luther King Jr. but Martin Luther King Jr. was born 77 years after it was named King County.
19:38Andy Dawson:So they were previously named after a guy called George King who was a gold prospector or something but then later on they retconned it. Bingo.
19:46Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, it was originally named after William Rufus Devan King who was the vice president briefly and not very well and then he died after about 45 days in the job and he was a slave owner. Oh, well, good. I know
20:01Andy Dawson:That was a real rollercoaster
20:04Anna Ptaszynski:I really took you on the tragic path You know what, he wasn't a great guy So yeah, he was apparently one of the worst Vice presidents of all time He never did anything vice presidential You know, all those important jobs that the vice president has to do And also, another thing The only other detail I found about him Is that he wore powdered wigs long after they'd gone out of fashion So if you didn't already hate him for owning 500 slaves The powdered wigs thing really put the tin lid on it So he was king and it was named King County after him and then it was renamed after Martin Luther King. That's good.
20:32Anna Ptaszynski:How brilliant. What a slap in the face for Rufus. Absolutely.
20:35Andy Dawson:They could always just name it after another king in the future like King Prince Charles
20:41Anna Ptaszynski:or like Stephen King. Oh, that's a good idea.
20:44Andy Dawson:It'd be great if you were called like Smith County and you just changed it every few months. To the most fashionable Smith at the time.
20:52Anna Ptaszynski:And what you're saying is that Martin Luther King's reputation is apparently going to take a massive nosedive and it'll be necessary to say, what about Stephen King? You never know who's going to get cancelled Do you?
21:03Anna Ptaszynski:Okay On that note I think I have a clue who's going to get cancelled next James We should have some We should dish out some Facts to our new friends of the podcast So if you go to Patreon.com slash Clubfish and you sign up to Clubfish At the highest tier, the friend of the podcast Tier, you can get A fact from our archive, one of our headline facts dedicated to you forever. You can become its custodian and keeper. And we're going to dish out a load of those now. So let's get cracking. Who has a fact that they would like to give out?
21:37Andy Dawson:Okay, I think I've got one. The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. It was bought by a man who collected broken laser pointers. And that is now under the custodianship of Robert Fink. This guy must have thought all of his Christmases had come at once. like he just goes on ebay thinking i wonder what's on here and he finds the one thing that he collects it was the best day of dan triber's life he says to this day yeah that's wonderful great fact what about a fact here for thomas welch um i bestow this one upon you and that is that when alexander fleming's neighbors foiled a burglary at his house as a thank you gift he gave them some mold brilliant but it's alexander fleming so it's So penicillin mould?
22:22It was indeed penicillin mould because it's Alexander Fleming. So it's not just like anyone giving you mould.
22:27Andy Dawson:Yeah, it's celebrity mould. It was celebrity mould, yeah. And I think...
22:32Anna Ptaszynski:That's the format. Sorry. Is it? We've cultured moulds from a random body sample taken from these celebrities and you've got to match them up.
22:41Andy Dawson:And then you turn it into sourdough bread and you taste the bread and see if you can guess which celebrity it is. Exactly.
22:46Anna Ptaszynski:Is this Bradley Walsh? Is it? Bradley Walsh. Bradley Walsh. Bread pit Okay Now we're cooking Now we cook Yeah It's about to be The centenary of that It was 1928 That he Discovered penicillin Wow Great So be prepared For a lot of
23:06Andy Dawson:Are we gonna have Like big sort of Street parties in London Where everyone Gets a lot of mould Yeah maybe Yeah I think we should You only get invited If you're a fun guy Completely different Let's have another fact
23:20Anna Ptaszynski:This one goes out
23:21Andy Dawson:I'm pooey.
23:22Anna Ptaszynski:I'm really sorry. Let's go on to a fact. Let's go on to a fact for Grey Crainac or Crainac. Your fact is the earliest known ice cream recipe suggests flavoring with poo. I don't remember this. It's a cheeky, isn't it? We do cheeky things with a fact. It's whale poo. Oh, was it ambergris?
23:45Andy Dawson:Ambergris. That's not cheeky at all. No, it's not. It's still poo. It's still poo? Is it not normally vomit? That's a good point. Does it come out of their mouths, not their bottoms? I think it comes out of both, but I think vomit is more common.
23:57Anna Ptaszynski:That's true. It is also poo. Ambergris is also poo. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is it? Because I always want to pronounce it ambergris, but I feel like... I call it ambergris. You call it ambergris. Who knows? It's not common enough to have too many emails. Not to have an argument about, no. It's fine. Fine either way. I love a fast spot.
24:14Andy Dawson:Okay, very cool. I've got another one here. another one from the lower regions and it goes now to Jake McCann. Jake your fact is the dog pee makes streetlights collapse I remember this one. Yeah and this is basically dogs weeing on streetlights and them getting more and more weak because of the urea.
24:40Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah and the only way to solve it is to wee on the other side?
24:45Andy Dawson:No I think the way to do it is to not allow dogs to wee on lampposts. But I mean, it's hard to stop, isn't it? That's hard to stop, yeah. And it does feel like you're going to know if it's on the brink of collapse, aren't you? It's not like one day, it would have to be a very acidic dog wee, I reckon, for it to be just a new, brand new street lamp and it just keels over.
25:02Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, that's true. So here's another fact. And this is the fact that after the button was invented, it took more than a thousand years for someone to invent the button hole. And I am going to give this fact to Sean Tobin Murphy, a fantastic fact. That's a classic, I'd say. It's a classic fish fact. It's really, there are certain formats that various facts fit into and that's of the format it took loads of years for someone to invent the hole in the basket.
25:27Andy Dawson:Like the tin was invented 200 years before the tin opener. Yes. And everyone just had full tins of sweet corn and didn't know what to do with them or something. So many completely avoidable famines. Terrible.
25:41Anna Ptaszynski:Stop putting it in tins.
25:43Andy Dawson:But yeah, like with the buttons, it's like they had a loop of cotton or something that you put the button in.
25:48Anna Ptaszynski:Like a duffel coat. Right, like a cool design feature. Yeah.
25:52Andy Dawson:And also a buttonhole is a specific, you know, it has to be strengthened around the hole, right? It's not just a hole. It's not just a slit. You can't just cut it. Yeah, a little known fact. Yeah, yeah.
26:04Anna Ptaszynski:That's where I've been going wrong. I'll close the rags. I just insert a buttonhole everywhere. Yeah, yeah. Should we have another? Yeah. This one goes out to Tom Dix. And the fact is, as a baby, St. Nicholas refused to drink his mother's breast milk on fast days. His holiness. So good. Love this fact. I mean, it's really dangerous for a newborn baby to go a whole day without breast milk. Yep. It's really silly. It was on Wednesdays and Fridays. Twice, two days a week. I think he did it in the evening. He allowed himself to break his fast. Did he? I presume that was absolutely ravenous. Yeah. Yeah.
26:41Also her breasts by the end of the day will be very turgid. Very uncomfortable for the mother.
26:46Anna Ptaszynski:Right. It doesn't sound like it's good for anyone really. But that's fasting. You know, you've got to show devotion.
26:51Andy Dawson:Do you reckon he cheats like a lot of people who fast do?
26:53Anna Ptaszynski:What, have a... Just a little suck on the boob.
26:58Andy Dawson:When his mom's not lucky.
27:01Anna Ptaszynski:Definitely. Lord St. Nick. Is that Father Christmas St. Nicholas? How many St. Nicholases are there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just imagining Father Christmas sucking on his mother's teeth.
27:11Andy Dawson:I don't think he had a beard in those days. That would be very uncomfortable.
27:18Anna Ptaszynski:When was he around?
27:21Andy Dawson:What, St. Nicholas?
27:22Anna Ptaszynski:I don't know, third-ish century or fourth or something?
27:26Andy Dawson:Okay, so what I'm asking is, did the ho-ho-hos come before pros or before hoes? I see.
27:34Anna Ptaszynski:Right. St. Nicholas was born in 270 AD. Okay, so we go pros, hoes, ho-ho-hos. Now we're cooking.
27:40Andy Dawson:Got it. Lovely. Lovely. Glad we established that. Okay, here's my last one for the day, and this now goes under the custodianship of Zarko Naritz. And Zarko, your headline fact is, when Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs. So sweet. It makes you warm to him.
28:08Anna Ptaszynski:Presidential handovers were nicer back in the day, weren't they, then I'm going to have you locked up. No, I'm going to have you locked up. Well, I've pardoned myself. Eat it. Okay, one more. One more. And here is one for Beth. Just Beth. And this, Beth, is that Las Vegas hosts an awards ceremony for people who make awards. Love it. So good. Fantastic. Of course, because there's an awards ceremony for everything, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. And we said at the time there are different categories. There's best trophy and best plaque. Yeah, really good. what list of celebrity do you think you'd have to be to be asked to make the after dinner speech at that award ceremony I don't think you're going to get it Anna I'm sorry I'm really sorry I think maybe a bit of profile raising and you could get there but I think oh right well look that's it that's another episode of Little Fish so soon so soon if you have a fact for us that you'd like us to read out on the show just email it to podcast at qi.com we read every single one they're all brilliant They're so much fun to read I've made my point Are they all brilliant?
29:12Anna Ptaszynski:No, they're not all brilliant But your fact will be So send it to podcast at qi.com No, it's so wonderful hearing from everyone If you've got something for Drop Us A Line Or Audience Feedback Show It's the same email address Podcast at qi.com So we'll see you there And we'll see you again in a few days For another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish Bye for now
29:37Thank you.
From the publisher
Anna, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts including beards, barrels, scissors and Shostakovich. Andy explains why he is the true man of the people. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians.
Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.
Edited by James Harkin
Produced by Leying Lee
Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia
