Little Fish: Swallowing A Fabergé Egg

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1:42Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray. I'm joined by Dan Schreiber and Anna Tuzinski. and we are here with some of your best facts from the last seven days. That's the whole intro. I like it. This is my first time and I'm wowed. Something to know, Andy's very good at intros. I've heard that. And that was a prime example. Well, the outros are where I shine. But anyway, let's get on. Does anyone have an audience fact they'd like to bring to the table? Yeah, I've got one here. This is from Cara Eaton. And this is my first little fish fact, so it has to be really good, Cara.

2:18and it's the fact that up until 1999, the state of Montana didn't have speed limit signs along their highways. The sign simply said, drive what is reasonable and prudent. I like that. Treat the public like grownups and I'm sure they won't take the piss. What kind of debate do you have with the cop that's pulled you over when they don't think that you have been driving? Well, I think that's an interesting conversation, isn't it? It was raining, but my tyres are very good, sir. I was in a hurry. I've only had one drink. My wife is giving birth. I'm celebrating early. But every police car is followed by a philosopher car.

2:57That's the nice thing. And you talk about what is prudence. I wonder what the most unbelievable amount of excuses were in one single car that was speeding. A wife in labour. There were bees in the back. A brick fell on the accelerator. Well, you don't need excuses. There is no limit. I would question, Cara, the wording. Drive what is reasonable and prudent. It's very Cockney, East London. Drive what is reasonable. So I'm not sure that's exactly what they read. But anyway, it's true. I've checked it. And it was actually because there was a famous 55 mile an hour speed limit in America. what a snooze between the 70s and the 90s because of the oil crisis.

3:41Oh, really? Yeah, so Nixon imposed, I know it could come again. Look forward to that. Yes. Coming back. All electric car drivers will be allowed to go at 300 miles an hour. But then it was revoked in 1995 and Montana said, okay, we've forgotten how to do speed limits, proper speed limits. So we'll just say drive however fast you like. Yeah, that's almost like if it was to do with the gas, it's drive at a patriotic speed. One that will not disrupt the system around you. Nice. Very nice. That's great. Well done, Cara. Yeah. Let's have another. Yeah. Okay. Well, this one is from Mary Campbell, who says movie actor Robert Redford, who was born in 1936, was a pallbearer for liver-eating Johnson, a man who died in the year 1900.

4:27Can we guess what he died of? Give it a go. I'm going to have a punt at raw liver. incorrect oh yeah you missed the bigger headline here which is that uh how was a man born in 1936 burying a man who died in 1900 oh yeah completely passed me by um i've got a guess guess it a long delayed funeral it was a nightmare to organize yeah absolutely guests have to come from a long way away exactly and then before you know 45 years have passed yeah yeah canapes do you have liver is No, what it was is that this was quite a famous American. This was a guy called John Liver-Eating Johnston, or Johnson, but he was really Garrison.

5:11So he was born Garrison, he changed his name to Johnston, but then the newspapers misprinted his name as Johnson. So he's sort of got three names. I feel like we're focusing on the wrong element of his name to really drill down into. Well, it's just a very confusing story because this is one of those characters who's sort of stuck in myth, you know. he became famous because his obituary came out and everyone found out about him but he didn't die for another 20 years after his obituary came out what yeah sorry can we quickly talk about the liver eating thing i know this is elephant in the room okay dan this is the most confusing way we could possibly introduce it's really easy okay a man born in 1936 buried a man who died in 1900 whose name was either garrison johnson or johnston and he became famous in America 20 years before he died because his obituary was released.

5:58What are you not getting? Why was he famous? No further questions. Okay, so his obituary was accidentally released 20 years before he died. And yes, you wouldn't write an obituary for someone unless they were already famous. No, that's not true. Because there are lots of people when you read the Times obituaries who you go, wow, how did I never hear about this person? They may have been famous in their own field it's never someone who's just done nothing you never have the obituary big full page in the times empty space absolutely born lived died so had he done anything uh yeah i think john liver eating johnston had done something at her yeah he ate livers uh so this was because james edits this show and he's not on it's just incredible to see you laying this massive bear trap for him so early on as well he was an american frontiersman and he became famous because these myths went around about him that he was killing a lot of native americans of one particular tribe and uh it was in revenge of the fact that they had murdered his wife and the idea was that he would kill them and he would remove their liver and supposedly it was 300 of them that he'd done this with right and this became a big myth about him that kind of got spread around America.

7:15Was he liked or it doesn't sound like a good? No, but also it's kind of a, it's a weird myth because interviewers and biographers have looked into it and they say actually it was all myth and actually he was friends with that tribe and they shared liver with him from other animals, you know, so he was a good friend of theirs. But he became particularly famous because Robert Redford starred in a movie about his life, telling this story. And at the time that that was happening, there was a school, a middle school in America, and the teacher was telling the story of this guy who had died penniless and he died in an area of san diego where he was basically buried under a freeway but he'd said he'd love to be buried in the rockies so there was a big push to have him reburied and as a result robert redford was a pallbearer because he'd played him in the film yeah exactly and he had to carry the coffin from his original burial place to the rockies it's a long distance yeah so what i said at the start like long delayed funeral we could have just said yes to that and um no you can't just leave it at that can you i mean it was general enough that no fair enough stunning yeah i still i still don't feel like we got to the bottom of it really interesting no i do okay here's one from john lariche uh and john writes i was talking with a friend who works in the pool and technology industry she sells pool related technology okay like swimming pool or water pools um she says one of their biggest clients is kerberg nuclear power station here in the western cape of south africa my fact is that kerberg nuclear power station uses kamikaze scuba rumbas to help clean the water that's been used in the reactor so these are vacuum cleaners yeah water vacuum clean wet vacuum cleaners because you get wet or dry ones don't you yeah um and the filter units they have are unable to filter out really small radioactive particles so these scuba diving underwater vacuum cleaners robots are sent in to just filter the water and they're doomed because obviously it's radioactive they will break and apparently this is a really common solution for nuclear reactor maintenance hang on so they just clean as much as they possibly can before they eventually expire and then they're radioactive and then they have to be buried with the radioactive waste.

9:29And Robert Redford always is the pool bearer. Always, yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Sellafield has a load of, they found an old radioactive vacuum cleaner that was buried at Sellafield after an accident there. Yeah, it's quite, it's just a common thing. It's like kitchen roll, isn't it? Yeah. Once you use the kitchen roll, you have to throw away the kitchen roll. No, I put it back onto the perforation. That's so horrible. That's so horrible. You sellotape it. I do, yeah. Yeah, hang it out to dry. Oh, good to see that there's an underwater vacuum cleaner now. You going to invest? Well, I should be dead for what I did about two years ago.

10:06What did you do? I had a broken washing machine and I managed to get the door open, but there was a pool of water underneath. And I don't know what I was thinking, but I thought I'll vacuum it out. And Fenella saw me and quickly explained that. Your wife shouting, you suck from the doorway. you can get wet slash dry vacuum cleaners as in they can do both they're amphibious yes nice that was the big revelation for me researching this fact yeah that's great why I can't work out what I'd use that for if my bath if the bath is dirty but there's someone in it at the time so I can't empty it I mean maybe that yeah that's really that's really passive aggressive cleaning isn't it no we love having you over no please feel at home but I just invited you for lunch and now you're in my bath

10:53Okay, another fact. A fact for you from Paul Bernard. A fact for you, he says, related to an older segment you did about haiku poetry. So old that I remember that. The Northern California town of Ukiah hosts an annual haiku festival. Can you guys guess why? Big Japanese population. No. Okay. Ukiah. Is this nanogram? Well, it's a nanogram. It's a nanogram. Yeah. Yeah, of festival. Of haiku. Of haiku. Of haiku. Nice. Yes, but that's not why it's called that. It's named after a village, Native American village, the Pomo people called Yokaya. But I guess they thought, you know what? We're almost an anagram of haiku.

11:35So let's do it. They have a haiku festival. Is it a palindrome? It's a palindrome, yeah. Nice. Hold on. No, no, it's not a palindrome. No. What do you mean? It's haiku backwards. But I don't even know if there's a word for what this is. A reverse. It's, yeah. Wrong way round. wrong way around the word wrong way around the word because amigam is just you scramble the words that's no big deal isn't that butchers speak in Australia when they speak a word the wrong way around yes we did this on Fish a long time ago and we had Susie Denton talking about it where they speak they speak backwards that's difficult to confuse customers okay to lure them into buying poor low quality meat I just thought that wouldn't tempt me at all I think you'd gone mad this meat is wriggling with Tomags

12:18should we have another uh letter this is from alex from manchester who says on top of kok tobe which is one of the highest points of the city center of almaty in kazakhstan stands a monument to the beatles that's very nice do they play kazakhstan they never played kazakhstan and this is an interesting point i guess that alex is trying to make that qi or no such thing as a fish once covered that the furthest point on earth from the ocean is in Urumqi on the Kazakhstan Chinese border otherwise known as the Eurasian pole of inaccessibility and this is a mere few hundred kilometers from Cocteau Bay in Almaty I'm going to claim that Cocteau Bay is the Beatles pole of inaccessibility being the furthest point that a Beatles monument exists from a performance by any beetle um lovely yeah and they've said I'm open to being corrected and I had a quick look.

13:08Paul McCartney did play the Red Square. He did play Russia. So it's still a great distance, but I don't know whether or not there's anywhere closer. Did they go down under, the Beatles? Just as really obvious. Absolutely, they did. But without Ringo. So if you're missing a Beatle, does that count? Did he not go? What the hell? The other three of them went. Yeah, and they had another drummer come in who was not Pete Best. It was a different one. Yeah. Did anyone notice? yeah yeah they were they were pretty famous at the time I just thought it was just a slam on Ringo's yeah but this was do you know what this was this was largely Kazakhstan trying to say that the Beatles have had an extraordinary influence on Kazakhstan generally people would have started learning English because they were listening to Beatles records and so this was done I think in about 2007 that this monument was put up and it was also put up because they were trying to fix the reputation of Kazakhstan from the damage that Borat had done and the perception.

14:08I've got to say, a Beatles monument thousands of miles from anywhere they ever play does sound like the sort of thing you would set up, Dan. In much the same way that your, where was it? Your Laurel and Hardy themed ice cream parlor in Kosovo. In Kosovo. You missed this, Anna. What? We'll tell you later. You don't need to. Here's a great one from Cash Howard. The fact is, the tokotukan's beak can comprise up to half the total surface area of its body. Imagine the surface area of a toukan. Yeah. A tokotukan. You've got me on the subspecies there, I'm not. It's the one with the really, really big beak.

14:47Oh, okay. It could be just like a really... 50%. But it could be that this toucan has a really spiky beak. It's not that it's wrinkled. Oh, okay. Birds' beaks tend not to be wrinkled. It's hard. It's going to be hard, the beak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please write in if you know a bird with an amazingly wrinkled beak. But basically, what they use it for, it's so cool. It's partly for heat transfer. So it gets obviously very hot in the tropical environments where they live. And it uses it to pump heat out into the surrounding area. So it's got this network of blood vessels under the surface. And it just radiates heat out away from it.

15:21Kind of like elephants do with their ears or that kind of thing. It's basically a massive radiator. they can pump out 400 % of the heat that they are generating if they're overheating. So if you touch their beak it would be noticeably hot if it was a very hot day. I guess it would, yeah. You could use them as radiators, couldn't you? You could hang your socks on the beak of a toucan. You could. They don't like that though, it's very disrespectful. It is. Points available for whoever can guess the newspaper headline that I read when this scientific study was done and discovered. Toucan play. Yeah, that's what I was going for.

15:56That's not bad. No, it's not good though. A bird with a big air conditioning bill. Yeah. I don't think I would have got there ever. Well, it's your first show back. Yeah, I'm rusty.

16:14Spring has sprung and big savings are in full bloom at Menards. Visit Menards Garden Centre for everything you need to get your garden growing. Choose from hundreds of beautiful, colourful flowers. lush trees and shrubs and everything in between menards garden center is back in bloom stop in today to get your garden on check out fresh deals happening now at menards

16:46i'll give you guys a fact this is from chris lock and it's a baseball fact he says it's another baseball fact i don't know if you've had one from him before but his fact this time is that the first recorded mention of the game baseball was actually in Guildford, not in America. And it's in the diary of a guy called William Bray of Shear. Wow. And yeah, it's very cool. And he sent a link. So I read it, went to the trouble of reading it. And he did say I'm biased towards this fact because I help run Guildford Baseball Club. And it's nice to think with the home of baseball globally. And still, I'd say the Mecca for baseball fans.

17:19I've been to Guildford and I know that's why I went. It's in the UK, it's worth saying. For a lot of overseas people, we're saying it's not in America. it's not far we've played Guilford have we? we sure have years ago it's lovely Guilford actually it's nice nice bookshop yeah oh yes I do remember Guilford now and home of baseball of course that's why we played there and it's in a diary entry from the 31st of March 1755 it's on Easter Monday and Mr Bray says played baseball with a space between baseball with a group of people having visited Stoke Church in the morning drank tea stayed till 8 weather cloudy so life has sort of not changed in england cloudy weather guildford anyway yes um i will say actually it's not the first instance of baseball in this country because another one was found in 2019 in walton on thames in surrey again in the uk and that was from 1749 wow and that's but instead of a bat at the time you use the palm of your hand to bat the ball oh those are hard balls to hit a yeah i think the balls were a bit softer then but still i don't think it's going as far is it and largely the same rules a diamond i don't think they specified they were mostly commenting on the tea and the cake and stuff um yeah sure i go on here from melissa whitcomb who says i've got a fact about sniffing feet according to the guinness world records madeline albrecht from the usa has sniffed around 5 600 feet and plenty of armpits in her career of 15 years working at a foot care and footwear firm in Cincinnati, USA.

18:51And I looked, I went into it and it's true. This is a Guinness World Record. It's a very loosey-goosey Guinness World Record. They can't have observed that happening. And also it says she sniffed approximately 5 ,600 feet and an indeterminate number of armpits, which doesn't feel like something... It's not scientific. No, but what it does sound like to me is something beatable. And Anna, you and I are former Guinness World Record holders. I'm okay you sure? I think there must be something else out there sniffing flowers? maybe we'll still do it as a team but you can just be the witness to me doing the sniffs I'd absolutely love to do that who's going to provide the armpits?

19:31have you got a ready supply? your patient's zero I guess swimming pools and saunas and gyms there'll be a few bare feet around yeah go sniffing around there yeah with your clicker I live by the beach I just need to go for walks yeah or crawls you've got to get up close oh well that's lovely yeah thank you Melissa yeah it's an appetising one to end on okay that is all of your facts and now it's time for our facts to be issued to you if you have joined Clubfish our exclusive members club at the friend of the podcast here then you get one of our headline facts allocated to you in perpetuity and so we're going to dish out a few of those now Let's kick off with one going out to Grammarien And the fact is Before trains had corridors Guards had to climb along the outside of the carriage To check your ticket This is one of mine I think This was from a book, I think it was called The Railways By Simon Bradley and it's an absolute stunner Of a book, it's so good And it's about the insane history of early It's about railways But these early trains, the guard would just have to Clamber the outside There was a train.

20:44I wonder what speeds. And you were locked in your carriage sometimes as well? They were low speeds, I guess. It wasn't like being on a bullet train. Like crawling past Tom Cruise, who's having a fight on the roof. It wasn't like that, I think. But yeah, it was pretty scary, I reckon. It would be. Any speed is scary if you're grabbing the outside of a train. Yeah. This one's for Hannah Marie Christensen. And this is that in the 1990s, Tonga's official finance minister was also its official court jester. oh i remember this this was so long ago this is vintage all of these are going to be vintage just heads up well it'll be interesting to see when i stop saying that was so long ago won't it wasn't he quite a questionable character it turned out he committed some fraud yes or he certainly did a lot of dubious investing and then fled the country but we make it sound in our headline fact like it's just a really fun light thing and not a big criminal which is what we do That's what we do We trivialize crime Yeah Yeah That's how I see myself Should we have another?

21:46Yeah Archie Craig This one goes out to you And the fact is that Kaiser Wilhelm once lost a valuable arms contract for Germany Because he slapped the king of Bulgaria on the bottom Yes This is yours Anna This is one of mine Yeah Yeah he was just a bit of a lad A bit of a Jack the Lad Yeah And I can't I think he I don't think they were having an argument, were they? I think he was just inappropriate. Exactly. I think he was just incredibly inappropriate with everyone around him and he didn't know how to behave. Yeah. Yeah. And we've all met people like that. Yeah. No names being mentioned. Obviously.

22:22But she was looking at Andy. Yeah, I know. Yeah, we did a whole thing about Kaiser Wilhelm, who was eccentric. Yes, he was amazing, wasn't he? Yeah. Also commander-in-chief of the Royal Dragoons at the start of the First World War. Was he? Yeah. and was quickly demoted from that job. There's a conflict of interest there, obviously, in that he would have been fighting on our side if he'd turned up. Oh, yes. Why was he commander-in-chief of the Royal Dragoon? Because they were cousins, weren't they? They were all cousins. Oh, you give your cousins something you don't expect to go to war with him a year later kind of thing.

22:52It's the king, the Kaiser, and the Tsar, I think, might have all been cousins. Yeah, okay. It was incredibly awkward anyway. Yes. Here's another one. This one goes out to Tom. Tom. Tom, Tom. Tom, your fact is signs saying beware of pickpockets attract pickpockets. I love this one. And it's because people see the sign, they pat their pockets, they go, ah, there's my Fabergé egg. And then the pickpocket sees that and can just have it. Did you mention Fabergé because of that story recently? No. Did you not see that? A woman who, for her job, for some reason, she had to be custodian of a Fabergé egg for 24 hours or something, took it home in her handbag left her handbag on the floor in a pub or something and then a pickpocket just wanged it away we must have got home opened the handbag and thought what's this piece of tat oh no thought I've overshot here I'm now going to be the subject of an international manhunt I just wanted someone's bag yes that was an incredible story extraordinary I want to hear the conversation with her boss the following day I thought someone had swallowed one what?

23:56no I haven't seen that story I haven't seen Fabstix no because they're big aren't they in my head The police were waiting for him to lay it. You know, there was a... Dan, I think you've created... You've seen this in a cartoon. I dream this. No, you're thinking of... You're thinking of... Someone was fed bananas in India so that they would shit out a bunch of something that they eat drugs. Emeralds or rubies or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that was many years ago. I think Dan is... Completely different, yeah. Dan is saying something like valiant effort to try and get Dan off the hook. It doesn't work.

24:26Weirdly, I saw a separate Fabergé egg story recently. Oh, yeah. Which was, I read the book about Prince Andrew Oh yeah, big fan I just love the guy And I just want to get some life tips No, he was touring Russia And I think accounts of the visit Were just that he was shown around You know, this is when relations were better And there wasn't a war on and all of this And he was just, not that that would stop him Anyway, he was just visiting And he was being shown around somewhere Like the Hermitage or one of the, you know The royal palaces with the collection of stuff And apparently he was just heavily, heavily hinting That he'd love to be given a Faberge egg He'd love to own a Faberge egg one day I was just trying to get a free Faberge egg Outrageous Try your luck The more I hear about this guy Right let's have another one This one goes out to Ryan Jackson Ryan Jackson your fact is now that No one is quite sure How to say Louis Armstrong Or Louis Armstrong Are we not?

25:24No and we did it on the show So basically, this was one of my facts. And I was reading the fact that no one, including his wife, was quite sure which version of it was. It changed all the time. If he was announced on a show, it was one version. There's multiple versions, I believe, of him saying it in different ways. So there just wasn't one agreed version. Oh, that's great. I love that. Yeah. Here's another one. This one goes out to Grumbert. The man with the Guinness World Record For the lowest voice Can hit notes so low Only elephants can hear him Okay I'm gonna go sniff those feet over You create a distraction Who's got the lowest voice out of the four of us?

26:08I think you or me But the question is who can go low Give me a lowest That's pretty low You can't just put a silly accent on And make it lower Weirdly you're acting like the silly accent Is going to help you get those depths Well it does because it helps bend your mouth into places Oh there we go it's Anna Do it This is a fact for Steph Delory The first thing was a parliament And it was the old thing In Iceland it's been going since the 10th century This is one of James's wasn't it It was James's The word thing that's where we get the word thing right It's from that parliament And it's become meaningless enough to just mean thing now is that one of the many claims to have been the first parliamentary democracy i think it was wasn't it yeah i think it must have been and we did a load of stuff about icelandic horses do you remember this yeah because are they the ones that have the special trots as well icelandic horses i think have a special way of trotting where they trot with their feet the other way around to normal horses something like that that sounds that sounds plausible yes i think they do and it's got a special name like twerting or something like that what we find and you'll find as we do more little fishes and it is that it's amazing what you do and don't remember yeah it's amazing like dan's story of the guy who swallowed a famish egg and the police were waiting for him to lay it you'll find that your mind is foggier than you thought when we're dealing with something we researched for like one day 10 years ago it turns out it can go anywhere yeah the difference is is that i immediately got picked up on it until you told that story about how we've got missed memories you basically accepted anna's premise that their horses have backward legs like they trot on one side of their body then the other they're always falling over yeah something like that anyway have that fact lovely uh let's have one more yeah here's the final fact this goes to bronwyn one of the largest majorities in a brazilian election was won in 1958 by a rhino called Kakareko.

28:09Kakareko. I remember Kakareko. Do you? Yeah. Still serving? It's been a while since we did this fact. Yeah, you'd think it was just a protest vote, but no, he just had a very strong campaign. Workers' rights, sorting out immigration. Yeah, everyone hated the current leaders, didn't they? Why don't we do more of that here, putting animals up for election? That would be fun, wouldn't it? I think that would have made the latest council elections in Britain more entertaining. Yeah. Would you have voted for a rhino if there'd been one on your ballot paper, regardless of party? I don't think I would.

28:44Okay. Killjoy. But I'm just trying to remember the details of this fact. I think kakareko means rubbish. Yeah, it does. But I don't think that was a part of the electoral pitch. I don't think the pitch was, I'm a rubbish candidate. Okay. I think it was, I'm a rhino and you hate all the humans. Okay. Yeah, you're right, actually, Anna. I mean given the choice I probably would vote for a rhino there you go yeah what's the headline we did the the beak air conditioner he'll give you the horn and that's what you want is it from your elected politician slightly too sexy I regret I regret I regret saying that as a slogan I've got it to be a politician you need thick skin yes very good yeah yeah that's it that is it and I'll give you the whore that's the scandal that makes he leave office that's when we take the rubbish out okay that is it that is all of your facts if you would like to have a fish headline fact dedicated to you from now and forevermore all you need to do is go to patreon.com slash club fish even if you don't want to sign up to be a friend of the podcast there is so much fun stuff on there there's a free tier where you get little extra videos and goodies and all sorts of bonus material and there's all sorts of other stuff on there patreon.com slash clubfish and if you would like to submit a fact to be on little fish in future just email podcast at qi.com we read absolutely every single one we love receiving them so podcast at qi.com is the email to send it to that's it from us we'll see you in a few days for another episode of no such thing as a fish bye for now

30:30Thank you.