In short
Audience-fact special episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, framed around “your facts” sent in by listeners. It also includes a live-show announcement for the London Podcast Festival (5–6 Sept) featuring Richard Osman (The Rest Is Entertainment) and Jamie Martin (My Dad Wrote a Porno).
Key claims and examples
Neil Armstrong spelled backwards (“Gnaughts/Mr. Alien”) is presented as “proof” alien life exists; a survey claims pangolin hunters in Nigeria consider pangolins the most delicious animal; Star Wars “Huttese” is linked to Quechua-based language bits; a story claims French Guiana’s EU status makes the EU’s largest national park in South America; Conrad Kujau forged the Hitler Diaries and later sold “authentic forgeries” under his own name; a fact about hiccups suggests burping at the first sign can prevent them (with a personal anecdote of a 24-hour hiccup episode). Other segments cover odd etymologies (Philadelphia), historical trivia (Ethelred the Unready insult), and quirky science/wordplay (Wiener sausage; “cybernetic wieners”).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWelcome to the Episode
1:26 to 2:21
Introduction of the show's hosts and the concept of audience fact specials.
First Audience Fact
2:21 to 3:20
A fun fact about beliefs regarding alien life from an audience member.
“Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish.”
Alien Backwards and Conspiracy Theories
3:20 to 7:08
Discussion on a humorous claim regarding Neil Armstrong and aliens.
“This is from Pete Nissen, who says, a computer engineer for the astronomy department at a prestigious US university.”
Understanding Jabba the Hutt
7:08 to 10:28
Exploring the made-up language from Star Wars and its real-world connections.
“Some of the words from Quechua in English, alpaca, condor, guano, lima, as in the beans.”
Historical Figures and Fun Facts
10:28 to 13:04
Sharing amusing facts about historical figures like Dr. Fanny Payne.
“who says that she's sending in a particularly Harkinian fact and I strongly agree.”
The Tasty Pangolin
13:04 to 14:03
Discussion about pangolins being the most trafficked and tasty animals.
“This is from Jakob Vull who starts off possibly too sad but it is funny.”
The Delicious Pangolin
14:03 to 15:09
Discover why the pangolin is considered the tastiest animal by hunters.
“In addition to being extremely tasty, 89 % of them were captured by simply picking them up off the ground.”
Evolution and Human Smell
15:09 to 15:45
Explore the theory that human body odor may have helped us avoid predators.
“So we could be ruining our chances of survival by inventing perfume.”
Philadelphia's Misnamed Legacy
15:47 to 16:13
Learn about the humorous misinterpretation behind Philadelphia's name.
“After the Egyptian city, because they thought it meant brotherly love.”
Inaccurate Facts and Corrections
16:13 to 16:58
The hosts discuss a mistaken fact about Karl Marx's descendant and correct it.
“Are we allowed to mention facts that actually aren't correct?”
Show all 27 chapters
Diane Abbott's Cemetery Date
16:58 to 19:30
A humorous story about Diane Abbott's unusual date with Jeremy Corbyn.
“Either he said it jokingly in an interview once, or it was just put in an interview and it spreads.”
Sumo Wrestling and Safety
19:30 to 21:41
Find out about the unusual transportation rules for sumo wrestlers in Japan.
“She actually got off the train at about...”
Conrad Kujau's Forgeries
21:41 to 24:05
Learn about the life of Conrad Kujau and his infamous Hitler diary forgeries.
“After serving a four-year prison term for forging the Hitler diaries, Conrad Kujau began selling authentic forgeries under his own name.”
The Baptism Experience
24:05 to 25:06
A comical recount of a baptism mishap involving fire and candles.
“Nine years writing this I was born with a tiny moustache For at least 300 years One common insult against a king Was that they had pooed in the font while being baptized.”
The Finch Fact
25:06 to 27:32
Explore an odd fact about a finch named after a person and its connection.
“I'm just thinking of the baptisms that my kids have had, and it's very much water over the head.”
The Ingenious Names in Jazz
27:32 to 28:00
Discover humorous and clever album titles by jazz musician Dick Hyman.
“Dick Hyman Includes the 1966 album I'll Never Be The Same Some of Hyman's other albums include The Sensuous Piano of D and The Man from O-R-G-A-N.”
The Refurbished Payphones and Pat Schlott
28:00 to 29:04
Discussion about refurbished payphones and a humorous take on the name Pat Schlott.
“Molly McInerney writes that an engineer refurbishing and installing old cine-operated payphones, that person's name is Patrick Schlott.”
Facts about French Guiana and its Exports
29:04 to 31:09
Exploration of French Guiana's status as part of France and its surprising facts.
“Anyway, but it is part of France in legal terms.”
Quizzical Insights on Museums and Ancient Egypt
31:09 to 32:03
A dive into interesting facts from museums and ancient Egyptian practices.
“It comes up in quizzes a fair bit, that one.”
The Chiseling of the Herms
32:03 to 33:54
A discussion about ancient Greek statues and their destruction during invasions.
“a message from Jake, who had been to the Kelvin Grove Museum in Glasgow and learned that people would chisel off penises of the gods to use as aphrodisiacs in ancient Egypt.”
An Email About Hiccups
33:54 to 35:25
An email detailing a unique method for stopping hiccups and a personal anecdote.
“Well, I think that was quite common that if you went to a place and you wanted to disfigure their gods you would kind of disfigure their faces but you would also cut off the genitals.”
Leeds and Yorkshire's City Rivalry
35:25 to 37:34
Discussion about the formation of Leeds as a city and local rivalries.
“He said that when he was 13 in school biology, he learned what causes hiccups and he thought, he hypothesized, a way to stop it should be doing a burp as you feel the first hiccup coming.”
The Isle of Man and Unique Local Facts
37:34 to 41:20
Sharing interesting facts about the Isle of Man's history and culture.
“I don't have any really local to me, because I'm from London.”
Jeff the Talking Mongoose and Pilates
41:20 to 42:05
A humorous recount of the story of Jeff the Talking Mongoose and Pilates' origins.
“which is a local town in the Isle of Man.”
The Tale of Jeff the Talking Mongoose
42:05 to 46:01
Discover the bizarre story of a mongoose that captivated media and investigators.
“So it was, yeah, it was quite, there's a great bio on it.”
Inventions and Historical Tidbits
46:01 to 49:42
Learn about unusual inventions and their quirky origins, including Pilates and dog revolvers.
“William Stevenson, the man James Bond was fashioned after, who is from Winnipeg so I think Andy Cumming's from Canada once escaped prison using a can opener.”
Baseball and Quantum Entanglement
49:42 to 51:06
Explore a fascinating fact about a baseball player who played for two teams in one game.
“Do you want to carry on or shall I answer?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish. We have a very exciting announcement for you if you live in London or if you live anywhere else in the world. That should cover most of you, I think.
0:12Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, that's it. If you're on the ISS, I'm sorry, this is not for you. Click forward. We are doing a couple of live shows at the fantastic London Podcast Festival. We're doing them next week, if you're listening to this as it goes out. It's the 5th and 6th of September. It's going to be so much fun We have two unbelievably special guests Do you want to say who they are James? Yeah they are titans of podcasting I would say Doyens of podcasting Grandes dames de podcasting Absolutely They are Richard Osman of the Rest is Entertainment podcast And it's only Blooming Jamie Martin from My Dad Wrote a Pardo The greatest of all the podcasts That's right Richard and Jamie are going to be joining us live on stage and it's going to be so much fun and it's going to be especially fun if you're either in the room or watching the live stream of it because, and this is one for everyone around the world, we're doing a live stream and you get to see all the bits that we edit out of the final show because they're just too darn funny or too rude or too exciting.
1:14Absolutely. And if you are on the ISS but you're coming down the seven days subsequent to the shows that we're doing, then don't worry because the streams will be available to watch for seven days after the live event.
1:25Anna Ptaszynski:Absolutely. absolutely so really this is an entire human species experience um and if you're an animal listening to this if you're a chicken or a monkey or an alligator just ask the nearest human to set you up with a live streaming ticket and they will be able to do that absolutely so um for details about those shows which are on friday the 5th of september and saturday the 6th of september with richard and jamie go to nosuchthingsafish.com slash live and right there you can get tickets to the festival if there's any left and all those lovely lovely live stream tickets brilliant i think i think i think that's it isn't it that's all i have on my list it's me too let's do the show up with the podcast up with the show
2:21Anna Ptaszynski:Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish. This is one of our audience fact specials where we're going to talk about your facts. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray. I'm here in the QI offices in Hoban with Dan Schreiber, Anna Tashinsky and James Harkin. We have gathered around the table with three months worth of crisp, fresh, hot, good audience facts. And we're going to be sharing them with you. And we've had some cracking stuff in the inbox, as we always do.
2:49Dan Schreiber:We have. And you've circulated round to the three of us the choicest cuts.
2:54Anna Ptaszynski:Absolutely. But I haven't verified the stuff I've sent you or done any extra research. This is mostly audience emails without that filtration system.
3:04Dan Schreiber:Well, you never know. We might have verified or done extra research. Depends how diligent we are. Also, listener, listen out to what we're all saying and work out for yourselves. If Andy has kept the choicest cuts to himself.
3:17Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. Why don't you give us a fact to start off with, Andy? Okay, here's a fun one. This is from Pete Nissen, who says, a computer engineer for the astronomy department at a prestigious US university. Sorry, that's who he is.
3:31Dan Schreiber:Jesus Christ. Have you read these?
3:34Anna Ptaszynski:Pete works I think we've got the answer If he's kept the choices guts
3:38James Harkin:Hasn't even read them
3:40Anna Ptaszynski:Pete works at a prestigious US university And is a computer engineer for the astronomy department He says Every single faculty member firmly believes That alien life probably exists But the distances are too big And the laws of physics too rigid for aliens to ever visit Earth Yeah, that's what I think as well Okay However, I've recently come into possession of hard evidence That contradicts this Okay
4:02Dan Schreiber:But you feel like an idiot, James
4:06Anna Ptaszynski:I'm so annoyed that I put my cards on the tables I know So, here's Pete's evidence The first human, in quotes, to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong I agree with that Okay Oh, James Oh, you've done it again Neil Armstrong, spelled backwards, is Gnaughts Mr. Alien That's right Apart from that word gnawts Which doesn't mean anything in our languages Mr. Alien is irrefutable proof As Pete calls it And he's going to be presenting that at the next faculty meeting Well, I gotta say I'm quite glad that I put my cards on the table nice and early now
4:45Dan Schreiber:Sounds like Dan was well versed in this Age old alien backwards Have you heard that before?
4:49James Harkin:Well, I knew Neil A is alien backwards
4:52Dan Schreiber:As in have people talked about that before? Is this all over there?
4:55James Harkin:Yeah, yeah, that's a big thing But it's not used in terms of a conspiracy theory It's just used as like Oh, what a nice coincidence Like Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon. Yeah, exactly. And the third one?
5:06Anna Ptaszynski:Who's the third one? Michael Collins. Michael Collins. Probably can do something with that. Do it at home. Snilock. I read a while ago that the reason we haven't had aliens here yet is because any civilization that can travel throughout a space will necessarily have also created technology that can wipe itself out. Yeah, interesting.
5:27James Harkin:and then there's another theory which is that we always talk about the distance of space but we sometimes forget how much time there has been since the beginning of the universe so you might have had a civilization that got to where we've got to ready to go out spacefaring and then as james says they wipe themselves out and we've just lived two billion years distant from them when they were active and they were ready and they were sending signals to space it's like a rom-com
5:51Anna Ptaszynski:sort of meet cute missing out on each other yeah exactly michael collins does contain all the letters of the word alien, just so you know. I wondered why you weren't paying attention when I said all that stuff. Also, coch mills. Alien coch mills. So... Okay, that's interesting. Are they making bread out of them? My research hasn't revealed that yet. I'll do some more anagrams and work it out. Let's have another fact. Okay, this one is from Jorge Murillo, or George Murillo, and they say that 10 million people in South America can understand Jabba the Hutt.
6:26James Harkin:that's so interesting i assume that was a made-up language so has it been a language that's been adopted uh it's a made-up language called hutties and it's in star wars of course for anyone who doesn't know star wars but it was invented by it was based on a language called quetua which is spoken in south america and there is enough words in quetua that if you're well-versed in that language, you can listen to Star Wars and you pick little bits up. That is so good.
6:56Dan Schreiber:So it's like a dialect? I guess so. Or it's a bit like a Portuguese person in Spain could sort of piece a lot of it together, maybe. Yes, a bit like that. A bit like how if we hear sort of a Dutch person talking, we can kind of pick up bits of it. But it's a different language. I have no idea what they're saying. You see that? That's kind of a thing. What? Wow. Some of the words from Quechua in English, alpaca, condor, guano, lima, as in the beans. It's all quite that part of the world related stuff, isn't it? They haven't given us the word for chow mein. They've sensibly left that to the experts, haven't they?
7:31Dan Schreiber:I suppose so, I suppose. There's quite a few Quechua languages, as in it's like a language group. And one of them is called the Wanka language. Oh, there you go. That feels like your bonus research. It does, yeah, that's from my own files. Because I actually, I was there in South America a while ago, and I bought a football jersey from the team Deportivo Wanker. Oh yeah, of course, that's what they're named after. Yeah, named after these people.
7:58James Harkin:I thought you were going to say, and I kept hearing people call, Wanker! Your guy told you no, it's the local language. Did Jorge say something about his grandparents? He said that they were having lunch one day, he and his sister and his family, and they got to a bit where, and the reason I didn't read this out is because these are people I'd never heard of, Greedo holds Han Solo at gunpoint and almost immediately they kind of looked at each other because they recognised what they were saying. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. You know, Star Wars, I read about the other day.
8:31James Harkin:So the planet where Obi-Wan Kenobi comes from, do you know what it's called? I thought it was called Tatooine. No, so that's where he was based. That's where he lived. Mordor. Yes. It's a crossover we didn't know existed It's called Stu John It's called Stu John because George Lucas Was being interviewed by Jon Stewart Who asked the question, where's Obi-Wan Kenobi from And he said, I don't know, Stu John And so it's officially canon And I don't like that Because George Lucas can just say anything in an interview So it's not in the movies Exactly
9:03Anna Ptaszynski:Hence the question That's a bit like papal infallibility But it's a bit of a curse As in if anything you say becomes canon
9:09Dan Schreiber:yeah you know he's gonna be watch his mouth like nixon's argument you know if the president does it it isn't illegal if i say it it's true well be careful what you say god nixon was the last person to think that do you remember i don't know if we did it but there was a jedi because
9:26James Harkin:there's a big encyclopedia of peripheral characters and they put them all together and someone came up with a new character and called him baits and so it got officially put in as master baits and they missed it the person missed the joke and so that's an official jedi according to the isn't there a type of music called jizz oh yeah that's that's space yeah
9:45Dan Schreiber:space jazz space jazz master baits doing space jazz the pugwash crossover sounds like it's imminent klingon is a language from um not star wars star trek the other one indeed um and i found out the other day that they filmed the first klingon scenes before they'd written the language which, you know, it's quite a complex language. It's one of those quite developed languages. Yeah, so they film the scenes and they just mouth random stuff for the scenes. And then the guy who is one of these special linguists who they bring on to actually write the language afterwards had to make the language match the mouth movements of the initial Klingon speakers.
10:20James Harkin:Wow.
10:20Dan Schreiber:First language ever based on mouthing nonsense. That's really funny. That's really good. Anna, you got a fact? Yep, this is from Hannah Biddle, who says that she's sending in a particularly Harkinian fact and I strongly agree. And I don't know if I approve of it. But here it is. During his career, Rafael Nadal used 300 kilometers of string in 1 ,250 Babalat rackets. Now, she's added those two together for no reason that's really explained. So she's got 1 ,550. And then she says, as we know, Rafa hails from Mallorca. Mallorca to the French Open in Paris is 1 ,208 kilometers. And then Paris to Wimbledon is 340, making the total trip length basically 1 ,550 kilometres.
11:08Dan Schreiber:So that if you add up the... Shouldn't she be multiplying them together? She shouldn't be doing any of this.
11:15Anna Ptaszynski:And that's what we say to you, James, after your fence.
11:19Dan Schreiber:There's no logic to why she's added the number of Babalak rackets to the kilometres of string she's used and then just used the distance from a Yorker to the French, James, to Wimbledon. So the amount of string is the total amount of string as well. Yeah, it's a full length of string. That makes perfect sense, Hannah.
11:34Anna Ptaszynski:Because once you've taken out all the string to measure, then what are you left with? The racket. The number of rackets. So you just have to count the rackets and then you measure out the string end to end.
11:41Dan Schreiber:And then why is Rafa just going from New York to the French Open to Wimbledon? What happened to the Australian Open? You need to go to a whole lot more rackets to get to the Australian Open. Yeah.
11:49James Harkin:Hannah, I appreciate it. It's very strong work, Biddle.
11:53Dan Schreiber:Well done.
Read the full transcript
11:53James Harkin:Very good. I go on here from Becca Nelson. It says, hope you haven't come across this before. the first female dentist in England was called Dr. Payne, middle name Fanny.
12:05Dan Schreiber:Nice.
12:05James Harkin:So Dr. Lily Fanny Payne.
12:07Dan Schreiber:Does sound like gynecology was the area that she should have gone into. Yeah.
12:11James Harkin:Well, I did Google to find out more about her. A little heads up for anyone wanting to do the same. Put quote marks around the name because you do come up with some interesting stuff. She's 1895. She was studying to become a dentist and it wasn't allowed in England. So she went to Scotland and everyone was saying, you can't become a dentist. You're taking the bread out of some good man's mouth. You can't do this.
12:33Anna Ptaszynski:But that's where she was looking for the bread in the first place.
12:37James Harkin:So yeah, so she studied there. She built up a huge debt, came back to England, was allowed to become a doctor. So Dr. Lily Fanny Payne. And she spent the first number of years of her job paying off the debt that she accrued from going to Scotland.
12:51Dan Schreiber:Welcome to being a student and then getting a job, Fanny. that's what happens if you didn't want the debt don't take the course
13:00Anna Ptaszynski:you've just reminded me Dan there was a famous British educationalist and feminist and what year was Fanny Payne? 1895 is when I think she became this woman was alive too she was called Fanny Hurts oh Fanny Payne and Fanny Hurts is a good Edinburgh Fringe show yes waiting are buddy cops oh they're cops oh yeah oh they're cops what are they
13:22Dan Schreiber:they always go for the crotch I suppose. Fly kick you.
13:28Anna Ptaszynski:Can I give you guys another? Yeah. This is from Jakob Vull who starts off possibly too sad but it is funny.
13:35Dan Schreiber:Okay.
13:36Anna Ptaszynski:So a mixed message coming in at the top. I assumed that if you're killing a highly endangered pangolin you know those things? They're covered in amazing scales. Yeah. They're almost like armadillos. They're like an armadillo anteater cross. Yeah. They are amazing. They're the most trafficked animal in the world. Yes, and they're for that reason increasingly rare. So I assume that if you're killing a pangolin, you're doing it because the scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine, which they are. But a survey of more than 800 hunters and meat traders in Nigeria found that the pangolin is considered to be the most delicious of all the animals.
14:12Dan Schreiber:Is it?
14:13Anna Ptaszynski:In addition to being extremely tasty, 89 % of them were captured by simply picking them up off the ground. Yeah, that's the problem. They're naive, aren't they? that's what you call an animal who'll just let you pick them up naive animal that was too sad
14:26Dan Schreiber:that was actually too sad to cover sorry where's the funny bit i'm still waiting for that punch
14:30Anna Ptaszynski:line is that they're so tasty i think that's the funny bit do you remember turtles are really tasty as well the giant giant tortoises of the galapagos that's the problem with these animals yeah they need to evolve some bitterness do you think what's made us so successful as the human race is just we'd actually taste gross well there's a lewis leakey theory isn't there that
14:50James Harkin:That's why we have BO, so that other animals won't eat us. Yeah, he thinks that we became the dominant species because lions basically came up to us, smelt us and went, nah, no way. And he said that you would often find that if there was a dead human, the animal wouldn't start eating it until it had rotted and it had maggots and so on. That's when we were... Delicious. Yeah, exactly.
15:09Dan Schreiber:So we could be ruining our chances of survival by inventing perfume. At this point, the lions are coming up and going, yum. Yeah. Lynx Africa. Yeah. Don't wear that in the jungle. Do you remember a few weeks ago we were talking about why people have beards? Yeah. And we were like, well, it could only be either to attract women or to sort of get other men. Terrifying other men. Or what if it is to make you unpalatable to animals? Like they get a little hair stuck in their teeth. Yeah, really annoying to eat. And it's right at the top. It's probably your head is the first bit they're going to eat.
15:39Especially lion tamers. Exactly. Interesting. Good theory. Just a thought. It's a good theory. When the Quakers founded the new city in Pennsylvania, they decided to call it Philadelphia.
15:51Dan Schreiber:Yeah. After the Egyptian city, because they thought it meant brotherly love. Unfortunately, the translation was a bit off, and it meant sibling love to honour the practice of brother-sister marriage in the Ptolemaic dynasty. I did not know that. I thought it was just brotherly love. That's what I thought as well. So it turns out that the Quakers inadvertently named their city Incest Bill, according to Joe Brooks-Smith.
16:16Anna Ptaszynski:That is a good fact. That's so funny.
16:26Dan Schreiber:Are we allowed to mention facts that actually aren't correct? But I think it's a useful thing to know if you've sent one in, right? What you got? So, Stephen Corcoran, I'm afraid you've sent in a fact saying Karl Marx's great-great-grandson does parkour and has a YouTube video called Exclamation Marx. Terrific fact.
16:43James Harkin:I thought we might have even said that on this podcast. No, do you remember what happened with this fact?
16:48Dan Schreiber:What happened with it?
16:48James Harkin:Okay, so I submitted this as a fact, and we were going for it as a headline fact, and I found the parkour guy, and I got in contact with him, and we had a chat, and he's not. Either he said it jokingly in an interview once, or it was just put in an interview and it spreads.
17:03Dan Schreiber:Yeah, so that's not true. But I just happened to be on Karl Marx's daughter's names. He had three daughters. Do you know what they were called?
17:09James Harkin:Quotation. Very good.
17:12Dan Schreiber:Stretch. And... Skid?
17:20Dan Schreiber:No, they were all called Jenny.
17:23Anna Ptaszynski:Okay. That was his wife called Jenny, yeah. I thought they were going to be called like Capital and Labour and... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Combine Harvester. Yeah.
17:31Dan Schreiber:He didn't, we wouldn't wish that upon them. Speaking of marks and names, just reminds me of a fact that I submitted to you guys for a headline and we turned down, which is that there is a Brazilian footballer called Marx Lennon and he's a left winger.
17:45James Harkin:Oh, that's good. That's great. There's another Karl Marx fact, which is not true, but it gets peddled around as a truth, which is, you know, how he's buried in Highgate Cemetery. So he has a giant, huge gravestone with his head on top. And apparently some people...
18:00Dan Schreiber:A statue of his head. There's not a big gravestone. And then Karl Marx's decomposing head sitting there.
18:06James Harkin:Oh, I see. Yes. Yeah. It's a huge statue of his head. And supposedly some anarchists wanted to get rid of it and they put a bomb underneath it. and it blew up, but it malfunctioned. So it only blew up a tiny bit. And if anything, the only damage to it is that the graves has slightly shifted to the left. And that's been peddled around everywhere and there's no evidence for it.
18:27Dan Schreiber:There's some not true Karl Marx facts. Actually, though, speaking of Karl Marx, I did find out something quite funny last week. Listening to the Diane Abbott interview. So for international listeners, Diane Abbott, one of our MPs, got herself in trouble in the last couple of weeks. But she got herself in trouble on a podcast where she was being interviewed about her life. and she went out with Jeremy Corbyn and she was talking about the early days of their relationship and she said that she used to whine and whine and whine saying you never take me out, we never go anywhere, we never do anything and so he said okay, I'll treat you, fine finally, I'll treat you, I'll go out and she properly got all dressed up, dolled up, got really excited, you know cancelled plans for that evening and he took her to Highgate Cemetery to look at Karl Marx's grave Wow and that was when she thought Oh, you would have liked that, wouldn't you?
19:14Dan Schreiber:I've had grave dates, yeah.
19:17James Harkin:I've done those. I went to see William McGonagall's grave on a date once. Did you? Did you? Where is he buried? Edinburgh. See? Yeah. Long way to go for a date. Yeah, it was a cost of time.
19:28Dan Schreiber:Did the other person appreciate it?
19:30James Harkin:She actually got off the train at about... I'm the Tay Bridge. Please fall again. Quite an esoteric joke, that. Yeah. Perfect.
19:41Dan Schreiber:international listeners are all turned off at this point interesting, is it true about Karl Marx's grave that, is it Herbert Spencer who he really hated is buried right next to him?
19:50James Harkin:Yeah, it's on the opposite side so they're basically looking at each other I'm smelling sitcom Marx and Spencer
19:59James Harkin:I've got another fact here this is sent in by Daniel Atkinson who's recently got into watching Sumo and so has consumed a ton of Sumo information So he says Sumo wrestlers have to take taxis And ride bikes everywhere This is because there are so many sumo Related car accidents that the sumo federation Has banned them So they're banned because they're terrible at driving
20:21Anna Ptaszynski:Well the problem is that when one sumo wrestler In a car hits another one They then just will keep driving until they've driven the other one Off the road, like that's the really sad bit
20:30Dan Schreiber:Brilliant
20:31Anna Ptaszynski:Sorry they get bikes Those tyres have got to withstand
20:36Dan Schreiber:Quite the pressure
20:37James Harkin:That's a good point. I've never seen a sumo on a bike. Have you? No.
20:43Dan Schreiber:But we don't live in Japan. Maybe in Japan they're telling money. Yeah, it's possible. I've been to the yearly final of sumo in Tokyo. And I reckon that they all turn, because I think they're all quite rich, aren't they, sumo wrestlers these days? They all had cars that were taking them in because we saw some of them arrive. Oh, okay. You didn't see anyone wobbling along on their stabilizers?
21:06James Harkin:we've done so many good facts about sumo over the years do you remember the one about the guy who had the top of his head altered because he needed to get the height requirement in order to become a sumo
21:14Anna Ptaszynski:did he have stuff put in
21:15James Harkin:yeah it was like basically like a lump of fat yeah like a breast implant basically just put in the top of his skull sexy and then there was the fact that the judges all carry a knife on them in case they make a wrong call out of honour they have to kill themselves on the spot What?
21:35Dan Schreiber:Yeah. It doesn't happen that often anymore, does it?
21:39Anna Ptaszynski:And how wrong does the call have to be? Is it like, give him a four for that? No, a three! Here's a good fact from Matt Fisher. After serving a four-year prison term for forging the Hitler diaries, Conrad Kujau began selling authentic forgeries under his own name. He often had to authenticate his forgeries because other forgers were selling forged, authentic Conrad Kujau forgeries oh my god wow and i did a bit more digging on this and basically he came out of prison he did a little bit of time and then he set up a shop selling forged uh is it uh juan miro paintings and maybe some fake dalis as well but he was acknowledging they were fake um it's pretty easy to fake a miro is it they're just circles and triangles aren't they Mirror, mirror on the wall.
22:28Not relevant.
22:30Anna Ptaszynski:But basically, I found out how he got into forging the Hitler diaries. That's quite a thing to do, isn't it? He collected a lot of Nazi memorabilia. He was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.
22:40Dan Schreiber:Always a good sign.
22:43Anna Ptaszynski:And the prices in the West were way higher than they were in East Germany or West Germany. Because obviously, there's demand overseas. And it wasn't legal. So he often got his stuff confiscated. And I guess there was more available on the German market, you know, than there was in the West. So he then started forging authentication details for his stuff to make it more valuable. So he got a First World War helmet, which was a real First World War helmet. And he said, oh, this was Hitler's helmet. And here's a certificate saying it. And then he started doing stationery and letters. And they were really primitive.
23:12Anna Ptaszynski:They were aged with tea. And, you know, they were like children's school projects. But he was getting better and better. And then he started doing Hitler diaries. I don't really remember much about that story. But, like, people fell for it, did they? Yeah, they were published, weren't they? Summit Times bought them.
23:26Dan Schreiber:Really? They hit the diaries?
23:27Anna Ptaszynski:It was embarrassing. It was one of the most embarrassing things
23:31Dan Schreiber:to ever happen to a newspaper. Yeah, wow.
23:34Anna Ptaszynski:But they were partly full because there were 61 volumes available. Whoa. I know. He did a lot of writing.
23:40Dan Schreiber:Why did that make them more easily full? I would have thought the Sunday Times, but Hitler was a busy man. How did he have time to write all this? I think if you just give them one page that goes,
23:49Anna Ptaszynski:oh, can we invade Poland tomorrow? And they might think, Oh yeah this has just been knocked up by someone Exactly that
23:55James Harkin:But if it's 60 volumes of him saying Bloody Stalin But 61 That's a hell of an investment of time If you suddenly hand it over and someone goes This is a fake Nine years writing this I was born with a tiny moustache
24:16For at least 300 years One common insult against a king Was that they had pooed in the font while being baptized. This is according to Cass L. And they read it in a book called The Anglo-Saxons by Mark Morris. And they're referring to Ethelred the Unready. Right. So yeah, people didn't really rate him very much. And they thought, we're just going to make this up about him. As far as I know, he didn't poo in the font. What was the nappy situation back then? Great question. Of course, sumo hadn't been invented.
24:47James Harkin:What were they wearing? Cloth, I guess. Yeah, you would just wear cloth. I think a lot of kids would just go without. It would be cold, wouldn't it? The king, I would think, would have a royal diaper.
24:58Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, swaddling cloths and things like that. I bet that was a person. Like, you are.
25:02James Harkin:You just carry, get shat on, get pissed on. I'm the royal diaper. So would they dunk the whole baby in? I'm just thinking of the baptisms that my kids have had, and it's very much water over the head. Oh, they often would dunk in. Right, so you go full. Traditionally, a proper baptism, your head should go under, really. Your head Like a waterboarding
25:22Anna Ptaszynski:That's not precisely how a waterboarding works You're not demanding information from him Do you know what, I've never been to a baptism And I've never touched wood I've never been waterboarded Do you deny the devil And all his minions Screw you copper
25:41James Harkin:Do you remember, have I told you That thing of when Wilf was being baptised What happened to me So I was handed to him Oh you shattered the fog I remember this thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why forgot to put on my nappy? And so I was holding him and I had to read a piece out. So I was holding Wilf, reading a piece out from a bit of paper. And I then had to put the paper down behind me on the table and then hold Wilf with two hands. So I put the paper down behind me and I came back and the guy started reading the prayers. And I just suddenly was like, oh my God, something's on fire. What the hell is on fire?
26:11James Harkin:And I turned around to see and the paper wasn't touching and there were a few candles there. and I looked down and my arm hair was lit up because I'd gone over a candle as I did it. Yeah, I was on fire. I mean, it was, you know, slowly going out, but I had to... I mean, it does feel like the devil's had something to do with that, doesn't it? So, Mr. Shriver, do you believe in God? I do. Why are you on fire then? Can someone cover that crucifix, please?
26:45Dan Schreiber:There's a species of finch that's named after a guy called Finch. What a great fact. Lovely. Great little fact from, well, Andy, you've said it's from someone called Colin's surname.
26:56James Harkin:Wow. And the surname was named after Colin's surname.
27:00Anna Ptaszynski:I think Colin signed his email, Colin's surname.
27:04Dan Schreiber:He must have. So that's odd from you, Colin. But great fact, nonetheless, it is correct. Maybe he's from Surinam and it just...
27:15James Harkin:So there's a Finch called the Finch But no one knows it's named after them Because it's just called the Finch Is it called the Finch Finch?
27:21Dan Schreiber:Well it's called Finch's Euphonia In fact And it's in the Finch family
27:26Anna Ptaszynski:I've got one other name fact This is from Hannah Wallace of Florida The discography of 98 year old jazz musician Dick Hyman Includes the 1966 album I'll Never Be The Same Some of Hyman's other albums include The Sensuous Piano of D and The Man from O-R-G-A-N. The Man from Organ.
27:48Dan Schreiber:We've met him before, haven't we? Have we? In the podcast. Have we? I'm sure we've had a Dick Hyman.
27:53Anna Ptaszynski:My friends used to have a comedy double act called Dick and Hyman. But that was their names. Really? Yeah.
27:59Dan Schreiber:Because a Dick Hyman, you don't know what that would be. They don't normally have them. No. Molly McInerney writes that an engineer refurbishing and installing old cine-operated payphones, that person's name is Patrick Schlott. However, the calling slots will not actually be used because the public phone service will be free. Oh, okay. But I assume he's worked on other Schlott's. 100%. Schlott is such a good surname. It's really good. Schlott. You can go for a casino afterwards. That's what I'd do.
28:32Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. Pat Schlott is what James Bond would do at a casino.
28:36Dan Schreiber:Pat Schlott. Pat Schlott. Pat the Schlott.
28:38Anna Ptaszynski:It's a Sean Connery joke
28:40Dan Schreiber:Yeah but what's the pat? You have to test all electronic items You have to pat test them I've just got to pat the schluck
28:50James Harkin:Thank you so much James you absolutely pulled by not saying the fire I'm not sure about this Bond movie Why should I said no again? Mark Weldon Lowe says that the granddaughter of famous artist david shepherd is a lamb and that's her married name she's called lamb and her grandfather was that's very good uh i go on here from jake from illinois yep who says when the ferris wheel debuted at the columbian world exposition in 1893 in chicago they needed to expedite the painting process supposedly francis davis millet what was it that they just held a paintbrush at the bottom and let the wheel go around so they didn't have to move that's how i would do it that makes total sense yeah uh well supposedly what actually happened was francis david's millet who was the decorations director invented spray paint specifically so that the ferris wheel could
29:51Anna Ptaszynski:be done in time oh really yeah here is quite a nice one it's from john o 'connell jr and it's a little like the nadal tennis racket stretching fact in that it's got a distance in it it's also a stretch well this is a this one is true though i have i've followed it up so john says since french guiana is part of france i don't really know much about french guiana i know it's in south america i know it's near the top and i know it's um that's all you really need to know what
30:20Dan Schreiber:else do you expect to know what is exactly the number of dogs living there like you know main Cain export. Chief exports.
30:27Anna Ptaszynski:I don't know the chief export. Cain sugar, probably. Maybe. But 41 % of it is Amazonian rainforest. It's very rainforest-y. Anyway, but it is part of France in legal terms. Yeah, it's one of the départements. Right. Well, I didn't know that even really. So since French Guiana is part of France, John writes, and France is part of the European Union, the largest national park in the EU is in South America, not in Europe, which I like. That's good. It's as big as National Park is there. Following on from this, Brazil is the country with which France shares its longest land border.
31:02James Harkin:I did not.
31:02Anna Ptaszynski:I thought, what about Germany and Spain?
31:04James Harkin:They're massive.
31:05Anna Ptaszynski:And they're both shorter than the Brazil-French-Guiana border. Yeah, that's a really great fact. It's kind of a little bit. It comes up in quizzes a fair bit, that one. I once went to Réunion, which is an island in the Pacific or the South Atlantic or somewhere. No, it's in the Indian Ocean. Oh, my God.
31:23Dan Schreiber:Jesus Christ. Oh yeah, it is, isn't it? It's just in the east of Africa. It's just in the east of Africa. But that's also a French department one. So you don't need to go through any security to go between them or any passport control. And I think it's the world's longest domestic flight that goes from Charles to Paul to there. It was something like 14 hours. And does that come up in quizzes? That one, I'm not so sure. I never heard it before in a quiz.
31:51Anna Ptaszynski:Do you ever worry that going to lots of quizzes, as you do, blunts your sense of wonder at the most amazing facts in the world. I'm not sure I ever had a sense of wonder. Although this really shook me to the core, a message from Jake, who had been to the Kelvin Grove Museum in Glasgow and learned that people would chisel off penises of the gods to use as aphrodisiacs in ancient Egypt. Ah, okay, okay.
32:18Dan Schreiber:They eat them or snort them? It's not clear To be honest But I think you'd sprinkle it on your ice cream Grind and sprinkle At first I thought he was saying that they used them as dildos And I thought that would be an interesting idea Well certainly it would be Yeah very interesting
32:39That explains why you got kicked out of looking at the Elkin Marbles
32:44Anna Ptaszynski:Penises of the gods is a very evocative phrase Yeah It's something about it feels well it's like eric von daniken's um what's his book chariots of the gods chariots of the gods yeah it's a sequel and they were quite small then so actually maybe it wouldn't
32:58Dan Schreiber:i think i think there wasn't this big um onus on penis size were they big statues though or do you mean there were tiny statues penis size penis size i actually think like there are some egyptian gods that had quite large penises like barbie for instance sorry really big penis i'm did he say Barbie? Barbie! B-A-B-I He was like the monkey god who would take you across to the underworld and he had a penis that could be used
33:23James Harkin:as a sail or an oar to hold up the sail Oh, a mast A mast, yeah So Ken doesn't get a penis but Barbie does That's There we go Very good
33:34Anna Ptaszynski:Did we talk about the destruction of the Herms? Because the Herms were all they were Greek statues I think and they were a bust of a head and shoulders but then they did have a little willy sticking out in front and they were fertility things. And I'm sure there was a period in Greece which was the demolition of the Herms when Athens was invaded by someone or other. All the Herms got chiselled off. I didn't know that. Well, I think that was quite common that if you went to a place and you wanted to disfigure their gods you would kind of disfigure their faces but you would also cut off the genitals.
34:03Dan Schreiber:But that's just what you do today as well, isn't it? I mean, it's like the obvious thing to do. You see a statue with genitals, which bit you're going to take?
34:11Anna Ptaszynski:You'll take the willy. no fair enough yeah yeah what were the
34:13Dan Schreiber:Herms I've never heard of these things what were they attached to if it was just a head and shoulders and then was it sticking out with the neck it was like a
34:18Anna Ptaszynski:column of marble you know it was like a column of marble shoulders penis floor penis floor yeah it was a column and then they had like a tiny little willy like as if you were using it to get water out of like a water cooler I see yeah
34:34Dan Schreiber:like a stick man they just couldn't be asked to draw the rest of the body look it looks
34:37Anna Ptaszynski:like that oh yeah
34:39Dan Schreiber:so it is the
34:40Anna Ptaszynski:only it's really the only prominent bit that you can remove so it's an obvious target for vandals and hooligans like you anna yeah i'd
34:47Dan Schreiber:do it i've got 20 of them in my house um i have a very long email uh not all of which i'm going to read which actually doesn't seem to have come signed off by anyone which is a shame because they've discovered something amazing i might not have copied does it say andy murray at the top
35:04Anna Ptaszynski:there yeah it's from someone else called andy murray well that's very confusing did they happen to have the same email address as you. Let's move on. What are they saying? What are they saying? They're long, but I doubt not fascinating email.
35:17Dan Schreiber:This person who's apparently called Andy Murray has worked out how to get rid of hiccups. So he said, skipping out the first nine paragraphs. No, it's very good. He said that when he was 13 in school biology, he learned what causes hiccups and he thought, he hypothesized, a way to stop it should be doing a burp as you feel the first hiccup coming. and he can report that after 45 years of doing that, he's only ever hiccuped once. But I never feel my first hiccup coming. You've got to be on the lookout all the time for an initial hiccup.
35:50Anna Ptaszynski:It does, yeah.
35:52Dan Schreiber:It does. But then he did say he lost his concentration once on the 28th of November 1990. This was also in the Hitler Diaries, this kind of detail. I think it was a memorable day for anyone who was an adult at the time. because it was the joyful day, as he describes it, that Thatcher resigned. And he said he was part of a small group of archaeologists digging near Salisbury. And when they found out, they started celebrating, got incredibly drunk. He was so happy, so drunk on cider, that he forgot to burp in time. And he proceeded to hiccup nonstop for 24 hours, having obviously saved up all these hiccups.
36:30A lifetime.
36:31Dan Schreiber:They've just been sitting. That whole thing sounds like a cautionary tale, doesn't it? Of the man who suppressed his hiccups and then hiccuped forever. You're so right. That's a Grimm's fairy tale or an Aesop's fable or something.
36:47James Harkin:I would definitely be up for 61 more volumes of this guy's diary. This is awesome stuff. Here's something from Kate Evans. She tells us that when Leeds became a city for the first time, so Leeds and Yorkshire, they didn't have any celebrations. and that is because they only applied because they heard that Sheffield was planning to apply as well and thought, well, since we're the largest city in Yorkshire, we should be a city before Sheffield are. So they quickly applied, they won, and then they didn't have any time to prepare the celebrations. So good. Very good. So good. Or maybe they're from Yorkshire, so they're so tight they decided they didn't want to have any parties.
37:29That's good.
37:30Anna Ptaszynski:I like a city rivalry. Yeah. I'm a big fan of that. What's your favourite? I don't have any really local to me, because I'm from London. Where's the rivalry?
37:42James Harkin:London and the entire rest of the UK. You're Oxbridge, though, so you were part of a major Cambridge-Oxford rivalry. People don't really care about that, not properly.
37:50Dan Schreiber:No, it may shock you to know that Andy's not a rower, if you're listening. And so I don't think...
37:56Anna Ptaszynski:Why would listeners not think I was a rower, Hannah? They think you're a cocks. soaks on them I rode on the coxless fours that was a very painful team to get into I must say good lord I'm doing so much of the cox that he got destroyed by the Phoenician Empire wow okay do Rose care about that really I mean they do for the boat race let's move on
38:24James Harkin:I'd love our UK version of roast shows
38:30Anna Ptaszynski:I don't think Jimmy Carr will be signing on to host this one oh dear
38:42Dan Schreiber:I've got a fact about wieners this is from Ralph Linsangan and it says in brackets repeat I don't know if that means repeat the name Ralph Linsangan Linsangan or if it means the email is repeated But anyway, he headlines it by saying cybernetic wieners are only possible because of Dr. Wiener. Quite confusing because I'm always a bit confused about the word cybernetic and what it actually means.
39:04Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, it doesn't mean anything, does it?
39:05Dan Schreiber:No. Well, so I looked it up and it doesn't really help me out. Cybernetics is a study of automatic control and information exchange, sort of between machines and living things. Right. So I think it's related to prosthetics. So if you've got a prosthetic penis that can be remote controlled or something or do something, it's in... Remote controlled? Wow. Yeah, that would be cool, wouldn't it? Sorry, I just need to pull the batteries out and rub them a few times. This guy's called Norbert Wiener. Dr Norbert Wiener. Oh, I've heard of him. Yeah, I think he's quite a big deal. So he was the founder of Cybernetics, which is a big deal.
39:39Anna Ptaszynski:That was the runner-up name that lost out to James Bond, but it was going to be the names of Wiener. Norbert Wiener. It's a fun trivia fact. And it would be sexy.
39:49Dan Schreiber:If that had happened, that would be a sexy name right now.
39:51Anna Ptaszynski:Norbert Wiener and Pat Schlott.
39:54Dan Schreiber:He sounds very cool, Norbert Wiener, and worth more than we're making it sound like. He learned 34 languages, apparently. Graduated college at 14, got a PhD at 17. He was known as the most remarkable boy in the world in 1906. But maybe the reason you've heard of him, James, is that he came up with the Wiener sausage. So he was a mathematician. And I'm just going to read this out, and good luck ever grasping it, get a PhD. In the mathematical field of probability, The wiener sausage is something that can be visualized as a sausage of fixed radius whose center line is Brownian motion. And we have talked a bit about Brownian motion on the show.
40:33Dan Schreiber:But anyway, he came up with this mathematical concept that was named after him. So it looks like a sausage in maths. And it's named after him. So it's called the wiener sausage.
40:43Anna Ptaszynski:Got it.
40:44Dan Schreiber:You know, mathematicians are fun too, I think.
40:47Anna Ptaszynski:And he was responsible for the cybernetic penis.
40:49Dan Schreiber:And he founded cybernetics. and so machine-human interfaces and stuff like that, of which prosthetic penises could be seen as an extension, I think is what the person is saying.
41:01Anna Ptaszynski:Okay, so he wasn't a penis technician himself. I don't think he was a penis technician.
41:05Dan Schreiber:No more than any of us are.
41:07James Harkin:I got something here from Jessica Cluckus. I think that's how you pronounce it. She's from the Isle of Man, and she says, I am surprised it has not come up more on the pod, so here are some facts that I love. Pilates were invented in Patrick, which is a local town in the Isle of Man. Is that true? I didn't know that. Halloween does not exist there. What? I guess you don't have to do everything.
41:29Anna Ptaszynski:Quite right too. Fair enough. But it also doesn't exist in the Murray household. Yeah, because I've turned off the lights and I'm lying on the floor which actually would be a great position to spook people from but I don't do that
41:41James Harkin:in case local kids come around and alarm me. She says we were the first to give women the vote and have the oldest continuing running parliament in the world.
41:48Dan Schreiber:How ironic of the Isle of Man.
41:53what about Jeff the talking mongoose he is from the island man yes the ghostly mongoose is that
41:59Dan Schreiber:why they don't have halloween because he scared everyone too real it's too many bad memories yeah that was like a young teenage girl or something who pretended that she was talking to a ghostly mongoose and then got all of the newspapers involved and everyone believed it probably conan dialed it or someone like that oh yeah yeah i think all the biggest like ghost hunters
42:19James Harkin:of the time went to investigate it as well. So it was, yeah, it was quite, there's a great bio on it. It was quite a big scandal.
42:24Dan Schreiber:We covered it ages ago and the BBC got involved in a way that meant they had to change all their regulations when it turned out it was fake or something weird like that.
42:31Anna Ptaszynski:BBC scandals used to be certainly more wholesome, didn't they?
42:34Dan Schreiber:Yeah, they were more wholesome. Actually, Jeff the talking mongoose also used to get his penis out at parties. Right. Jeff. Jeff.
42:44Anna Ptaszynski:You said Pilates was invented on the Isle of Man. I'm really surprised about that. Am I remembering this right or wrong? That it was invented by someone called like Tony Pilates? It was.
42:53Dan Schreiber:It was invented by Mr. Pilates, who I don't think was from the Isle of Man.
42:56Anna Ptaszynski:Like Bikram Yoga was invented by, he wasn't Tony, but Mr. Bikram. Yeah. Yeah. I just think I love those things. Unexpected things named after people. German chocolate cake is named after a guy called German. Oh, yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. That kind of stuff.
43:13James Harkin:Yeah. So according, just a super quick Google while you guys are chatting, Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates. He was from Germany. His father was a gymnast and his mother a naturopath. Pilates said the inspiration for his method came to him during World War I while he was being held at a camp in the Isle of Man. Can I just say that I don't think it's really fair for the Isle of Man to claim that as one of their inventions when the person who invented it was being held prisoner there.
43:37Dan Schreiber:I think that's fair. We tortured it out of him in the end.
43:43Anna Ptaszynski:Maybe he was coming up with those positions to try and escape. We don't know. The only way he could get under the fence was by planking for seven minutes. Here's a great one. This is from Nat Edwards, who is master of the armories at the Royal Armories in Leeds. Very cool. What a cool thing. So here we go. This is the fact. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, special guns were popular among cyclists, especially in France, Belgium and Spain, for shooting bothersome dogs.
44:12Dan Schreiber:Oh, yeah.
44:13Anna Ptaszynski:Cyclists would have guns marketed to them And this was invented The Velo Dog A new kind of ammunition that could be fired From small, lightweight, powerful revolvers Alarmingly they were not very accurate And they were called dog revolvers One of them was even used in an attempt to assassinate King Alfonso XIII Who survived, possibly on account of not being a dog
44:34Dan Schreiber:We've been researching this for QI Weirdly, this year or last year And water pistols were invented For scaring dogs as well The first adverts you see for water pistols in the newspapers were, use this to get rid of dogs, and it was for cyclists.
44:47Anna Ptaszynski:So water pistol makes sense to me. Like, you've got a troublesome dog, you're on your bike, you don't want to, you know... An actual gun for a dog feels a bit... Do you shoot it, or do you try and scare it? Or do you pistol whip it? And when I say whip it, I mean that's the type of dog you're... I think the idea was to shoot them.
45:06Dan Schreiber:I think it's dogs like water, so the water pistol's probably not that successful. They probably just went for more and more. If I squirted the water pistol at my mum's dog, it would just want to eat the water.
45:15Anna Ptaszynski:Mum's dog is very stupid, though.
45:18Dan Schreiber:You need to grade up to machine gun. There's a good fact here from Luca from Italy. I'm going to do it as a riddle. There's a golf course where you can hit the ball and it stays in the air for an hour and three seconds.
45:33Anna Ptaszynski:Nuclear, quantum, entangling. Time zones.
45:43Dan Schreiber:it's very simple it lands in the higgs boson so if you hit it around the sun yeah um it's time zones yeah do you know this one oh that's cool i haven't heard of it no it's a green zone um golf course and it straddles finland and sweden and there are seven holes in finland and 11 in sweden so on hole six you hit the ball and it stays in the air for an hour that's great you know i have heard of that golf course but i haven't thought of the time zone part of it that's so good that's
46:12Anna Ptaszynski:good for a crime so i'm just gonna say it for an alibi where were you i was here for an hour waiting for the ball to come down so i couldn't have killed him obvious i think it was the quantum
46:24James Harkin:physicist funny paint and funny has a kicking the crap out of a quantum physicist over here I wasn't going to mention this one but I will because it's related to James Bond and we've been mentioning that bit. Andy Cumming has sent this in. Two facts. William Stevenson, the man James Bond was fashioned after, who is from Winnipeg so I think Andy Cumming's from Canada once escaped prison using a can opener. Yes.
46:52Anna Ptaszynski:And says this only bends the truth a touch.
46:55James Harkin:Now I didn't look into that because I wasn't going to read that. I thought James Bond was modeled after quite a few other people as well. I think there's a few different people, isn't there? Like, for instance, James Bond, the ornithologist.
47:06Anna Ptaszynski:Ian Fleming had a cool older brother, who I think did lots of expeditions and travel and big game hunting and stuff like that. Yeah, that's right. But do we know what happened with the tin opener?
47:14James Harkin:Because I wasn't going to read it. I was going to bring in his next fact, which I thought was quite a fun one. So he sent two. Two fun facts. The city of Regina briefly had the slogan, the city that rhymes with fun. as you might imagine people were fired
47:31Anna Ptaszynski:that's really good i actually i have another one from uh stephen corcoran of ex exclamation marks
47:38Dan Schreiber:fact fame oh yeah okay uh non-fact fame yes well this is this is a good one it's that a british
47:44Anna Ptaszynski:officer captured during the first world war was granted leave to visit his dying mother on one condition that he return this is about a captain called robert campbell he was captured really early in the first world war august 1914 i mean just such bad luck you know you got to set out the whole thing and he got word when he was in a prisoner of war camp that his mom was dying and he wrote to the kaiser saying look can i please go and visit my mother uh i will come back and the kaiser said yes but you've got to come back and he went he went home he went to kent which must have been such a weird experience yeah spent a week with his mom kind of saying goodbye and then he went back to prison voluntarily.
48:22Anna Ptaszynski:Right. Then as soon as he got back, he started digging a tunnel for the next nine months. Did he? And then escaped via it and then was recaptured again anyway.
48:29Dan Schreiber:Good on him. He wanted to escape the honourable way, I suppose.
48:32Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, yeah, completely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm good back though
48:35Dan Schreiber:because you'd assume they'd just chase you down. They know where your mum lives.
48:38Anna Ptaszynski:They know where you live, yeah. Yeah, but you're living... Germans! They're at war with the place where you are. Anna?
48:45Dan Schreiber:Yeah, I've overestimated how easy it was to just send one of their men over to Kent Fair point
48:49Anna Ptaszynski:I think he thought that if he didn't go back other prisoner exchanges might not happen and that they'd just end the whole system Anyway, he lived until 1966 Did he? What month? Just wondering if he saw the World Cup What month was the World Cup? It was in the summer The report I found said he died in the Isle of Wight in July 1966, aged 81 That would have been tight It would have been tight He might have seen the qualifying the earlier rounds in the tournament they think it's all up oh it is
49:22James Harkin:who did england be in that match west germany oh so it would have been what a beautiful i've got to find out what a beautiful ending that would have been to a life i have to find out if he saw
49:30Anna Ptaszynski:the world i mean he saw the victory in the first world war and the second which was arguably you know he'll have cared more about we don't even know if he liked football we know he liked war
49:41Dan Schreiber:did he like war was that why they all did it um from anna ridpath just a nice bit of trivia she says my friend nathan is a big fan of baseball so this is credited to nathan there was a single baseball player called danny jansen who played for two teams in a single game
49:57Anna Ptaszynski:how oh this is uh very simple quantum
50:03Dan Schreiber:entangled. Do you want to carry on or shall I answer? Please. The game was postponed halfway through and he moved between teams. I'm really sorry that James, he's on killing all of your scientific theorising.
50:14James Harkin:I'll get it one of these days. One of these days it's going to be quantum. Still another alibi to you, Andy. I wasn't even on that team. I couldn't have killed him.
50:25Dan Schreiber:Yeah, you're absolutely correct. it was postponed because in clement weather and he was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays to the Boston Red Sox and then he was put in a particle accelerator and
50:46Anna Ptaszynski:right that's it that's all of your facts thank you so much for sending them in if you'd like to send in more facts then please do the email is podcast at qi.com and we'll do another one of these before too long. They all get read. They all get read. Even the very long ones. So that's... There's no incentive to keep it short, actually. What am I doing?
51:07Dan Schreiber:We cut off at 50 words.
51:08Anna Ptaszynski:I cut off at 50 words. There we go. But maybe you'd like to contact all of us on various social media accounts. So if you'd like to do that, you can do and it's encouraged. I'm on Instagram at Andrew Hunter M. James? Add me on LinkedIn. Add James on LinkedIn.
51:22James Harkin:Yeah.
51:23Anna Ptaszynski:Instagram on at Schreiberland. Anna?
51:25Dan Schreiber:we are collectively at no such thing on Twitter or at no such thing as a fish on Instagram
51:30Anna Ptaszynski:so there are all sorts of ways to get in touch but the most important thing is that you guys stay well and keep on keep bring it home Andy and goodbye
From the publisher
Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.
Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
