Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: Not Sponsored By Reba McEntire About this episode Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including Batman, Tim Horton and Saint-Saëns. We chat about cinema classics like Cruel Intentions 2 and Indiana Jones 4, and meet eight new Custodians of Fish Facts.
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Transcript 5,758 words · 10 speakers
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0:30 Speaker 01 Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. We've been so happy to get messages from you guys to say that you've been enjoying this show, and we certainly enjoy making it. It's a little bit more loose, a little bit more silly than the normal shows, but we really, really love getting your facts, so please do keep sending those in. The reason I've disturbed the start of your show today is because I want to tell you about a quiz that we're doing. It is for Patreon subscribers on the top tier, and it will take place on the 23rd of January at 7pm UK time, so that'll be sometime in the afternoon if you're in North America, and it'll be very early in the morning if you're in Australia or New Zealand, but hopefully you will still be able to join us.
1:12 Speaker 01 It's gonna be a whole load of fun, we've got loads of amazing stuff planned for you, and if you are not a member of Patreon right now, then you have to go to patreon.com/no Such Thing Is A Fish and join our top tier. You could probably just do it for a month and then quit if you just want to do the quiz, but honestly, there's so much good stuff on our Patreon that I really think once you join, you will be hooked, because we have extra content, we have merch, we have video content, there's all sorts of stuff on there. We hope we've made it value for money, because people going on there help to support the podcast, so it is a real good mutual benefit thing. Anyway, enough of that, really hope you enjoyed this episode of Little Fish.
2:07 Speaker 02 Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode where we put down our facts and we focus exclusively on your favourite facts from the last seven days. We have been going through the inbox, we've got a bunch of amazing things to read out to you today, so why don't we get into it? Who's gonna start?
2:25 Speaker 03 I've got one, I put my hand up there.
2:28 Speaker 01 Because we're recording on Zoom, you should say.
2:30 Speaker 03 I put my hand up because we're recording on Zoom, but I feel like I might have done it even in the room with you guys.
2:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, yeah, that's true.
2:35 Speaker 03 I do every other week. Right, here's a fact from Owen Bergstein. In 2023, how many full-sized corn mazes were there in the United States that were shaped like Reba McEntire's face?
2:50 Speaker 01 Okay, well, first question, what is a corn... No, who is Reba McEntire?
2:56 Speaker 03 She's an unbelievably famous person who I'd never heard of. She's a country singer.
3:01 Speaker 01 Is she?
3:02 Speaker 03 She...
3:03 Speaker 02 I know Reba.
3:04 Speaker 01 She's a big deal.
3:05 Speaker 03 She is, yeah.
3:06 Speaker 01 Fair enough.
3:07 Speaker 02 Household name in America, I would say.
3:09 Speaker 03 The queen of country. She's sold 75 million records. I've never heard of her until this email from Owen dropped into the inbox.
3:17 Speaker 02 I mean, what level of fame are you in America that there are more than one corn mazes?
3:21 Speaker 01 You're assuming there's more than one.
3:22 Speaker 02 I'm going straight in.
3:23 Speaker 01 Because... Imagine if the answer's zero. What a quiz that would be.
3:30 Speaker 03 The riddler has checked in again.
3:32 Speaker 01 Um, okay, corn mazes, and obviously if she's a country singer, it feels like she's gonna be popular in corn country.
3:44 Speaker 03 Good point.
3:45 Speaker 01 I'm gonna say three.
3:47 Speaker 03 Okay, nice.
3:48 Speaker 01 I'm highballing it, I feel.
3:49 Speaker 03 Okay, that's, yeah. Dan? Thirty-six. Thirty-six? Yeah. Well, Owen goes on, "Did you say six, ten? Did one of you ruin the game and say something like a hundred?" Probably.
4:01 Speaker 01 Well, he's a listener at least.
4:05 Speaker 03 Well, the real answer is 25 plus another 15 that say her name. So there are 40 full-size Reba McIntyre corn mazes in the USA.
4:18 Speaker 02 And what's the reason?
4:19 Speaker 01 That is astonishing. Well, she has a face which is very good for corn mazes. She has these wrinkles on her forehead that are in the exact shape of a spiral.
4:32 Speaker 03 She's getting on a bit, but I should say she's an incredibly beautiful and distinguished lady with no wrinkles on her forehead. What's the next?
4:37 Speaker 01 Can I just say, you can be beautiful and have wrinkles.
4:42 Speaker 03 Oh, we've got into body positivity corner. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. She looks exactly like an area of corn.
4:47 Speaker 01 You know what? I've been to the world's biggest maze. It's in Hawaii and it's in the Dole plantation where they make pineapples. And I went in it and someone has basically made a hole in all the hedges. So you can just get to the middle by walking through the holes.
5:07 Speaker 03 More like a hole plantation than a, did you say the Dole plantation?
5:12 Speaker 01 I see what you're doing there. Yeah, very good.
5:14 Speaker 02 Very nice. I had to break out of the maze a few years ago. There's one in Crystal Palace and I was with Fenella and she suddenly got terrified that a murderer might be in there. And sort of got like weird claustrophobia. She was like, this is exactly where you would get murdered. So we had to break out of this maze, but it happened to be on the edge of the maze. And we went into this weird, random forest and we were lost for like half an hour where it is so much more likely.
5:41 Speaker 03 I've done that maze, Dan. It's about four feet high. It's not.
5:45 Speaker 02 Please, this is not me saying that I picked out. I'm just reporting on what happened.
5:49 Speaker 03 Listen, I just got to tell you one or two other things Owen says because the email is so good.
5:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:54 Speaker 03 So he adds that there are about 500 corn mazes in the USA. So 8% of US corn mazes roughly were Reba McIntyre themed. He also adds, the mazes appear in 23 states. The 23rd state joined the union in 1820. So in 1819, somebody could have remarked to someone else, in just over two centuries, more American states will have Reba McIntyre themed corn mazes than currently exist. How times change.
6:24 Speaker 03 And it says, PS, I am not sponsored by Reba McIntyre. I find her music annoying.
6:29 Speaker 02 Oh.
6:31 Speaker 01 There you go.
6:32 Speaker 03 Ouch.
6:33 Speaker 01 That's amazing. Shall I do another fact?
6:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:35 Speaker 01 Easing. This one is from Andrew Lawwata, and Andrew says that the 2000 movie Cruel Intentions 2, which sounds like Dan would love it, is a cut down of a TV adaptation turned sequel to Cruel Intentions, which was adapted from Dangerous Liaisons, a film adapted from a Broadway play that was itself an adaptation from an 18th century French novel. And it was produced by a company called Original Film.
7:05 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
7:08 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
7:10 Speaker 01 That's, there you go.
7:12 Speaker 03 Would you like another one?
7:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, go on.
7:14 Speaker 03 Here's, this is from Dennis Rump, uh, who says, I would love to hear Andy try to pronounce my last name. Hint, it's German, so I think it's Dennis Rump.
7:24 Speaker 01 Bad luck, Dennis, because Andy actually speaks a bit of German, don't you, Andy?
7:27 Speaker 03 Nein, ein bisschen. Yes. Um, this is, hey, this is a cool.
7:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:33 Speaker 03 This is a cool fact about planes. It's brilliant. Um, so you know, you have those turbines on an airline's jet engine. You know, the airline jet engine has all these blades, right, on going round and round and round. Well, Dennis says, the centripetal force, which is the swirling round force, on each turbine blade of an airline's jet engine is roughly equal to the weight of two double-decker buses. To, I know, it's crazy. And to overcome this stress, which is obviously enormous, each blade on those turbines is made of a single crystal of an alloy. Isn't that mystical?
8:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, what does that mean? It is the way you said it, yeah.
8:17 Speaker 03 Crystal is a word that's very easy to say in a mystical fashion, isn't it?
8:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, single crystal of an alloy. I don't really quite understand what that means.
8:24 Speaker 02 Is it literal? Is it like if you were a, someone who robbed banks for, or jewelry shops? Is there like a fine crystal just sitting at the centre?
8:32 Speaker 03 It's not a, it's not a crystal in the sense that you are describing it, Dan. It's, um, it's, it's metal.
8:37 Speaker 01 It's not a crystal in the sense of Indiana Jones and the crystal skull.
8:41 Speaker 03 So glad, oh god, it's a real, it was a real cineast's dream, this episode, isn't it? Cruel Intentions 2, Indiana Jones 4.
8:50 Speaker 03 But basically, the blades, they have to cope with these huge stresses and forces. And if you have one crystal, it's one part is the point. So there are no, what they call grain boundaries in the blade, which makes it a lot stronger.
9:02 Speaker 01 One of the best quibbles that we ever had on QI was when we did a question about these turbines. And we said that Rolls Royce engines are tested by throwing frozen chickens or frozen turkeys into the blades to make sure that they don't break.
9:18 Speaker 03 Right.
9:18 Speaker 01 Which I think is true, or at least it was true. And we put a picture of one of these turbines up on the screen. Actually, it was a video, some VT. And someone wrote in saying that couldn't possibly be a Rolls Royce engine because Rolls Royce engines go in a clockwise direction. And that was going in an anti-clockwise direction, or vice versa, I can't remember what it was. And what had actually happened was, we had used it, but we just flipped the footage.
9:45 Speaker 03 Oh, wow. Brilliant spot. What a spot.
9:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was an amazing spot. It's a brilliant quibble.
9:51 Speaker 03 Lovely. All right, James.
9:53 Speaker 01 Okay, here is a fact from Peter Bloom. And Peter says, while in prison, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame amputated two of his toes to get out of hard labour. Six days later, he was unexpectedly pardoned.
10:09 Speaker 03 Lovely.
10:12 Speaker 01 So slightly, well, he got out of six days of hard labour.
10:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've never looked into those guys. I just know.
10:17 Speaker 01 What do you know about them, Dan?
10:18 Speaker 03 I just know it as the movie. I know it as the Bonnie and Clyde movie. I know it as a Serge Gainsbourg song. Uh, Bunny is a beautiful French moment in that song.
10:28 Speaker 01 Do you know what they, um, what they did?
10:31 Speaker 03 I know they robbed banks and then they were shot, shot, shot up.
10:35 Speaker 01 Interestingly, they very rarely rob banks. And in fact, whether they ever did or not, I'm not sure. Because banks are quite hard to rob, right? Because they have a lot of security. Definitely Clyde did rob a few banks, but usually when he did it, he did it with another associate called Raymond Hamilton. And Bonnie often drove their getaway car. And I think like Raymond and Clyde doesn't have the same ring to it.
11:01 Speaker 03 It's not as sexy.
11:03 Speaker 01 So they might have done one or two banks, but mostly they would rob like convenience stores and gas stations and stuff like that where there's not as much security and you can just get the money out of the town.
11:13 Speaker 03 That's that's less sexy as well. That's extremely unsexy. Now that we know it's Clyde and his friend Raymond basically sticking up an Aldi at the side of a road.
11:22 Speaker 02 Doesn't work. The Serge Gainsbourg song would have been less sexy as well.
11:25 Speaker 03 Ah, that's very funny. That's great. Oh, that's great extra intel.
11:32 Speaker 02 Well, I got a little sort of crime adjacent fact here that's been sent in by Alex Hartley. People are more likely to give their seat to a pregnant woman when Batman is present.
11:43 Speaker 03 Nah, I buy it.
11:46 Speaker 02 So this was reported in Nature and the idea was a female experimenter came on appearing pregnant. She boarded the train with an observer and then they watched if anyone stood up to give her a seat. Now, an additional person dressed as Batman would then enter from another door. And as soon as Batman was in the room, they noticed that 67% stood up versus 37% when Batman wasn't there. Interestingly, 44% of the people who offered their seat claimed that they did not see Batman before offering the seat.
12:19 Speaker 03 Right. So can I can I ask something, Dan? Is this to do with seeing a pregnant woman and thinking, oh, I won't bother. And then Batman gets on, who reminds you of values of justice? Or is it just that the presence of a Batman costume on a train is weird enough that you look around and then you notice, oh, there's a pregnant woman here?
12:38 Speaker 01 Great. Oh, that's a good question.
12:40 Speaker 03 Because everyone's looking at their phones and people are not paying attention.
12:43 Speaker 02 I'm not sure the answer to that, but I think that's something that absolutely our listeners can Google.
12:49 Speaker 03 Have they tried different superheroes?
12:50 Speaker 02 Not in this one. This is a very specific Batman.
12:53 Speaker 03 Okay.
12:54 Speaker 02 Experiment.
12:55 Speaker 03 Spider-Man might have a different result.
12:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, but they didn't have access to the Marvel Universe's copyright, so.
13:01 Speaker 01 If it was Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman or someone, you might see that superhero and think, well, women are much stronger than me, so I deserve the seat.
13:13 Speaker 03 Yes.
13:14 Speaker 01 I think Batman's been used quite often in studies, hasn't it? Do you remember that study that if you dress children like Batman, they do better at school or something?
13:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:24 Speaker 01 Remember that?
13:25 Speaker 03 Well, they can afford the private education, can't they? Because they're absolutely loaded. Yeah.
13:29 Speaker 02 What is it, a monthly day every day at the school? What's going on?
13:33 Speaker 01 I think it was something like that. It just made the kids more confident or something.
13:37 Speaker 02 Well, there was also that thing, which I think was done on QI, which is how I know it, of the Superman pose. I don't know if that was debunked.
13:44 Speaker 03 Right.
13:45 Speaker 02 Andy, do you, do you have another fact?
13:48 Speaker 03 I've got a fact which relates to something we said recently on the show, actually. This is from Catherine Radma. I'll just read you the fact. Noted French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, I want to say.
14:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, who wrote the Où ar cantonner theme in a previous episode.
14:06 Speaker 03 Exactly. Is credited with composing the first documented film score.
14:10 Speaker 01 No.
14:12 Speaker 03 Way. This was in 1908 and he seems to be the first famous person to have written a score for a film. And it was a specific score for a specific new film. So I think that's what qualifies it as the first. It was called The Assassination of the Duke of Guise and it was 15 minutes long, which was epic at the time. That was like Lord of the Rings, Avatar. That was a biggie.
14:34 Speaker 02 Do you think you need an intermission halfway through?
14:36 Speaker 03 Oh, definitely.
14:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:39 Speaker 02 Sorry, too much.
14:40 Speaker 03 Bursting for a piss, seven minutes in.
14:48 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
15:02 Speaker 05 People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
15:13 Speaker 04 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
15:18 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
15:24 Speaker 04 So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
15:46 Speaker 03 James, you got another?
15:47 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, okay, I've got one more. Um, we mentioned Tim Hortons, the donut chain. Uh, a few weeks, well, actually quite a few weeks ago now, this coffee shop in Canada. Because we were saying that in Canada, they eat more donuts than in America. Um, but the Callum Smith wrote to us and said, did you notice that it has no apostrophe? And this is because the apostrophe is illegal in Quebec.
16:14 Speaker 03 No.
16:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. Uh, and it's because the apostrophe S is, uh, English grammar. And they're trying to keep the French language alive.
16:25 Speaker 03 Oh.
16:26 Speaker 01 Uh, and so they say that, you know, you're not allowed to do it. And apparently Canadians, um, in that area are very upset about it, half of them, and half of them are very happy with it.
16:37 Speaker 03 Does it have to be called Le Horton de Tim or something?
16:40 Speaker 01 Uh, no, it's just Tim Hortons, just with.
16:42 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
16:42 Speaker 01 N S, yeah.
16:44 Speaker 03 How far would the authorities push this if the rules were being breached? Like, are we talking police activity?
16:50 Speaker 01 Honestly, I think it would depend on the political climate at the time, as so many of these things do.
16:56 Speaker 03 Very wise.
16:57 Speaker 01 Um, you know, if you want to stop people selling liters instead of pints or vice versa, those things the police tend to get involved just before a local election.
17:08 Speaker 03 So, James, are you saying Tim Hortons is a Canadian company, therefore it has to do those rules? Or is that for all companies?
17:14 Speaker 01 Um.
17:15 Speaker 03 Like McDonald's, I wonder if McDonald's.
17:17 Speaker 01 I don't think McDonald's has to change all of its, um, paperwork, just in, when it's in Canada. Um, so German doesn't use apostrophes. We were talking earlier about how Andy speaks a bit of German, but people in German do sometimes use apostrophe S. And it's known in German as the idiot's apostrophe.
17:37 Speaker 03 That's unkind. Why?
17:40 Speaker 01 Because it's like someone is not using the German language correctly and is sort of appropriating the English language instead.
17:47 Speaker 03 I see.
17:47 Speaker 01 And a bit like how we take the piss out of people if they put the apostrophe in the wrong place. If you're like, uh, you know, grocers or something, we call it the grocer's apostrophe.
17:56 Speaker 03 True, you're right.
17:56 Speaker 01 They call incorrect apostrophe use, or correct in English, but they call it idiot's apostrophe.
18:02 Speaker 03 Very strong.
18:02 Speaker 01 Hmm.
18:03 Speaker 03 Very strong, harsh but fair.
18:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, that's the Germans. For some of history.
18:11 Speaker 02 Well, those are brilliant facts. Thank you so much, everyone, for sending them in. If you want your fact read out on the show, podcast at qi.com, send them there. Andy goes through them all and he sends them out to us and we love chatting them through. So yeah, more please. But we've got one more thing to do before we wrap up, which is we have some new custodians who need some facts dishing out. So if you are a member of the Club Fish highest tier, which is friend of the podcast, you immediately get assigned one of the facts, the headline facts from the archive of no such thing as a fish. So we're going to read out some now. So Andy, why don't we start with you?
18:48 Speaker 03 Yes, here's one. This goes out to Missy Brown. Congratulations, Missy. Your fact in perpetuity to look after and care for is that the first ever "Made in Germany" labels were intended to put people off buying products made in Germany.
19:07 Speaker 03 It's because it's this old law, I think it was the 19th century. And I think maybe Germany didn't have quite the reputation for really high quality, precision manufacturing, all this that it did now. People were worried about Sheffield, huge metalworking city, Sheffield cutlery industry, all of that. There were worries about cheap German knockoffs. And so this was a law that said, if you're a foreign company in the UK, you have to put a label on saying "Made in Germany" and therefore worse. I'd like to see some more fun in the labels, like "Made at sea."
19:37 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
19:39 Speaker 01 Made in space.
19:39 Speaker 02 Is that on your fish?
19:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:44 Speaker 01 "Made with love."
19:45 Speaker 03 That's lovely.
19:46 Speaker 01 Do you remember that was, what was it? Was it, um, what are those smoothies called?
19:51 Speaker 03 Innocent.
19:52 Speaker 01 Innocent. Was it, was it true that they said once, I might be getting this mixed up with another company, but they said "Made with love" in one of their items. And they weren't allowed to put it because it's very, you know, the rules of what you put on labels are very strict. And if you say it's "Made with love," there has to be actual.
20:11 Speaker 03 Actual what? Actual what? The only one I remember is the Welsh dragon sausages, which had to put a little disclaimer on saying, "Does not contain dragon."
20:21 Speaker 01 They should have just farmed some Komodo dragon and just put a tiny little bit in each one.
20:27 Speaker 03 Where was your business brain at the time, James?
20:30 Speaker 02 I had contact the other day with, you know, I've been taking lion's mane mushroom, little juicy injections.
20:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, all right, Joe Rogan.
20:41 Speaker 02 Well, they're made locally in Margate where I live and a friend of mine had a bottle and she bought it last summer and she said, I don't know when the used by date is. And so I was like, oh, I'll just ask the person online. And they said, basically, if we were allowed to, we would put used by end of universe because it's, it's fine forever.
20:59 Speaker 03 Because it doesn't work no matter when you take it.
21:01 Speaker 02 Who says it works? Who says it works? It's all about placebo.
21:07 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
21:08 Speaker 01 Fair enough. Okay, here is a fact for Leah M. Leah, your fact is that in 1991, a professor at Iowa State University suggested we could solve almost every problem by blowing up the moon.
21:24 Speaker 02 Wow.
21:24 Speaker 01 I do not recall this fact, Dan. It's one of yours. Can you remember what problems it would solve?
21:31 Speaker 02 Global warming, the production problems on Cruel Intentions 3. There was a lot. I think this was one of those comments and the professor has passed away since where I think the family were sort of like, oh, it was a, it was a comment in passing and, you know, it's been amplified as like his main things. You've got to be so careful with your words, you're a scientist. Let's, let's do another one. This one is for Lily Kemp. This is a James Harkin fact and it's from episode 21, by the way, if anyone wants to go back and listen to all of these facts in their full glory. The fact is in New York
22:09 Speaker 02 City until 1925, drivers going east-west stopped on amber and drove on green and drivers going north-south stopped on green and drove on amber.
22:22 Speaker 03 Great.
22:23 Speaker 01 Amazing.
22:24 Speaker 03 But it's easy to tell if you're going east-west or north-south, especially in New York, right? Because it's such a grid system.
22:30 Speaker 01 But I think like, probably for people who aren't native New Yorkers, you might not always know which direction you're going in.
22:39 Speaker 02 That's very true. That's very true. Well, my secondary proposal is to paint N or E or S or W on every single road, every two metres. So I think that'll help.
22:51 Speaker 03 All right, I'll do one.
22:52 Speaker 02 Go for it.
22:53 Speaker 03 This one goes out to Molly McAdonie. Hello, Molly. This is one of my facts, actually, and it's that there are companies which lasso icebergs to stop them hitting oil rigs.
23:05 Speaker 01 I remember when you came up with this. Yeah, you loved this fact, didn't you?
23:09 Speaker 03 I'm so happy. And I found, because they're quite secretive, the firms that do it, because it's quite a, I don't know, specialist job, or they have their own techniques for, it's mostly predicting where they're going to end up, the icebergs, you know, that's the secret bit. The actual lassoing is just driving around it with a rope and then hauling it for a bit. But I found someone who worked for one of these companies and I had a chat with him and.
23:30 Speaker 02 That's right.
23:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:31 Speaker 01 It feels like for the greater good, we shouldn't be making secret where icebergs are going to end up. That should be public knowledge.
23:38 Speaker 03 For the really greater good, I think we should let them hit the oil rigs.
23:43 Speaker 02 And get all that oil into the ocean.
23:46 Speaker 01 No. Yes.
23:49 Speaker 02 Interesting take, Andy. Let's end this shit show. Let's accelerate it.
23:55 Speaker 03 Well, that's very good.
23:56 Speaker 02 But that's one of my all time faves. Love that one. Yeah, that was an early classic. And I remember, I think it was one of the very first ones where we had contact with someone with a very obscure job. It was always exciting research moments where we could get in contact with people actually in the field doing it. James, do you want to read out this? This is your one.
24:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I can do. In 1903, a man called W. Reginald Bray posted himself.
24:24 Speaker 01 And that fact has now been delivered to someone called, and I don't think this is their real name, but apologies if it is, Mr. Retro Graveyard.
24:34 Speaker 03 Yes.
24:36 Speaker 02 That's a name.
24:36 Speaker 01 Sorry, Mr. Graveyard. Or can I call you Retro, perhaps, if that is your real name? But yeah, that's your fact. W. Reginald Bray posting himself.
24:46 Speaker 02 He was always, was he, he was always doing that, wasn't he? The only memory I have, and it might not be connected to this specific guy, but someone posted themselves, I think, to Australia in a box that was put in an airplane, and it was successful. And so someone else tried to replicate it, and they were tightly packed in. And unfortunately, as they were packed in, the box went over and he spent the entire trip upside down in the box.
25:10 Speaker 01 And that's when the This Way Up sticker was invented.
25:14 Speaker 03 I've just looked up W Reginald Bray.
25:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 03 He was also known as the Autograph King and collected 15,000.
25:20 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
25:21 Speaker 01 And my hero.
25:23 Speaker 03 Dan, very excitingly, was born in Forest Hill, London, which is about a five minute walk from where you used to live. He was born there in 1879. Just listen to this sentence. He lived there until 1938, when he moved to Croydon. He died on the 6th of June, 1939. A great advert for the Croydon way of life.
25:41 Speaker 02 I was hoping you would say he died when he was murdered in the local Crystal Palace maze.
25:50 Speaker 03 That was a very cool.
25:51 Speaker 02 All right, let's get another fact and this goes out to Tristan Street. And your fact is that the world's oldest edible ham just celebrated its 112th birthday.
26:04 Speaker 03 Gorgeous.
26:05 Speaker 02 Now it'll be much older now, the ham, because we did this years ago.
26:09 Speaker 03 Fear it might have been decommissioned. Was this the one that was hanging up in the covered market in Oxford?
26:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:13 Speaker 03 Which Anna had seen.
26:14 Speaker 02 I had seen as well, because I, I used to live in Oxford. In fact, the first time I ever joined QI was part of, there was a QI building in Oxford and James.
26:25 Speaker 03 You were trying to open your, your cannonball gelateria, weren't you?
26:33 Speaker 02 Don't know why that didn't work. We, we had a QI building there and there was the covered market and there's a shop in there, a butcher's. And hanging in the window is supposedly the world's oldest ham. Yeah. And do you think it's no longer there, do you?
26:47 Speaker 03 No, I think now the title has passed to Sir Ian McKellen.
26:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, but no, I fear it might not be there anymore.
26:56 Speaker 02 Right.
26:56 Speaker 03 Uh, I hope it is.
26:57 Speaker 01 Do you think someone might have eaten it?
26:59 Speaker 03 I don't think. It was one of those hams which just, if it was at a buffet, you'd, you'd definitely eat around it.
27:07 Speaker 02 Keep in mind, I've seen that in a buffet.
27:09 Speaker 03 Cause it looks like a, it looks like a sort of, a long buried limb that's been dug up.
27:14 Speaker 02 It really does. Yeah.
27:16 Speaker 01 But I think like ham is, the ham doesn't really go off. It's like lion's mane mushrooms in that respect.
27:25 Speaker 03 Oh, it looks like someone's posted saying it was on display a couple of years ago in the cover market, so maybe it lives.
27:31 Speaker 02 Okay.
27:32 Speaker 03 Maybe it lives.
27:32 Speaker 01 Feels like a school trip for us.
27:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, oh, definitely. We should start doing that.
27:37 Speaker 02 All right. Well, congratulations, Tristan. Next fact. Andy, do you want to read this one out?
27:42 Speaker 03 Yes, this goes out to Sarah. You know who you are. And it's that orangutans like playing on iPads, but gorillas don't. This was an experiment that was done in 2013, and they gave orangutans iPads, and they bloody loved it. And I think they started calling each other. And there was this rash of experiments when the iPad was quite new. It was more of an experiment on scientists with access to iPads than it was on these animals, basically. But I think they would, they would chat and they would put up on the screen, you know, a banana. They'd say, would you like a banana? Then it would tap the banana, and then they'd give them a banana. So.
28:18 Speaker 02 This is quite a good racket, actually, because the iPad would have been fairly fresh around 2013 when we were doing this. If you were a scientist and you wanted all the latest tech for free, you would request it and say it's part of a gorilla experiment, and you would let the gorilla play on it for five minutes and then bring it home.
28:35 Speaker 01 I rather feel like after gorillas played with your iPad for five minutes, it might not be quite as usable as you hope.
28:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're right, James. Yeah.
28:44 Speaker 02 All right, let's get one more. James, do you want to read this one?
28:47 Speaker 01 Okay, this one is for Susie. And your fact, it's an absolutely classic. I really love this fact. The 1888 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Wales reads, "See England."
29:03 Speaker 03 And in that moment, Welsh nationalism was born afresh.
29:06 Speaker 01 I really hope, I really hope it's not Susie from Carnarvon.
29:12 Speaker 01 But yeah, the reason was that the article "England" was actually "England and Wales."
29:18 Speaker 03 Yes. I think it's because at the time, legally, legally, I'm saying legally, not culturally, they might have been one territory. There's all, there was all this chat about the principality, that kind of thing. Whereas I think Scotland was differently established as a different nation, basically.
29:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. It's why you have the England and Wales cricket team.
29:38 Speaker 03 Do you?
29:39 Speaker 01 They always call it England Cricket Team, but it's the England and Wales.
29:42 Speaker 03 I had never heard that.
29:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:45 Speaker 03 And that's why they're so good.
29:46 Speaker 01 Well, most of them come from South Africa or New Zealand or whatever. But yeah, like that they are officially known as that.
29:53 Speaker 03 Well, you're not allowed South Africans on the England cricket team, are you?
29:56 Speaker 01 Well, Kevin Pietersen was born in South Africa, one of our best ever players. The the England cricket team over the last couple of years has been two Yorkshiremen, one Lancastrian, and then people from assorted places around the world.
30:10 Speaker 02 Have they become citizens of the UK in order to do that?
30:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, you you would have to be.
30:14 Speaker 03 You have to be legally, yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
30:16 Speaker 03 But is that is that why we've been winning so hard all around the world, as I understand it?
30:21 Speaker 01 Uh, well, unfortunately, this is going out after the Ashes has just finished. But before that, yeah.
30:26 Speaker 02 Oh, good, good.
30:29 Speaker 02 All right. Well, look, congrats, everyone. We really hope you enjoy your facts. If you want one yourself, do join Club Fish. Just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. There are lots of tiers there. There are lots of really fun things going on as part of the club. So join up today. And if you also want to have your facts read out on this episode, as I said before, podcast at qi.com, send them in there. We love, love, love getting them. Anyway, we're going to be back on Friday with a proper main episode and then back again on Monday with another little fish. So we'll see you then. Goodbye.
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