¶ Intro / Opening
You really want to be better with your finances. You try to put money away in savings. You look for deals. You wrote out a budget once a long time ago. You still overdraft from time to time and you still have debt. The truth is managing money is not easy, but rocket money can help.
Rocket Money shows you exactly what you're spending every month. From there, the app helps you make a budget that meets your financial goals. The app even gives you real-time alerts when you're about to go over your budget so you don't spend too much.
With Rocket Money, you can also see all your subscriptions at a glance and cancel the ones you don't want right from the app. Rocket Money can even try to get you a refund for some of the money wasted. Plus, you can use the Smart Savings feature to start putting more money away.
Rocket Money analyzes your accounts to determine the optimal time to stow away cash without going over your budget. Our members report that the Rocket Money app saves more than $700 a year. Getting better with money doesn't have to be a pipe dream. Rocket Money can make it a reality. Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores. Love, it isn't just one color. It comes in countless shades, different hues.
Desert diamonds celebrate all the people we love and all the shades that make them who they are in an entire spectrum of unexpected tones from warm whites to pale champagnes to deep embers. Natural colors that reflect they will always be loved for exactly who they are. Discover desert diamonds. A diamond is forever.
¶ Podcast Intro and UK Tour Announcement
Ho, ho, ho! Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Little Fish. Before we get into it... There is just a little announcement that I would like to make. Christmas is only a few days away. And if you were looking to get a present for someone in your life who loves fish... I would love it if you would be able to come to my new tour that I'm going to be doing around the UK as of March next year. What? I'm so sorry. This is a...
Terrible way for you to find out. We're going on tour? We're not, unfortunately. Dan! You can come. I don't have a stitch to wear. You can come and watch. I can do my act. Oh, no one wants to see that, mate. I've been practicing. I can do it without injuring
any of the audience by now. I really can. Oh, Dan, I'm so excited. Where are we going? Where are we going? Okay, well, this show is called This Changes Everything. And we should clarify, it's just Dan. It's not me. I'm just being a silly banana. You could come along. I would be very happy if you did.
front row with pom-poms every night, Dan. It's going to be Dan on tour. Where are you going? So, on the 15th of March, I'm going to be in Warwick, and then I'm going to be in Salford, I'm going to be in Brighton, I'm going to be in Edinburgh, Nottingham, and then I'm going to be playing the Royal Geographical Society in London. Yeah, this is going to be a great evening of mysteries.
amazing facts, mind-blowing stories from history. I've put together the best of the best of stuff that I've been digging up over the last 10 years. If you've read my book, The Theory of Everything Else, you'll know the kind of tone of it. It's all the stuff that has led to the world we live in today, but it's all the bits... of history that have been swept under the carpet because people would rather you didn't know about it. So if you like mystery adventure and jokes, please come along to this.
changes everything. So if you're looking to buy tickets for yourself or someone else, just put Dan Schreiber, this changes everything tour into Google. You'll find a link. You can also find it on my Instagram at Schreiberland. It'll be in the bio.
Please come along. It's going to be an awesome night. I'll be there. And Andy will be there. I mean, just come to just to see Andy. Sure. Sit and watch Andy watching me. We've got another little fish for you now. These are your facts. Here we go. On with the show. On with the podcast. Thank you for doing that. I didn't have a choice. Now please, please Den, put the call through and release my family.
Hello and welcome to Little Fish, the show where we look at the great facts that you guys have been sending in over the past seven days. Andy has gone through the inbox, as bulging as it was, and taken out the very, very best. sent them to me and to Dan and kept some for himself and we're going to read through them today and maybe chat a little bit more about them. So without further ado who's going to read the first one? Maybe Dan?
¶ Listener Facts: 4D Geometry & Wartime Roles
yeah okay um i got a fact here which is from eli jones who says that jungle gyms were invented in japan in the 1880s by a british polygamist So Jungle Gems, I think, is what- I would have called soft play when I was younger. Right. So me, a jungle gym is the metallic bars that are in a sort of a crescent shape from the ground that you would climb around. Oh, interesting. An adventure playground? Yeah. That's a jungle gym to me, but do we know what this guy invented? Wow.
A hard, this sounds like a hard play. Yeah, that sounds like hard play. Hard play. Well, here's a story. While living with one of his families in Japan, a British mathematician called Charles Howard Hinton tried to instill a fundamental understanding of the fourth dimensional geometry into... His children. What is the fourth dimension? Sorry to throw you an easy one so early. Imagine you take a square and you turn it into a cube. You're adding a third dimension.
Now imagine you turn that into the next level up. That's the fourth dimension. I've just got another cube on top of a cube in my head. That would be a hypercube. It's really hard to explain. I thought the fourth dimension was time. But that's clearly not what we're talking about here. No, this is the fourth spatial dimension. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Okay, well, it sounds like soft play might not have been enough to do it, I'd say. I suppose, was he trying to teach children spatial awareness?
Because they're moving through a 3D space? Yeah. And they're becoming... Are the children the fourth dimension? He said he wanted to help them with the understanding that we typically move in two dimensions. walking around cardinal directions.
is what he said. Yeah, so you walk flat on the earth. We're not flying. Like a bird is in three dimensions because it can go up and down as well, but normally we're on the ground. If someone stops me and asks for directions, I very rarely include the third dimension in my answer.
I say, take the second left down here. And I never say, you'll need to rise about three meters. And then go into the fourth dimension. So... to us you'll still appear like you're in the same place but actually you'll be in a different position in that other dimension right it's very simple stuff guys um so he uh he wanted to do this by creating a bamboo grid
and running drills with his kids where he would shout coordinates at them and they would scramble through the grid to get the coordination right. So that was his plan. It was to invent a device that allowed for them to do that. A byproduct of it was the invention of the jungle gym. Yeah, I've seen a picture of it and a jungle gym you're talking about is like a climbing frame but made of lots of boxes. Mmm.
Okay. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. What was the other thing that, maybe it was soft play that was invented by a guy in Manchester who saw that people were playing in burnt out cars and decided that maybe we should give them something else to play in. Was it bombs? sites as well yeah i think so a load of precarious concrete and rusty metal strewn patches yeah and kids were playing on them because it was a kind of free space for them to play
And it never did them any harm. He definitely came up with some kind of playground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, well, great fact. Indeed. Andy, what about another one? All right, here's one from Andy Walker. who's sending his favourite film fact. The UK actor Richard Todd was a D-Day veteran, and I really like this. He was in a film called The Longest Day, which is a really, really famous Second World War film. It's about three hours long.
It recreates large chunks of D-Day, basically. He was in the film The Longest Day, playing his real-life commanding officer. So he had been at D-Day himself as a young man. 20 years later, he gets cast in this film. playing the guy who was in charge of him on D-Day, and there's someone else in the film playing him as a younger man. Really? Yeah. And I'd never heard of Richard Todd, really. I hadn't seen this film. And he was incredibly popular in the 60s and 50s.
He was a matinee idol, and he was there at Pegasus Bridge in D-Day, which he had to capture and sort of hold off really fierce German attacks to try and retake it, because they were trying to shut the whole thing down. And... Yeah, he ended up in this film later on with a load of, I mean, it's a huge film with a lot of incredibly famous actors in it, many of whom had been there on the actual D-Day. That must be crazy. It must have been so surreal. Yeah, exactly. And he had enough of an impact.
that he was a character in that movie yeah that's pretty wild isn't it yeah yeah it's really cool i guess small regiments you would know the names of everyone you know, that you were talking about. He was one of the first people on the ground. He landed at 40 minutes after midnight on D-Day. He was absolutely one of the first people. Did it start at midnight? Maybe that's when the parachuting dogs landed.
I think it was when the parachute got landed. I think we said in an earlier episode that that's what came in first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was one of the first two-legged mammals on the ground. I'm not sure I would start at midnight because I think that's when they'd be expecting it.
Good point. I think I started like 17 minutes past something. Well, that's why it was such a terrible failure. Because they didn't listen to you. No, that's fair enough. I don't know if it was dead on. But I did a little more reading about... him in his life and it was a very interesting life. One of his other superior officers on D-Day, this is just an amazing name I've tracked down, he was a guy called Jeffrey Pine Coffin. That was his surname.
That's very good. It was a double-barreled name. The Pine and the Coffin families had got married to each other a century before, and they called themselves Pine Coffin. You don't get names like that anymore. It's a brilliant name.
¶ Listener Facts: Bizarre Remedies & Media Filters
Okay, here's one from me by Dario Persichino. Thank you very much for writing, Dario, with this incredible fact that it would take just over 1,418 years to eat a full Jesus. So what Dario has done here...
is assumed that when you're eating a communion wafer, which is the body of Christ, that that is actually Jesus. And he's worked out all the stuff he's... sent us all the working out and i can promise you that it's all great uh and he worked out that you would need 74 000 communion wafers to eat a complete jesus and assuming you receive communion once a week it would take approximately 1418 years to eat
for jesus uh he says this does not take into account any philosophical issues of transubstantiation uh and that it hasn't taken into account the weight of jesus's foreskin which he said he knows be a point of interest to me because that's why it was excommunicated but he said he figured it would only make a one small wafer difference yeah
I'm going to say friend of the podcast, Jesus is false good now. Absolutely. But Dario, honestly, absolutely stunning, stunning bit of maths. I wonder how many bottles of wine it would take to drink all the blood of Christ. Dario, get on it. That's in true Hawkins style, that fact, isn't it? I read a recent article about communion wafer, which had got the blood of Christ on it. And they found red.
stains on the communion wafer and thought that's what had happened in actual fact it was caused by a fungus and three different types of bacteria all of which are commonly found on human hands oh Now, there is a theory that Jesus was a mushroom, so he could have been reforming on that wafer. Right. Could be. Could be. that's brilliant that's really good you've all taken your tinfoil hats off what's going on uh should i do one yeah yeah go for it okay this is from anton gillenberg who writes fact
The Vatican Apostolic Library holds shelf after shelf of self-help hiccup remedies. Do they have the finger up the anus? Which is, I believe, the only medically certain way to cure it. You're right. You're right. Wow. Digital rectal massage. Yes. Is that what the Sistine Chapel is? Is God's finger coming towards... No, stop. Adam, have you got hiccups? Okay, so this is Pope Pius XII, who reportedly is a friend of the podcast. Huge friend. Give me...
He was the guy who said that anyone who mentions Jesus' foreskin gets excommunicated. He was the guy whose embalming went incredibly wrong. Yeah. The Hot Summers. Who had that crazy doctor. He was a proper friend of the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, welcome back, Pope Pius. So, yeah, he suffered from chronic hiccups. So over the years, people from all around the world would send him all kinds of remedies.
From charming suggestions like being startled to the more vulgar ideas that we have mentioned on our show. I'm assuming. Ah, there we go. Finger up the bum bum. So. As correspondents addressed to the Pope, God's representative on Earth, these submissions could not be discarded and were preserved according to standard Vatican archival procedures. So they are all there.
So there's many unusual items, including all of these remedies that are now part of the collection that are maintained by the Holy See. Yeah. There's a PS to this email, by the way, from Anton, who is in Helsinki in Finland, just to add that. PS. I have actually come to possess the only foolproof method to cure hiccups.
As it involves bizarre choreography, schnapps, and singing in Swedish, it's rather difficult to explain in writing. But if we ever meet in person, I would be delighted to share it with you. Okay, let's book that gig in Helsinki straight away. I have come in to possess the only foolproof method. It's quite strong, isn't it? It's got choreography involved, yeah. I think this is exciting. I imagine what it is, is everyone gets some schnapps, stands in a circle.
does this sort of really amazing dance with your arms going one way, your legs going the other way, all that kind of stuff. Then we all say something like some ancient riddle in Swedish. And then we all put our fingers up each other's buns. I've got one. Yeah. This is from Emma Wood, and I find it quite fascinating. So she sends a couple of facts. I'll just do the second one if that's all right, Emma.
It's a bit anecdotal, but she says, I personally found this quite a cursed piece of trivia. Years ago on a tour of a famous commercial radio station, I was told for their breakfast show that they use a specific voice filter. to make the hosts sound more artificially happy in the mornings. There's any knowledge about... Is this person British, do you think? I...
I don't know. She says, in my research, unfortunately, I cannot find anything documented to back this up. Is this a radio-wide conspiracy? Have I blown this shit wide open? Well, we can say because we know Zoe Ball. and we've all been on her breakfast show, that she is genuinely that happy all the time. Yeah. But we add a filter to our show. This show, we've got lots of filters on. Oh, yeah. Just remind me what they are again. Well...
We put on one which makes us sound a bit cleverer. Oh, yeah. Dan's yours has been broken for a while, actually. I know, I've been meaning to get that looked at. I have the cruelness filter on mine, of course. You've got that set to strong today, I see. Anna, believe it or not, we've turned down her sarcasm filter. Yeah, that's why she hasn't been on for three months.
Think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription. There was probably some waiting on hold, some guessing at your password, some mind-numbing small talk. And maybe after all of that, you still weren't able to cancel it. Good news. It doesn't have to be this way. Thanks to Rocket Money. Rocket Money tracks, manages, and can cancel your subscriptions for you. When you connect to your accounts, you'll see a complete picture of all of your recurring subscriptions all in one place.
Rocket Money organizes your subscriptions by due date and notifies you when something is coming up, so you'll never be caught off guard when you get charged. If you see a subscription you want to cancel, Rocket Money simplifies the process.
Instead of waiting on hold for an hour, you can cancel it right from the app. Rocket Money will even try to get you a refund for the money you spent on subscriptions you forgot about. Stop wasting time trying to cancel subscriptions the hard way. Make your life easier and go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel.
¶ Listener Facts: Linguistic Quirks & Legal Length
That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores. Okay, so here is another fact. This one is from Gudrun. Ulfarsdottir. She says that tourists in Iceland have been tagging the place name Gjallskulda in hundreds of photos on social media recently. The weird thing is that these photos seem to be taken in lots of different places around the country. The reason is because Gjeldskulda in Icelandic means parking fees apply.
Lovely. Lovely. And apparently lots of parking lots, people have been putting up this sign to make sure that people pay. But then people have just seen it. In fairness, it looks like it could be a name of a place in Iceland for sure. Brilliant. But of course it reminds me of the Pravo Yazdi thing a few years ago in Ireland. where loads of traffic infringements had been given to this single person called Pravo Yazdi, but it turned out that Pravo Yazdi was Polish for driving license.
I left that one. Yeah, that's brilliant. Should I do one more? This one is such a fish geared fact. You have to know an in joke in order to like this one, I think. Caleb Gruen. has sent this in. I'm a longtime fan of the podcast. As a US law student, I recently came across a fact that might be of interest to you. Judging by word count, the constitution of the US state of Alabama, sources vary.
But 373,000 words is probably the best estimate. Wow. Is longer than Anna Karenina. Which is around 364,000 as the highest estimate. Wow. That's the fact. How much verbiage does it take to run Alabama effectively? probably there's a lot of stuff about farming and the alabama constitution like there is in anna karenina yeah i think i think yeah caleb basically wanted to let us know that because he said spoilers about the alabama constitution will probably be less infuriating
¶ Listener Facts: Albatrosses & Moonbound Elephants
to our listeners than spoilers about Anna Karenina. That's really funny. Andy, go on, give us one more. All right, here's the final one. This is very exciting. This is from Yana Rao, and Yana is working on a sub-Antarctic... Sub-Antarctic? Sorry. It's not where the Nazis live. It's the entrance to the Hollow Earth. Sorry. I think this must mean just above the Antarctic rather than just below the South Pole.
An island called Marion Island off the coast of South Africa. And Jana and 19 others are living there for 15 months doing scientific research. Wow. Your podcast keeps me highly entertained and puts a smile on my face in the field while we hike hundreds of kilometers in shitty weather. And Jana is a seabird researcher working closely with wandering albatross.
So cool. So cool. And just sends a few brilliant facts about the wandering albatross. So I don't think we've mentioned them very much. And they're basically, they've got the longest wingspan of any bird. It's two and a half metres, roughly. And... I really like this. They've got this elbow locking mechanism. They can keep their wings open for as long as they want without activating their muscles. And basically, they can fly several hundred miles.
in one go without flapping their wings once yeah i just didn't really clock how far they can fly like imagine several hundred miles from wherever you are yeah it's a long way away from london to bolton without flapping yeah not one flap last time i drove i was flapping the whole way right and so they they lock their elbows so that it just basically rides the wind yeah yeah exactly and um i looked at what's going on on marion island yeah when from where yana is writing
And it's where they're trying to wipe out the mice, which have for years been absolutely demolishing the albatrosses. It's been a real catastrophe. Because half the world's...
Wandering albatrosses are bred on this island and the island next door. So it's a really important base for them. They shouldn't be called the wandering albatross, should they, considering they have such a small... They're all from here. It's true. Well, they do wander. They can fly... some of them have been seen flying 75,000 miles in one year
So they do wander. Just a couple of flaps to get there though. Yeah. And basically this island introduced five cats to the island in 1949 to control the mice, which were already causing a huge problem. Guess what they didn't do to the cats? New to them. They didn't new to them. So then they had hundreds of cats preying on the albatrosses because it's easier to catch the mice. Did they consider dogs after that? Yeah, it was very much the old woman who...
who introduced an unneutred cat to the Marion Island. Basically, they finally have got rid of the cats about 30 years ago, and now they're going after the mice. And if they can do it, if they can do full elimination, this will be a huge boon to the albatrosses, which have really suffered their populations.
That might be what Yammer's working on. Very exciting. Very cool. It's very cool. Very, very cool. Okay, one more fact. Do you want one that's also about birds or one that's also from an expert in the field? Oh, I'll say expert in the field. Yeah, expert in the field. Okay, bad news to Kirstie Blackman and her penguin fact. We're going to go. No. Sorry, Kirstie. It's all right. It was just penguins can't taste fruit. That's all I got.
That's what Kirsty said. Why would they have evolved to taste fruit? They're in a fruit-free environment. I have all the information, but we're not going to go into it today. We're going to instead have the fact from Ralph de Roa Mercado Mesquita. who writes that if elephants were to walk on the moon, their limbs would need to be about 10 meters long to maintain normal gait mechanics.
What? So this is Ralph is a biomechanist and researcher in locomotion and his team wrote a paper about what elephants would have to do if they were on the moon. I basically will just pray see this. Basically, if they wanted to keep walking in the way that they walk on Earth, they would need very, very long legs based on the gravity and the leg length and all that kind of stuff. That is an astonishing fact in that I just assume...
you could transport any animal to the moon and they would be able to moonwalk up there like they do down here like when you say moonwalk you don't mean walk backwards like michael jackson i think that's the agreed way of how you have to walk on the moon is it not No, it's true, but obviously if humans walk on the moon, then we...
bouncing rather than walking really aren't we so um yeah the elephants would have to have certain changes as well and ralph and his team will be presenting the project at the society of biomechanics in marseille in two weeks from the moment He sent that email. So probably if you're in Marseille, you might have missed it. Yeah, yeah, I think so, I'm afraid.
What are they hoping to achieve with this study? It's just fun, Andy. Oh, I'm sorry. That's what I missed. It gets people interested in locomotion and gait and biomechanics and stuff like that. I don't think they're intending to actually send elephants up. the moon but i think that's i think you're right it's super interesting and if someone did let's say fantasize the idea of a moon zoo
How would animals function on the moon if they were living there? There's probably so many interesting different ways that you would have to adapt an animal to be out there. The space suit for the elephant is going to be a big ask, isn't it? Where does the oxygen go? In the nose? In the trunk? They don't need a helmet. They just have a little thing on the end of their trunk, don't they?
I think their spacesuit is doing more than just helping you breathe. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Andy's like, no, I'll go out. I'll just hold my breath. I'll go out. I can hold my breath for two minutes. I'm going to go out, pick up a few moon rocks. I'm having a piss. I don't need... It's fine. I don't breathe through my cock. Shut up, Houston.
Houston. Your last words. I'm in trouble. I've got three seconds left. What can I do, Houston? It's actually Houston. Okay, on that.
¶ New Custodians: Diverse Facts & Farewell
diabolical note we still have one more thing to do and that is to tell you the listener if you are a member of the upper tier of patreon whether or not this week you are a new custodian of one of our facts so who is going to go first with one of those i'll do one uh this one goes out to edward cox congratulations edward your fact is one
from another great friend of the podcast, Lieven Skyra, who came on the show in episode 13 and presented the fact that during the Second World War, the Nazis employed two official Nazi comedians, Tran and Heller. They made a series of films, didn't they? And I think maybe they got fired for being a bit too about regulations or maybe committing the cardinal sin of making fun of the regime a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Great fact. And this was our first moment with Levin.
on the show. We've since had him on multiple times, largely when we do Nerdland, which is his festival in Belgium. Are we going to do it next year? He's just sent us a message. Oh, has he? Okay, well, if the dates work, yeah, maybe. Is this an exclusive and official response? on sleeping uh if you're listening if the dates work yes maybe
Great, very cool. Okay, I'll do one. This was my fact from episode 13, and this is for Lin. Lin, you are now the custodian of this fact. The Philippines Basketball Association is the world's second oldest. And names of its 10 teams include the Rain and Shine Elasto Painters, San Miguel Beer Men, and Talk and Text Tropang Textors. Brilliant. Great names.
At one stage when you started, I thought we were going to get all 10 teams. I don't remember this. And the reason is, was I in this episode? No, you're not. No, I don't think I've ever even listened to this episode. Oh, wow. It's a goodie. It's a goodie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Ling, congratulations. Yeah. Here is another fact. This one is now under the custodianship of Casey McKenzie Johnson.
And the fact is that if you get a zebrafish drunk and put him in a tank with other zebrafish, the sober ones will follow the drunk one around. Lovely. lovely Anna's fact in episode 13 I feel like she was just hoping that that was what happened with her life but no this is about zebrafish which are often used in in medical trials because they have
quite similar nervous system to humans and to other animals. I think maybe my cousin studies zebrafish. Really? I haven't asked her lately how it's going. i'll have to drop her drop her a line very nice yeah that's cool i didn't know that yeah yeah well as we can ask i mean i barely know it clearly as with me saying it but yeah yeah uh should we have another one yeah all right this one goes out to you
Joshua Smith. Joshua, your fact, from this day forward, forsaking all others, is that the youngest woolly mammoths are older than the oldest pharaohs. Kabang! Yes! Bosh! pharaohs mammoths there was a time where you could have had a pharaoh riding a woolly mammoth yeah and it's an absolute catastrophe that we didn't make that happen as a species
How stupid are we? We didn't know that the woolly mammoth was going to go extinct so quickly. No, we didn't. And we also didn't know that the pharaohs were going to die out so quickly as well. No, you're right. You would have thought they'd both go on happily forever. But yeah, and the last woolly mammoths were living on this.
place called wrangle island i think and it's just because it was quite remote and um there are all these theories about why they died out i think in siberia right yeah that's it yeah yeah would the two have ever met do we know if absolutely no pharaohs in siperia no but i meant uh ancient egyptians would they have traveled at that point you can't really they did some seafaring and they did some travels in africa
but there's no way they could have got up to Siberia, I'm sorry to say. They wouldn't have had the warm togs for that. environment no those like tunics and funny hats that they wore absolutely not they would not be good in siberia absolutely not so sad yeah Don't give us another. This one is for Rachel Gilbert. Congratulations. You now own a James Harkin fact, which is that the CEO of Levi's hasn't washed his jeans in more than a year. Maybe 11 years at that point.
The dirty bugger. No, I do remember this one and I remember it being quite controversial in the office because I think Anna said she had never washed her jeans ever. Was the other thing you put it in the fridge? That was the... Freezer. freezer yeah that was one way to do it but basically they said that they just don't need washing
And I just straight up disagree. Still, after all this time, I think washing clothes, I mean, call me a rebel, call me a maverick, but I think washing your clothes is a good thing. Yeah, jeans are not the kind of clothes that need washing every day. You know, I try and get a new pair of pants on every day, and I don't mind sharing that on the show. But jeans, they can go a while. Because if you spill something very urgent on them, then you need to change them quite a bit.
I think I agree. If you shit yourself, you should change them. Well, yeah. If you shit yourself badly, you should change them. It's case by case. Oh, I've said too much. This is why I try and keep quiet about my personal life. Okay, let me do one more. This fact is going to Devin Parentstein.
It appears that parents is this person's middle name. And Devin, you are so lucky. You are really getting your money's worth with this fact because it's a Dan Schreiber fact. Wow, this is long. Is this how I said it on the day? Surely not. I've read audiobooks that are shorter than this fact. The thing is, we just haven't got the hang of delivering a crisp fact yet. Oh my god, the Alabama Constitution is shorter than this fact. Devin, your fact is...
The first successful transatlantic flight in 1919 was made by Alcock and Brown. At one point, they got lost in a cloud. And when they came out, they were only 60 feet above the water and flying at 90 degrees. water a double water in there as well yeah i don't think i would have double watered it okay okay mate maybe i typed it up wrong Maybe you actually said something that was only five words long and I just got carried away when typing up the episode.
I think I would have said the first bit as the fact and then quickly came in underneath it with the qualifications. But that's not an interesting fact that Alcock and Brown were the first people to cross the Atlantic. That's just a bit of trivia. I think Devin would feel absolutely stiffed if... His fact was that the first transatlantic flight was made by Alcock and Brown.
Well, you're welcome then, Devin, because I've included the extra exciting detail. It was pretty amazing. Them getting lost in a cloud and flying out of the cloud at 90 degrees to the water is funny. That's funny because you'd think there would be other signs like their drink spilling. Yeah.
Yes. Or them falling out of the plane. Yeah. Do you know the terrible thing? I actually trimmed this down a bit before we read it out on today's Little Fish. I genuinely did. Okay, are we going to do one or two more? Yeah, Andy, what have you got for us? All right, this is for Benjamin. Not Benjamin, Benjamin. It's this fact. In 2007, a woman called Evan Latimer inherited Napoleon's penis from her father. Oh, oh. And we did a lot about the afterlife of Napoleon's petit corporel. Because...
It was passed around and inherited and probably won and lost in card games and things like that. And it's had a busy, busy afterlife. Yeah. I play a lot of poker these days, but I think we are missing the time when you could just shove something on the... table and say let's play for that really it's all chips and it's all like oh let's play for a fiver and stuff like that you know you don't get people shoving mussolini's eyeball on the table and saying
I feel like all my stuff would just be rejected. That's very cool, Dan, that you brought an unboxed Mork and Mindy toy from the 1970s. We actually dispute your assessment of its worth. You may have paid 100 quid for it. actually mean it's worth 100 quid of chips because normally it's like you're you throw your car keys on the table or your house keys or your wedding ring or something for Dan of course it's a life-size cut out of Ben Elton
It's signed. You don't understand. Steve Martin briefly owned this tambourine. Oh, dear. But I think the Latimer family still own Napoleon's privates. Do they? Right. The penis, anyway. Very good. So congratulations. Congratulations, Benjamin. Okay, and let's do one more, Dan. Hopefully something nice, short, snappy, and not too penis-y.
Yep. So Karen Janes, you are now the custodian of Andrew Hunter Murray's fact, which is to say I don't care about something. A German person has the option of saying it's sausage to me. Is this your first ever sausage? facts on the show? I think it might be. First of many. I realised then that this was a rich theme of stuff. Das ist mir Wurst. I don't care. That's sausage. It's sausage to me. Sausage to me. But the Germans love sausage. Which is why it's a strange...
You know, it's a popular national dish. Yeah. Yeah, we actually found out in a recent episode that you weren't in, that they also say, that's train station tannoy to me. That's quite good because that is the sort of thing that you just let pass by you. That's brilliant. Yeah. Huh.
The first ever photo shoot that we had with a national newspaper had us sitting down with placards with our favorite facts on it. And this was your fact. You had that. I had one about being kicked in the head or something. That's right. I can't remember what Anna's was.
then dan had a huge billboard next to him with one of his facts there are 30 cricket teams in okay thank you so much for listening to this episode of little fish and congratulations to all the custodians of today's facts if you have some interesting facts that you want to tell us then send them over to andy at podcast at qi.com he will shuffle through them and send them out to us and we might mention them next week
the week after or the week after that or any time in the next 20 years until eventually we decide to stop doing this If you would like to get custodianship of a fact yourself, then go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and you can join the friend of the podcast tier to do that. But in the meantime, please enjoy the rest of your week and we will see you on Friday for a... Big old episode of No Such Thing As A Fish. Bye.
