FACTORALY - E97 WIND

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Wind is all around us and one of the most powerful forces on Earth. It has a massive effect on our lives and the lives of every living thing on the planet. Not to mention things that aren't alive at all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Good morning Simon. How are you today? I'm feeling okay thank you very much. Good. A little bit windy. A little bit windy? You got a bit of the windy pops. I need someone to put me over their shoulder and just tap my back a bit. Excellent. This is what? Yes it is, you're right. This is what, you are who, we are when.

Right, this is Factorally. I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. And the when is now. Yes, today. We do this every week, don't we? We do every week without fail for the last year and a half. We must be so good at this by now. You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?

So, how would you describe Factorally, Bruce, to the uninitiated? Factorally is a highly intelligent, intellectual delve into various subjects that are PhD level sure It really really is and then the truth Factorally is a fun filled fact full of stuff about things. Yes, that's that's far better We pick different subjects each week That's far better. We pick different subjects each week, subjects which may or may not have any value to them that often seem worthless and dull at the beginning. But by the end, crikey, we, we eat some interesting facts out of it.

We do. I mean, sometimes they're little subjects and sometimes they're big subjects. Sometimes they're subjects that are global. Yes. Like today's subject. Indeed. We've picked a biggie. Well, have we? There are all sorts of interpretations of today's subject. That's true, yes. It's a biggie because it's got lots of different

avenues that we could have gone down. Yes. Bruce and I don't tell each other what particular facts we're going to research separately. So we might have researched exactly the same points nine times out of ten we've gone in completely different directions. It would be a very dull podcast if we both researched the same thing wouldn't it? Yes that's right Simon tell me another fact that I already know. So today we are talking about wind. Wind! Where does the word wind come from? Right, so the word wind it's quite an interesting one it's got quite a few

different relatives to it but it's originally an old English word which comes from the Germanic vint, quite uninventive it hasn't changed much, that in turn from the Norse vindr, from Proto-Germanermanic Windas from Proto-Indo-European I can't pronounce that word it's got a lot of phlegm involved possibly ventos okay or something sounds like wind but ventos was also the source of the Latin word ventus which is the Latin word for wind which gives us vent and ventilation and air vents and things like that so they're all connected. Clever stuff. What is wind? Wind has one

of the most basic definitions of a really big scientific thing that I've ever heard. In essence wind is the movement of air across the surface of the planet. Okay. That's it. That's it. And how do you make wind? No, we'll get on to that later. How does the planet make wind? How is wind made? Right. It's all to do with the sun. So the sun is hot, obviously. It heats up the air that's on the earth. The hot air rises, leaving a sort of a not quite a vacuum but an area of low pressure underneath it into which cooler air gets sucked and that cooler air that moves into that space is felt by us or by

objects or by whatever and that is what we call wind. Ah okay so the rising of the air causes wind? The rising of the air causes wind to blow into the space where the air was before it blows. And then eventually it cools and comes back down and the whole thing repeats. Right. And does it all go in the same direction? No. No? That would be far too easy. Goes all over the place. This is going to be a really easy one to get incredibly nerdy and scientific about so I'm going to try really hard not to except for

this bit because I found this bit really interesting. Here comes the science. It's hotter around the equator obviously and therefore the air rises from there and leaves that gap for the cooler air to flow into. If you can picture the globe and then picture it being sort of sliced into slices at roughly 30 degrees separation from each other, from north to south, those slices have wind that sort of emanates from the surface of the earth, it goes up, it splits around the equator, it either goes north or south, travels for about 30 degrees up the globe, falls, comes back along the surface of the earth to where it started and it just

cycles. It's got this sort of cyclical motion. Like rain? Like rain and this happens sort of every 30 degrees north or south and there are these little sections. Each one of these sections is called a cell and you get Hadley cells, you get ferral cells and you get Polar cells, depending on where they are on the Earth. And it's very, very interesting. I had no idea that that's how wind moved. So that's on the global scale, that's roughly how wind moves. But then of course you've got the local scale where it's interrupted by mountains and lakes and cold areas and hot areas and Things like that. So the local scale messes it all up

Of course, I already know this because I'm I'm a professional balloonist right No, I'm not. Oh, you know what there comes a point where actually I could believe anything you say. But balloonists do know about this stuff. Have you ever wondered how you steer a balloon? Because it's kind of logical when you when you've done research into which way the wind blows you can kind of work out how they how they steer balloons. The way they do it is by height. So different winds blow in different directions at different heights in different places.

Yes, so you go up a bit to catch a westerly wind or down a bit to catch an easterly wind. Exactly. But what you can do is you can send up a little balloon before you send up the big balloon. Oh right, as a test. As a test. So you basically send up a little balloon and you watch which way it goes as it goes up. Right. So if it starts going left or if it starts going sort of forward or backwards or whichever. Yes. Then you can kind of work out at what levels you need to have the the balloon. Right okay. So that you can control the balloon and then when you're coming down same thing except they don't send balloons down well as they spit out the outside of the balloon what so if you spit out at the side of a balloon you watch the spit go down you can see it

going left and right or forward and backwards oh that's brilliant wow I wonder if this is what Queen were doing when they were writing Bohemian Rhapsody. Anyway the wind blows. Wind's been very useful though. Wind has conquered the world. Oh that's a grand statement. Yes, well you know we used to have an empire. Oh yeah back in the day. Back in the day when we had the biggest fleet in the world we had the biggest fleet in the world Yes, and the biggest fleet in the world was powered by the wind by the wind

Yeah, so all those sailing ships that we had enabled Britain to grow an enormous Empire. Yeah. Yeah, whether it was like just sailing up to somewhere I go Hi, we own this now. Sorry about you guys. Yes, or whether it was like fighting other people off yes with cannons and things yeah I've often wondered about the practicality of sort of steering such huge ships I mean I know you've got rudders and things that turn in the water but you know if you suddenly hit a particularly dead area of the sea where the wind isn't blowing become you're just gonna be sitting there yeah several hundred yards away from the other ship that's trying to either escape you or catch you. Yes, well except the other ships also working on wind as

well so they're not gonna catch you. Well yes, they're in the, to coin a phrase, they're in the same boat. Yeah so wind power really important for conquering other countries. Yep. And also these days for the energy. Yes of course. Did you do much research into windmills? I did actually yeah so I love a windmill. Do you? An old school Dutch one? An old fashioned. Or a big huge great? Well I quite like the modern wind turbines as well actually. I know a lot of people hate them But yeah, I think they're quite interesting things But I love the picture of an old windmill

You know sort of a stone tower or a wooden tower with those beautiful sails blowing around in the wind in a sort of Oh, we mentioned him the other week. Didn't we don't key Hotee? Yes fighting the windmills in his mind I just think they're beautiful graceful things. I grew up in southwest London quite near Wimbledon Common and there's a windmill on Wimbledon Common. There is you're right. Which has a nice cafe in front of it and I just think they're beautiful things and so I had a quick look into those and wind power in that sense has actually been around for a really long time. Back as far as the Babylonians all the way back in the 17th century BC I think this was quite a one-off because it isn't mentioned for several centuries after that but the Babylonian emperor

Hammurabi had a wind-powered device that irrigated his crops in Mesopotamia in the 17th century BC. Wow. So that's quite a long time ago. Nothing is mentioned for ages and then all of a sudden the 9th century AD in Persia you get windmills on sort of an industrial scale but they're horizontal so whereas our windmills stand up and the blades, the sails, are upright, this one in Persia, they were horizontal. So the sails lay flat and rotated parallel to the ground. And they were used exactly what you'd imagine windmills to be used for. They were used for grinding corn and pumping water and that sort of thing. It wasn't until the 12th century, so you know 300 years later in Europe, that we get the classical idea of

the windmill that we know it now. Upright tower sails on the front wafting around in the wind. At their peak around the mid 19th century in England alone there were over 10,000 windmills. Goodness me. And then steam power came along in the 19th century and the windmills sort of became less and less efficient and you know they sort of got decommissioned. But you know there was a time when you could hardly go anywhere in this country without seeing several windmills on the horizon. Yes. I mean Holland's famous for them isn't it?

Well absolutely. It's very flat and it's got lots of decent wind, solid regular wind. You talked about wind turbines. Do you know when the wind turbine was invented? Oh no I don't. So think about Scotland. Scotland's very windy. Yes. And there was a chap called James Blythe, right, who lived in Kincardshire. And this was at the time when batteries were just being invented and electricity was being stored in batteries. Right. And he decided that he was going to power his house by electricity. Yeah. And the way he was going to generate the electricity

and store it in batteries was using a wind turbine and he sort of experimented with various different types of turbine and sort of some of some of them didn't work because The wind was variable and was a knock the turbine over right and so he needed a way of sort of working out how to Regulate the wind. Hmm. So he basically decided to use barrels half barrels So he chopped the barrel in half vertically. So you get like a C shape of barrel and he'd sort of mount all these C shape barrels on a post and use them to generate electricity, which is then stored in batteries. And he did that in 1887. No. Yeah. No. The first wind powered house, which was his holiday home in

Kyrgyzstan, was powered by batteries with electricity generated by a wind turbine in 1887. Good grief, that's incredible. I sort of had a look into wind energy. It did seems like such a jolly good idea, doesn't it? You know, wind is a sustainable, renewable energy source. Nothing gets burnt, nothing gets used. It's just always there. And all we have to do is catch it. Yes. And I don't quite understand why we don't use more of it. But the part of the problem is the fact that the wind isn't constant, you know, much like solar energy, it isn't always sunny. So you have to find a way of storing the energy that you've captured. So, you know, batteries are a big thing. But you know, wind farms, they're cheaper than coal plants

to build. Once they're up there, they get people objecting to them don't you you do? Yeah, so if they're if they're on land you you do get people objecting to them I've driven past a particularly large wind farm in Bedfordshire And they're very noisy, you know as those blades go round. They do make quite a thrumming noise Yeah, and if you live within earshot of that I can imagine that would be hell. So the alternative to that is to put them offshore where there's loads of space and not in anyone's way. They generate an awful lot more energy just because of the fact that there's that much more space you can put so many more of them. It just seems

like a no-brainer. so many more of them, it just seems like a no-brainer. We've talked about regular and constant wind. Yeah. Is there a way of measuring how strong a wind is? Oh yes there is. Is there? There's a scale. Ooh, you're talking about Mr Beaufort.

I am. What have you found out about Mr. Beaufort? Absolutely nothing. Really? No. Oh, just as well I did it then. So Francis Beaufort was a word that I've never heard before. He was a hydrographer. Okay.

And a hydrographer is a scientist who does things to do with water. Water? Lakes, rivers, seas, things like that. Hydrographer. And he was an officer in the Royal Navy and he was getting annoyed with the fact that there wasn't a standard scale to measure wind. A quote I kept on seeing online. Sadly this quote didn't come from him but I've seen it so many times that it's really stuck with me. One man's stiff breeze might be another man's soft breeze. I don't care that that wasn't from him, I like it. So he wanted to standardise things and he came up with this scale that ran from 0 to 12 and it worked on the basis

of the characteristics of what you could see and feel and measure around you. And obviously this was for naval purposes. So his original scale was all about the effects of the wind on the sea. Hence knots. Knotts, right. Measured by knots rather than miles an hour. Yes, exactly. Yes. So his scale was all about the size of the waves and the rocking of the boat and the rippling of the sails, these visual things that could sort of tell you how strong it was.

So his scale sort of got changed and refined over the years and eventually started to be applied to the land as well as to just the sea. So rather than talking about this is how big the waves are, we're now talking about this is how much the trees are swaying or this is how much damage is being done to property during strong wind. His scale which he first came up with in 1805 was first officially used in 1831 on Darwin's first voyage aboard HMS Beagle. Captain Fitzroy who was the captain of that boat caught the idea of this scale and thought yep I like that let's let's start officially using that so at that point it was officially incorporated by the Royal Navy as their

their means of measuring the wind. Cool. So at the beginning I mentioned I was a professional balloonist, I'm not. Oh shame. But what I am a professional at, or semi-professional, is kite flying. Oh are you? Yeah, I'm an ambassador for a British kite company. I know you like kite flying, I didn't realise that. I have a large collection of kites.

You do? And the British company I'm an ambassador for is called Flexi-Foil. Right. And they make these ones that look like huge great Lylos. And two of those together can actually pull me at my weight off the ground. Crikey. They are huge. But flying kites is a very old thing that the Chinese invented basically.

Yes. And they use aerodynamics and the force of wind to raise something above the ground. So you need to have a nice steady wind. You need to know how fast the wind's going to decide on which kite you're going to fly. So I've got a selection of kites, some of which work very well in a light breeze, some of which need a stronger breeze to to fly. And you determine that by looking at trees. So where you're flying, hopefully it's not too near the trees obviously because you don't want to have a kite-eating tree, as in peanuts. If the leaves are kind of fluttering and that's not enough wind for a decent kite, but you can put up a nice

light kite in that. But if the branches are actually moving, which is what Beaufort used to measure his scale, then you kind of get, okay well that's probably about a 7 to 10 knot wind. And then I can choose which kite I put up in that wind. That's brilliant. I've just taken a look at the scale and it seems to me that you're describing somewhere between a Beaufort 4 and 5. Thank you very much. Number 4, wind moves small branches. Number 5, wind moves large branches. Yes, so that's how I tell which kite I can choose to fly that day. That's great. Well, who'd have thought?

That's a far cry from the family of Mary Poppins just making this thing out of paper and string and chucking it in the air willy nilly. I can make a kite out of paper and wood and string. Right. I can even make a kite out of a black bin liner. Can you? Yes.

It's called a Scott sled. Ah, very good. Yes, I've, um, one of my jobs that I do for voiceover is reading scripts from China, teaching Chinese children English as a second language. And some of these scripts have talked extensively about the Chinese kites, you know, being made of silk and bamboo and being incredibly ornate and different sizes, different colors. It's a real, real pastime. Can we do an episode on kites? I think we probably should, yeah. Yeah. Go on then. Yeah. All right, let's save that for later then. Right, so no more about kites. No more kites.

Do you know what a divine wind is in Japanese, talking of the Far East? No more about kites. No more kites. Do you know what a divine wind is in Japanese, talking of the Far East? Nope. So the Japanese word for divine wind is kamikaze. Oh really? Kamikaze. Interesting. They were basically divine winds that would kind of go and destroy ships. Wow. Gosh, didn't know that. There are solar winds as well, aren't there? It's not just on Earth. No, you're right. There are winds in space. Winds in space!

But I don't know that much about solar winds. No, I didn't do that one. No, fair enough. Oh, good! In that case, we found something that our factorialites, the people who listen to this can tell us all about it. Oh there we go. We have several areas where you can talk to us. So you can write us an email at hello at factorial.com. Yes. You can go on our website or you can go to our Facebook page. Indeed you can. Or if you see Simon or me in the street you can just yell at us. Yes. Oi! I know something about solar wind. Yes. Strange thing to yell on the

street but there you go. I know. People will think you're mad except for us. You mentioned the divine wind there. It occurred to me, I don't really know what heading to put this under, but the idea of wind being a metaphor for different things, you know, it's sort of... The winds of change. Exactly, yeah. There are so many references to wind in religion and myth and legend, through to book titles and movie titles and songs and things like that, you know wind is this sort of mysterious invisible ethereal force That's been ascribed Characteristics over the years, you know God's breath right the you know God breathing the wind of life into man

The winds of change free as the wind Smelling trouble on the wind or anything like that it sort of has this slightly mythical power to it. You've mentioned before when Cleopatra was about to invade people could smell her perfume that she'd soaked her sails in on the wind. So this sort of foreboding sense of impending doom on the wind you know. And I had a quick sort of look around different mythologies and religious cultures and things around the world and wind just pops up an awful lot. There are so many cultures that have

either gods of wind or wind-like spirits that affect change in one way or another. Egypt had an awful lot of wind gods, sort of a different god for every variety of wind. In Greece they had four particular wind gods called the Anemoi and their names were Boreas, Notos, Euras and Zephyrus, which is where we get a Zephyr. There's something called the Chinook winds in the Rocky Mountains named after the Chinook tribe. This was sort of a really hot wind that came in very suddenly and melted snow rapidly and it's sort of associated with a sense of revitalization and renewal and changing

of the seasons and things like this. I remember in the movie The Holiday Jack Black's character talks about the Santa Ana winds. Oh yes. Which are a real thing these these sort of incredibly hot very very gusty winds that flow through California. Madness can happen. Yes exactly when the Santa Ana wind blows anything can happen. We have those in Europe as well. Do we? We have the Fearn. Oh, what's that? Which is a German wind that blows through Germany. Yeah.

And we also have Scirocco's. Oh. In fact, lots of car names. Sorry, I have to get cars into it. Naturally. But lots of cars are named after different winds. Interesting. I'll tell you what, I'll put a list of cars

named after wind in the show notes. So we have a website called factorally.com. Factorally.com. Yes and in that place we have a blog and I put up various different bits of useless information which are linked to this episode. So if you want to sort of like listen to this episode whilst going through the blog, you'll find out more about what's going on and you'll have to keep stopping the podcast and looking up stuff. If you've got an afternoon, well who am I kidding, if you've got a data spare, then yes it's the perfect study companion.

Yes. The first thing I thought of when I thought of Wind was a film. How was it? Which film did you think of? Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind. Yeah, sure. And so I went down a rabbit hole. I'm sorry.

I really did. It was based on a book and the film rights were bought two weeks after publication of the book. Oh gosh. So the film rights were bought two weeks after publication of the book. Oh gosh. So the film rights were bought really early. Yeah. And the film came out in 1939 and it was, it was very successful. It won loads of Oscars. It was four hours long. Really, really long film.

Wow. David O. Selznick was one of the producers yeah and they did this wonderful thing where they did like the search for Scarlett because everybody where this time had read the book sure you know the best-selling book of the year yeah in 1936 when I was 1937 and so he decided to do the casting for Scarlett in public and he had 1400 people audition for the part. Wow. Including Lucille Ball. Oh really? Yes. So Lucille Ball was a comedian. Yeah. Who had... I love Lucy. So there's a link between Gone With The Wind and Star Trek. Oh hang on, how did we get to Star Trek?

Because Lucille Ball had a company called Desilu Productions. And if you look at very early Star Trek, you'll see that she was the person who backed Gene Roddenberry to make Star Trek. Oh, is that right? Yeah. She put up the cash for Star Trek. I didn't know that. So she was one of the 1400 people who did auditions. About 32 people did screen tests.

Right. Including Vivian Lee, who got the part. All right, and everybody else is going. Oh, we have to be skull it was wonderful marketing sure and then Somebody on the cast knew Lawrence Olivier. Hmm, and he said my wife would be quite good for this So Vivian Lee got got to go for it. And I heard, because we're voiceovers, that the way she got into character, because she's obviously English, of a Southern belle, was her voice coach would make her say, forwardoa forward, before she sort of said anything.

So she'd get into the accent that way. That's great. I love. I mean it had had three directors George Cucor and two other people. When it was originally created the screenplay was six hours long. Oh my goodness. Not just the four hours it ended up. Yeah. Wow. And the guy who wrote the screenplay Sidney Howard sadly died before the premiere. Oh no. So there were 15 other, 15 writers on it that various people tried on it. Including F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Oh. It's got a lot of firsts. It was the first colour film to win an Oscar. Right. And had the first black Oscar nominee. Did he? Hattie McDaniel, who played the maid. But Hattie wasn't allowed to attend the Oscars and Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Oscars because he was like no

you've got to let her you know just nominated for an Oscar you've got to let her in the building yeah yeah and yeah so and he actually threatened to boycott it. Well done Clark. But Hattie had a word with him and said look You have to go. I'll be fine, but you have to go to the Oscars gosh So that's one novel turned movie with wind in the title one of my favorite ever books has wind in the title Oh, we're doing the willows very good. Oh, yes, you know me well I loved wind in the willows? Very good. Oh yes, good guess. I loved Wind in the Willows as a kid, not least because there was a wonderful stop motion animation tv series of the Wind in the Willows. I remember it. Which had David Jason as the voice of Toad and Peter Salles who we all now know as the

voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit as Ratty and various other people and it was just, it's just gorgeous, it's just gorgeous. It's just beautiful. All the imagery of it. Mole in his little dark home, Rat in his rowing boat, Toad with his motor cars. And you know, I can barely see a vintage motor car go past without shouting poop, poop.

Gorgeous, gorgeous. So yeah, Wind in the Willows, love it. Yeah, I mean, other yeah, Wind in the Willows. Love it. Yeah, I mean other uses of Wind in the Willows. I used to do the advertising for Arista Records. Oh right. And one of the bands that we were advertising was a band called Earth... Wind and Fire. Wind and Fire. One of my favourite bits of merch that I ever did was a Clipper lighter. And on the side of the Clipper lighter it said earth, wind and...

Oh that's very good. Well done. Very happy with that. So you talked about the speed of a wind. But do you know how you work out the direction of the wind? Oh you use a windsock. Yes, or a weathervane. Or a weathervane, yes, depending on where you are. Yes, like one of those ones with a cockerel on it or an old man. That's right, yeah, you often see them sort of sitting atop old houses or barns or stables. Yes. So how do you know where the wind's coming? Because the little arrow moves around. It does.

And when it points to a certain direction, how do you know that's what the wind is called? Is it the direction that it's coming from or the direction that it's going to? No, you were right the first time. Is it? The direction it's coming from. So a northerly wind is coming from the north. Right.

A southerly wind is coming from the south. So if you look at a weathervane, the compass points on a weathervane are actually the reverse. Oh. So if you look at a weathervane are actually the reverse. Oh! So if you look at a weathervane and you see north is over that way, yeah, then actually north is the complete the reverse direction. Oh I see, so they are particularly labeled for the purpose of the naming of the wind rather than the direction on the

compass. Yes. Oh that's great! I had no idea. It's not just the sun that generates wind though, is it? Isn't it? I do. Right. Do you? Oh, we're talking about human wind. Of course we are. Of course we are.

Yes. Had to come there sooner or later, didn't we? We had to get to farting. Well, farting, you fart about between 500 and 1500 millilitres of wind every day. Everybody does. Really? It's about 10 to 20 farts. Most of them don't smell. So you don't even know you're doing it, hardly.

And what farting means is that your intestines are healthy. Oh, that's good. So that's useful. If you fly, the air pressure makes you fart. Oh, interesting. So people fart more in airplanes. You can you couldn't you can run cars on farts Methane powered cars sure and there is so much about farting that I'm going to go into it too much One of my favorite films is blazing saddles, right? Oh the camps fire there is a famous

Eating beans yes, and they are burping and farting Oh, the campfire. There is a famous campfire scene in Blazing Saddles where people are eating beans. Yes. And they are burping and farting. And one of the other characters in Blazing Saddles is the governor, William Le Petermaine. Right. Now Le Petermaine is a very interesting guy. He's a French guy.

He lived in the sort of, he was born 1857 till the end of the Second World War. And this guy Le Petermaine, Joseph Joseph Pujol was his actual name. Hmm, and he worked out He fell overboard of a boat one day and he felt water going up his insides And he realized that he could actually inhale through his anus Yeah, so It wouldn't go through his digestive system So he could actually like inhale water and squirted at a wall from about 16 feet.

Oh my goodness. I mean real good control of his innards. And he became really famous in France. In fact all over the world. He had an act that he did impressions from the anus. Where he did impressions of gunfire, he did impressions of old ladies, he did impressions of different accents. He had one called The Bride on her wedding night and then The Bride the next morning.

Because this is an audio podcast, people can't see the expression on my face. It is one of sheer confusion slash delight We'll put a link to a short film that was made by Leonard Rossiter sometime ago all about Joseph Pujol he started off. He was the son of a baker and he developed this skill when he was a soldier He was we'd entertain mates in the barracks. Yes his his farting skills and he went in to go and see a guy called Ziegler at the Ziegfeld Follies in in the Moulin Rouge in Paris did his impressions and the guy signed him on the spot wow and he gave him a spot in the foot in the Follie Beger and at

one point in his career he was the highest earning performer in Europe. Good grief. This guy who could fart, that's all he did. He went on stage, he said something about, this is the squeaky boots of a sergeant major, and he'd like to do farts. We can all picture what that fart sounds like. Yes. Eventually he decided to make a record of Claire de Lune, which you can still hear. In fact, when he released the record, there were a lot of people who wouldn't go and see him because they thought it was beneath them to go and see a man farting on stage.

But they liked the idea of it. So they bought the record. And Debussy, who wrote Claire de Lune, he saw his royalties, saw, they actually rocketed because of Joseph Pujol. That's amazing. And his record. Well, I don't think anyone expected to hear that on an episode about wind. No.

That's brilliant. So, Simon, at this point in the show, we often talk about records. Are there any, I mean I guess the fastest wind, the strongest wind, things like that. Are they the sort of records that you've managed to find? Yes, yeah, there are quite a few actually. The fastest ever recorded surface wind speed was recorded at Mount Washington in the USA in 1934 and that wind topped 231 miles per hour. Wow.

Which by my counting is really fast. That is quite quick isn't it? The largest offshore wind farm is called Hornsea 2, just off the coast of Yorkshire in the UK. It has a capacity of 1320 gigawatts. And Hornsea 2 has 165 wind turbines sitting in the sea. The most windsocks flown simultaneously. What does a windsock do?

So a windsock, as I understand it, you get them at airfields and they're just a hollow fabric tube which the wind blows through and it helps you to see which direction the wind is blowing from a distance. And I guess the power of it as simultaneously was 7,494. That was achieved by a company called Junior Chamber International in Japan in 2014. Don't know. There was no context. There was no explanation as to why they did that. They just did that. Wow. For funsies maybe. Then we get on to your type of wind that you've been talking about.

Okay, yes. I have a record for the world's loudest burp. Go on then. 112.4 decibels. Oh, you beat me. I had 109. Oh, shame. But that was British. That was a guy called Paul Hun. Oh, was it? Okay, this fellow was from Australia. He was called Neville Sharp.

This was set in 2021 and it said Sharp's burp is louder than an average electric drill or a trombone. So that's a nice comparative. The world's longest recorded fart lasted for two minutes and 42 seconds. Well that explains Lepetamine doesn't it? Doesn't it just, yeah. This record was set by Bernard Clemens of London in 2019. The Guinness Book of Records said, We do not usually officially track bodily function records like this, but this particular feat was verified by two referees using stopwatches. So they obviously made an exception.

Goodness me. Well I have another one. Go on. Which is the longest burp. Oh the longest burp, go on. Which was at one minute and 13 seconds. Good grief. So that's it for me. I don't have any more wind related facts or interesting things. What about you Simon? No, all of my facts have wafted away on the breeze.

What do we want people to do now that they've finished listening to this episode Simon? Well assuming that people have enjoyed listening to this episode, which naturally they have, we would like people very much to please go and give us a lovely, lovely, shiny five star rating on their podcast player of choice. Yes please. Accompanied by some beautiful words and a little review that would be splendid. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. Actually what you could do is listen back to some of our previous episodes. We've got some real bangers in there. We have haven't we? Yeah, almost a hundred episodes of them.

Almost a hundred to listen to. If you're going on a long journey this will Good 50 hours you'll be enlightened by the time you get there. I had some I had somebody write to me saying I Spent the day cleaning my house and listening to fact orally. I think my IQ has gone up by several points. Oh fantastic. That's great Yeah, that's great. That's what we're here for. Yeah to make housework less dull Great. That's great. That's what we're here for. Yeah. To make housework less dull. And then please go and tell your nerdy friends all about this podcast so that they can listen in and enjoy the fun. Yes, please. Well, there we go then. Thank you ever so much for coming along to listen to us to wind bags gassing on about wind. We hope you'll come again for another fun-filled factual flatulent episode of

Factorally. Factorally. I should have known. Bye for now. Cheerio. Sorry. Au revoir.