No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Magic Camel Filter

Episode Date: August 14, 2014

Episode 22 - This week in the QI office, Dan (@schreiberland), James (@eggshaped), Anna (@nosuchthing) and Andy (@andrewhunterm) discuss how to post a human, ancient ham, apes using iPads and the definition of Wales.

We run it on QI a few years ago. Yeah. Which was, there's no such thing as a fish. I mean there's no such thing as a fish. No, seriously. It's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life. He says it right there. First paragraph, No Such Thing is a Fish.

And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Shriver. I'm sitting here with the regular Three Elves, Andy Murray, Anna Chazinski, and James Harkin. and once again we have gathered around the microphones to share our favorite facts from the last seven days. So again, let's do it, our favorite facts, James. My fact is that in 1903, a man called W. Reginald Bray posted himself. Wow. How?

How? He stuck a stamp on himself and walked down to the post office and said, I want to be taken to a house, which happened to be his own house, and they took him. Yeah. Was it a slow day for him? finished his book. Didn't really know what to do. He was a bit of a wag, a bit of a practical joker.

And one of the things he did was he read through all of the post office guide and worked out what the smallest and largest things he could post were. So he discovered that the smallest item that he could post was 1B. And so he posted that. And the largest was an elephant. But he couldn't find an elephant, so he posted himself. What year was this? 1903.

1903. It sounds like because there's so many examples of people just testing the limits of the posting system. Yeah. Like just a bunch of practical jokers going, how far can we push this? There was a guy who sent an entire building's worth of bricks because he was building a bank in a different city. And the cheapest way was just to send the bricks via the post. Oh my God. Were they individually wrapped? No, I think that's what I hoped they were. That would be a brilliant admin job for someone, wasn't it? sticking the stamps on and putting them in them.

Alex would love that. Yeah, he would. He sent them at 40 at a time. They must have not introduced weight limits then. That must have been when they did it by size. That's when they brought it in. 200 pounds per day. It became the limit that they then imposed.

There's a weird history of people posting themselves. It's not just this guy. There's been a few since. A guy called Mr. Seng. I'm not sure where he was from. He decided to post himself in a sealed box and he thought it would just be a 30-minute journey. but they put him in the wrong pile

and he was stuck in there for three hours and he didn't make a hole in his box so he could hardly breathe and when they cut him out he'd passed out and when they interviewed him in the newspaper afterwards he said I tried to make a hole in the cardboard but it was too thick

and I didn't want to spoil the surprise by shouting wow that was real dedication to a surprise But then he can't really jump out and say surprise Because he passed out And was it a good surprise

Or was it like he was a burglar And he was going to jump out And then ransack a house Well there was a guy who posted himself What was it now? Okay, so there was a guy who decided He wanted to cross America And he was called Mr McKinley

I don't know what his first name was And he decided to be better to go in a box Because he could charge the postage to his company rather than paying for the ticket, which you have to pay for himself. That's how I get to work every day. Same thing, yeah. Sorry, go on.

Yeah, you're always arriving by second post, aren't you? Yeah, sorry about that. Oh, snap. I won't mind, but I'm by far the latest in the house every day. So he billed the $550 freight charge to his employer and climbed into the crate. Of course, by being in a plane, he was lucky. He was in a plane, which was, like, air condition and stuff.

But a lot of them is very dangerous because they're, You know, it's very cold and you can die in that. Do you know you used to be able to send children by post? Really? Yeah? Did you? Used to be able to post children around the place. Until 1920, was it in the US anyway?

Yeah. I think it was banned officially. Until around then. But you would buy the stamps and you would put the stamps on the child's jacket and then the child would sit in, for example, the mail van of the train. Yeah. And they were a bit of post. And I think you could lump all your post together because there are pictures of children with

post strapped to them and then they turn up and be like not only if I can't just going back to W. Reginald Bray he has his own website which I didn't know he's amazing yeah but the website it's absolutely fantastic he collected a lot of autographs so he sent thousands of cards out to people asking them to be returned autograph to the Pope or his local railway station master and on the website it has this lovely line which is over the years Reginald amassed over 15,000 autographs

declaring himself the autograph king, a title that was undisputed by his peers. Just imagine him saying, anyone going to challenge me? No. Imagine you were like his pretender. I think you wouldn't tell him that you had all these autographs, and then you go up to him and go, excuse me, you're the guy who's got the most autographs in the world? Would you mind just signing the...

And then when he signed it, you have him beat. Yeah, you have won over him. Oh, that's good. That's very cool. The Ig Nobel people, Mark Abrahams and the improbable people, they tried to send a helium balloon through the post. They wrote the address on the balloon and then took it to the post office. And when they weighed it, obviously it has negative weight.

And so they were like, well, we're not going to pay you postage. I think you should pay us postage. The balloon was refused, reasons given, transportation of helium and not wrapped. So I think you're not allowed to transport helium anyway. because it's explosive, isn't it? They were wrapping helium. In a balloon?

In a rubber. That's true. Yeah. So one of the most common questions that gets asked to the US postal system is can you mail a dog? Ah. They get this question all the time, says spokesperson Sue Brennan. The answer is no. Can't mail a dog.

No. The whole point of postmen and dogs is that they don't get along. Can you imagine a dog in a sorting office? Actually, they've worked out how many, for some reason they've only done this in Germany, but 3,000 postmen a year are bitten by dogs in Germany, and 2,255 pairs of trousers are torn, resulting in 8 million pounds worth of medical bills. In 2001, the German post office started teaching dog psychology to postmen. It's just a permanent ongoing war.

The postman first is the dog. Except the postmen are not allowed to carry weapons. and dogs are well they are weapons oh that's that's that's no mate that's like saying

was it Joe Lewis who had his his fists designated a weapon or something like that was Jackie Chan was it I've always heard about this and I've never believed it

is it true I think when you say you've always heard it I think it's me literally repeating it most days Jackie Chan told Whoopi Goldberg and a number of others on the view that when he's in America

he is considered his fists to be an illegal weapon. Do you get all of your facts from the view? Actually, no, I don't because I remember watching an episode where they were talking about the possibility that the moon landings didn't happen, that it was a hoax. And Whoopi Goldberg was going, I don't want to like speculate about the truth about it,

but all I'm saying is, you know, who was filming Neil when he went down on the ladder? Who was holding that camera? I don't want to speculate. It's like, Whoopi? Do you know, Whoopi Goldberg got her nickname due to her childhood flatulence. Oh yeah, she was a big farder.

Yeah. She'd whoopee. Yeah, that's right. That's good. Yeah. And she worked in a morgue, didn't she? Did she? I might mention that before. Putting makeup on corpses. And when she watched it, everyone's like, what's that smell? Not of people just woke up and walked out. Who was it? Did someone send a load of wasps?

And you can make wasps go to sleep. And they were sent on a flight and the flight was delayed or something. And they all woke up. You can still buy a, uh, parasitic wasps through the post and therefore like pest control instead of using pesticides you can use them and then what do you get mailed to you to get rid of the parasitic wasp infestation that you've now got then you get a spider to catch the fly there was always a big flaw in that song because cows don't eat dogs that's very true okay time for fact number

two and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the oldest edible ham has just celebrated it's 112th birthday. So how do we know it's edible? Oh, because it's quite a famous ham. It first came to prominence when it celebrated it's a hundredth birthday and someone has since bought it and I guess any time it has a birthday now, people mention it. So I wanted to dispute this claim because my local butcher missed a fella, best butcher in the world. You guys should all go to him. market in Oxford. Are we sponsored by Mr. Feller now? I have been past Mr. Feller's place in the cover market and I can confirm there is a very old

ham in the window. Yeah. So he claims, I think he bought it in 1993 when it was 101. It cost him £990, but he said he would have paid at least $5 grand for it because it was so special. It is now 125, he says. And he says that's edible. Now when he bought it from the auctioneer that was selling off, they said they weren't sure

it was edible. but he's the butcher, he should know. Why is he not in the news? Why is he not? It hasn't been proven, hasn't officially verified. Is this like the autograph guy? Like, no one else can be bothered. They're like, yeah, we have way older ham, but like, we don't need the title of world

oldest ham. I think he's above that. Yeah. Wow. Well, that's similar to the world's tallest man who I think was certified the world's tallest man. And then he refused to do the tests anymore. So they stripped him of his title.

And I think there is another man who is now officially, the world's tallest man, but actually is slightly shorter than the previous man. Why did he refuse to be re-measured? He doesn't want the hassle of being the world's tallest man. Because when you're the world's tallest man, people come to see you as if you're an attraction. I remember reading this odd fact about the idea that there are no children in the town, not because he's scared them away, but just because there's too much hassle to have a super tall guy and kids in the same town. I can't remember the exact fact, but it was...

Operation He is the size of a U-Tree. Old things that have been eaten. A German pensioner who received a tin of American lard 64 years ago in an aid package has only just tasted it after discovering that it is still edible. Oh, wow. I just didn't want to throw it away, said Hans Feldmeier 87. See, that's the spirit which makes people keep ham for decades

when it's just a not very nice ham. Yeah, in 2005 we found a 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles in China. Wow. It's not quite like they're still in the bowl. And that settled the debate because there's quite a heated debate, I think, between Chinese, Arabs and

Italians over who first came up with a noodle. And that's the oldest evidence of a noodle. So China's got it at the moment. Wow. Yeah. Speaking of well-preserved food, there's obviously the Kiviac, the Inuit food, which

is made from orcs that are preserved in the hollowed out body of a seal. Yeah, so you stuff them in there for seven or eight months, and they're completely preserved, then you get them out and eat them. Apparently they're pretty disgusting. But that was them. But I do quite like the Wikipedia page,

which is, so it's called Kiviac. And at the top of the Wikipedia page, it says, not to be confused with Kiviac person. So sometimes I think Wikipedia goes overboard with their clarifications there. I don't think anyone's looks up their mate Kiviac and gone, hey, you never told me you, are food stuff that gets preserved in a seal skin for eight months.

Isn't there a thing with camels, whereby if you have poisonous water you get the camel to drink it and then it vomits it back up and that makes it drinkable. Have you heard about this? I have not heard that. Why is it drinkable

because a camel has thrown up in it? Why? Because it filters it. There's something about it's a poisonous food or it's water or it's something. The first website I'm getting is six dangerous urban survival myth about water.

Actually, I'm reading this page now and it doesn't mention Dan's insane camel theory. Wow, this is really interesting. You shouldn't necessarily cut open those big barrel cacti. The odds are that the inside will be tough and fibrous, the water contained will not be abundant. And also, there's a greater chance the water inside will be bitter and acidic, which could induce vomiting, diarrhea and cramp.

Oh, well, at least if you vomit it, someone else could drink it. Imagine having a magic vomiting camel, which can purify anything. Yeah, I think I've got it right. somewhere. I think it's, I think it's to do with food. Google food. Camel vomit. Survival. If anyone knows about this camel weird survival tip, then send us a message to at Shrebeland or... I read a thing about how we have been making attempts to create food that last longer. So obviously, this ham is kind of an anomaly in that it's very old and that's very notable. But in the army, because they, they obviously have to have food that's nicely preserved, but they want people to eat

well, they've been attempting to make interesting long-lasting foods and sandwiches is one of the big things. Most soldiers apparently want sandwiches. They've currently made a sandwich which can last for two years and not go stale or soggy. And the people who made it are trying to work what they're calling an immortal peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That's the dream. So we can be at war forever. That's what they want. One soldier said they're the best two-year-old sandwiches I've ever eaten. Did you know that they fill all crisp packets with nitrogen instead of with oxygen so that the cliffs don't go off. Instead of with air, they don't put air in.

They get rid of all the oxygen in the packets to keep them fresh. Yeah, Ash was telling me, Ash, who is the lead singer of Emperor Yes, who did our theme tune, he was saying that when sparkling water is transported overseas, they take the bubbles out. And then they put the bubbles back in when they reach their country destination. Has no one heard this? You can, no.

Okay, if anyone listening can help me out. Is that what still water is they forgot to put? the bubbles back in. That's when the bubbles have ended up in a different country. I do know that when they make decaf coffee, they sell the caffeine to soft drinks companies to put into soft drinks. Isn't that amazing? I would love to know what caffeine looks like.

Isn't it funny how you said that and I just accepted it? And when Dan said his thing, I just immediately thought it was rubbish. It's the boy who cried wolf writ large. Okay. Time to move on to fact number three, and that is Chazinsky. Yes, my fact is that orangutans like playing on iPads, but gorillas do not. Really?

Yeah. So this actually started as an April Fool's joke by the Sun, and the heading of their article was Planet of the Apps, saying how gorillas love playing angry birds. And yeah, good old son. Always one step ahead with the wit. And it gave the idea some guy who worked at Milwaukee County Zoo read this article and thought, hey actually apps for apes good idea and started showing guerrillas iPads but they didn't like it because so guerrillas feel threatened by direct eye contact and face-to-face contact so they do a lot of their interacting site in a side long way and so that doesn't work very well with iPads because

you can't really see it properly and then as soon as you look at it you feel like the birds trying to attack you and they smash it wow right there is a thing about guerrillas and eye contact there was a zoo that gave out these glasses do you remember that and and they were glasses with pinholes in so you could still see them, but they had pictures of eyes looking in different directions. And the idea was you would look at the guerrillas, but the guerrillas wouldn't know that you were looking at them. Yeah, I think it's Rotterdam Zoo, isn't it? And I think it was after, I might have been after a woman got attacked by a gorilla. The only downside, it seems, is that, so they play on these iPads about half an hour, but if you give it to them to hold,

they have smashed quite a few in the past. So the Zookeeper or the staff have to hold the iPad, well, the orangutans play on it. That's right. I think the, the, bit of a hassle. I think I read the average length of an unsmashed iPad left alone with an orangutan is 15 seconds. That's the limit. Wow. Which is actually the battery life as well.

I really, really like orangutans. I think they're brilliant. They're solitary, apparently. So they spend all of their time. They know their neighbours by sight, but avoid all contact with them. So in that sense, not unlike Londoners. but they also make a lot of noise to advertise their whereabouts so that they can avoid each other

is something rather beautiful and tragic about that isn't it just everyone going around saying here I am don't come near me British they're British They've come up with the idea of showing Arangs in other zoos Arangs you're familiar They don't like that Andy They've come up with the idea of showing orangutans in other zoos

are pictures of orangs they might like to have sex with, they might like to mate with, so that they can do breeding programs rather than going to the hassle of transporting an orangutan across the country and then to find out that actually they don't fancy each other. But can they fancy each other through a screen, I wonder? Yeah, basically.

It's like Tinder. I don't know, yeah. Isn't that weird? Another similarity with us is that it's the younger ones take to the iPads much better than the older ones. The older ones are much more set in their ways. Same thing. An orangutan was the villain in the first ever detective

story. Oh, what's supposed to be the first ever Did a murder at Ruevog? The murders in the Rue Morg. Spoiler alert, the murderer is an orangutan. You can't say spoiler alert afterwards, can you? And by the way, it was Hamlet's stepdad. Spoiler alert.

Ash told me that Oh, God. Apparently Dolphids, when they start communicating, the words that they'll use to communicate, the first word will be their name, and then the second word will be the action they're doing. So I'd be like, Dan, drinking, and they can pick their name as well.

That does sound more familiar to me. I think I have heard that that dolphins use their names. That's how you know when someone's about to speak on University Challenge. So Dolphins would be good on? Yeah, Thompson, Edinburgh. Yeah. Flipper, UCL. Quite useful for people who forget people's names,

though. Wouldn't that be a great social habit? If everyone had to say their own name before they start speaking. God, my life would be a lot easier. So much better, yeah. Under European regulations, pigs have to be mentally stimulated because I think pigs are quite intelligent, so they get easily bored. So they've developed pig chase, the pig video game. Have you guys seen this?

And you can play a video game with a pig as a person, and they have this huge screen in their sty. and there's like a glowing light on it and you control the light and the pig snuffles up and follows the light and the aim is to get your finger on the iPad to make contact with the pig snout on the light and then you guide it towards a goal

and then you score and there's a big display of fireworks they're very good at it apparently. That's great. I'd love to play a pig at a computer game. Do you think you might win? You used to be able to play chickens at Norts and Crosses in America. They had these machines.

There was definitely one in Coney Island I'm not sure where the others were but there were a few and it was impossible to beat them. Because it's impossible to lose at knots and crosses if you play the right move, they were trained to always go in the right place. And so you would play these chickens at knots and crosses

and you could never beat them. Wow. So if you can't beat a chicken at knots and crosses, Andy, I don't fancy your chances playing a... A pegg at Call of Duty. Okay, now it's time for a final fact of the show and that is Andy Hunter Murray. Okay, my fact.

is that the 1888 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Wales reads, See England. Does it mean a place where you can see England? That's nice. I think it's, so I just thought this would be time to rectify this, you know, historical imbalance and poor treatment by Britannica. But James, actually, you found something that makes this more complicated, or that it's not just an example of England being totally, you know, anti-Welst showing.

I've seen the assertion on a few websites, and I've found the text of the actual Britannica. And it seems like the thing which is entitled England is actually about England and Wales. It's about South Britain. In the article for England, it says legal phraseology is not quite consistent on this head, but the more accurate description of South Britain is England and Wales rather than England only. And in the article, they mention England and Wales as the whole thing rather than just England. I see. That's good in a way.

you know. Yeah. So I thought Wales. Time for Wales. I like Wales. They've got the world's largest underground trampoline. Oh yeah. I know. I really want to go there. That's about the launch. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's open now. I think. Yeah, over about two weeks ago. No, sorry. What? Oh my God. It's larger than St. Paul's Cathedral. And it's a place that's already famous because it's the world's longest zip wire. Oh, wow. We'll put photos of the underground trampoline up here because this is, it's unbelievable. James, you've got a, you've got a mug here, which has a Welsh word on it. Yeah, the Welsh train place, which is the longest single word train place in the UK on Anglesey.

Yeah, can you say the word? I can try. Go for it. Might not be spot on, but it's something like, um, flamphir, pulghing,eth, gigerer, queer and droble, anticilio go, gog, goch. Now, if you've spotted any mistakes in that, right in to James's personal mobile phone number, which I'll read out now. But the thing about that is that

that was a manufactured name. Yeah, it's called L'Enfairp Pgee, L'Lenfuerpul-Gwingeth. And they added all the extra bits, I think, as a publicity stunt. They wanted a record. Oh, really?

Yeah, it was a very early publicity stunt where they tried to turn themselves into a notable town, and it worked. There did work, definitely. There's a place called, oh, God, what's it called? Hamilton, Ohio,

which has an excellent. exclamation mark after Hamilton. Oh. Yeah. But they changed it. They just voted on it in the 70s to put the exclamation mark in. Yeah. They hadn't just turned themselves into a musical.

No. It sounds like a musical, isn't it? Yeah. But they wanted, they wanted more tourists and they wanted more revenue from tourists. So they did that. And it worked,

but also. That's the pitch they could come up with, put an exclamation mark at the end of their name. Well, I mean, it's cost effective, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I went to flamfare, blah, blah, blah.

We'll definitely get letters for that one. Say the short one. Flamfer PG. I went there because I was in North Wales and it was about a 50 mile drive from where I was but I just wanted to go to that place. Okay. And I bought a mug.

So... There we go. Now, if everyone did that, they'd sell 60 million mugs a year. There was a town in America as well that claimed to be the center of the universe. Danny Wallace did this as a book. Because it just no one else knew where the center of the universe was.

Yeah. It's a mayor said something like, I've spoken to a lot of physicists and astrophysicists, and they said that the universe doesn't really have a centre. So if nowhere else is claiming to have it, then I think we'll have it. And he claimed there was like a bench or a manhole cover or something in the middle of the town.

He said, right, this is the centre of the universe and they put a little plaque up. Amazing. Good gimmick. I think that was quite fun. Yeah. So, okay, that was pretty bold of Britannica to do that. But you're saying that's a bit of a disputed.

No, it's not disputed. They definitely did do that. And Wales obviously deserves its own section in that we have a 1911 Britannica in this office. And that has a very large section on Wales. So they soon amended it. Yeah, I was wondering if when you told us this fact, whether maybe if you turned to England, it would have an entry that was like C Wales, which did use to happen. So there's this guy's written this really good book called Reading the OED.

It's by Amon Shea. And he read the whole OEDD recently. It was before it was re-edited in 2007, I think. So you read the OED from before that and found a bunch of hilarious stuff, one of which was the word unpoetic, for which the entry just said, C-F below. And the word below was unpoetical and it said CF above. So that was quite a good one. There are other excellent ones. So there's one that's created for the word dis gibelene, which is D-I-H-I-B-E-L-I-N-E.

And the definition is to distinguish as a Gwealth from a Gibleen. someone was really proud of himself for coming up with that sounds like Leah doesn't it that yeah sounds like a milf guelph a grey whale I'd like to friend yeah friend in the first edition of the encyclopedia Britannica which is even more basic and rude than the

the 1888 one rude is in simple not as in rude but the entry for woman just says the female of man see homo And the entry on tobacco says that excessive use is capable of, quote, drying up the brain to a little black lump consisting of mere membranes. They should put that on cigarette packets, shouldn't they? Yeah.

There was a book. You know in the OED how you have sources for each of the things. So it'll have, what was that word you just said? Discgiboline. It would have discwiboline and then it would have the source for where they found in, which book they found it in. There are 51 words in the OED, which have the source meandering of memory

by someone called Nightlark, and no one knows what that book is. Do they know who Nightlark is? Nope. That's great. Just very quickly on this idea of the mysterious... Um, mysterious book, yeah. I read this story when I was looking into stuff about posting,

uh, yourself across the country. In 1976, so starting in 1976, residents in a small town called Circleville in Ohio, population 13,000, they all started receiving these letters, accusing them of various misdeeds. And the letters were just anonymous. No one knew, but everyone in the town was getting them.

And they had theories as to who was sending them. There was a theory that it was a writer called Ron Giuseppe, who was writing them, but then he mysteriously died. But the letters continued coming to them until the 1990. and then they just stopped. It's a bit like, I know what you did last summer. And I know what you did last summer.

And I know what you did last summer. I don't know what they did last summer. I've never seen it. Oh, they killed someone with a car. Spoiler alert. So bringing it back to Wales, it does at least get the chance to laugh in our faces when we cock up,

which we often do where whales is concerned. So street signs are quite a famous example, aren't they? There was that sign that went up in Wales, a couple of years ago. So there was the English above, which said something like, take the next left if you want to get to X place, and then the translation in Welsh below

actually translated as, I am not in the office at the moment, send any work to be translated. There's a sign between Cardiff and Penarth that tells cyclists that they've got a problem with an inflamed bladder. That's what the translation is. And there's a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff

that reads, look right in English, and the Welsh translation below is, look left. Okay, that's it. That's the end of our show. Those are all of our facts. Thanks, everyone for listening.

If you want to get in contact and talk more about the stuff that we've been mentioning on this podcast, you can get Andy on at Andrew Hunter M. James. At egg-shaped. Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com.

And if you want to get through to me to save me from being fired for all of my misfacts, I want to help me out on the idea that maybe camels do vomit up stuff that we can then re-eat, that bubbles are taken out of sparkling water and reintroduced into the bottle on the other side of the journey. I can be got on at Shriverland. You can also go to QI.com slash podcast where we're going to have all of the facts that we've been talking about,

as well as links to further research to extra videos and pictures of that giant trampoline and so on. And we've also got all the other episodes that we've done. And you can explore those pages as well. We'll be back again next week. Goodbye. Just to add a post-podcast addendum to that, Dan and Andy are currently absent from the QI offices, both performing shows in Edinburgh. They've got two shows each, so Andy's got ostentatious and Folly Adder, so obviously go to both of those multiple times if you're listening. And Dan will be performing his stand-up cock-blocked from outer space, and he's also going to be in the Museum of Curiosity, which is doing live shows at Edinburgh. So anyone who's anywhere near there should definitely go to see this. apparently they're

apparently they're quite funny and if you'd like to buy any hum please go to Mr. Fellas Hum shop in Oxford do Best ham in the country and the oldest The Oldest