No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Rocking Chair In Space

Episode Date: December 12, 2014

Episode 39 - Dan (@schreiberland), James (@eggshaped), Andy (@andrewhunterm) and Anna (#getannaontwitter) discuss irritated astronauts, meaty rain, Britain's loudest snorer, and the garden party you don't want to get invited to.

We run it on QI a few years ago. Yeah. Which was, there's no such thing as a fish. You have 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.

Hello, 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 Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Chisinski, Andy Murray, and James Harkin. and once again we've gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go. James. Okay, my fact this week is that the San Francisco Fire Department's ladders are made of wood,

which is not perhaps the material you think would be good for putting near fire. No. No. It's because in San Francisco you have the wires that go over for the trams. They're electrified. And so if they use metal ladders, they might get electrocuted. Yeah, they have had stories of people who, when they were trying to fight fires, they'd put the metal ladder and it hit a wire of some sort and just blow up the firefighters who were climate. Not completely blow them up.

But like, yeah. And so they use this wood, which is very high quality and they think that it's still fire resistant enough that it won't set on fire. High quality, like, I've got a high quality mahogany table at home. Bit like that, yeah. It is quite hard to set fire to wood under the right circumstances. It doesn't just burst into flame like paper, you know. Yeah. So this fact came from an email which I get sent to my inbox every day.

It's called Now I Know. It's by a guy called Dan Lewis. And it's every day full of interesting stuff. It's really good. We're all fans. We're all fans, yeah, exactly. No, it's just full of QI-style material and it's really good. So that's very cool about Fire Ladders being made of wood.

Are there any fire engines made of wood? No, I don't know. Are there any fire men made of wood? Five months are made of wood still, aren't they? quite often. Well, they normally don't have poles anymore, do they? A lot of stations these days, when they're built, are on ground level. And there was a rumor they were being eradicated in Britain because of health and safety concerns, which has been denied, although they are being eradicated in the US, so new fire stations don't have firemen's poles built in them usually

anymore. It is a weird thing of firemen's pole, because I can get downstairs quite fast. I think it's, isn't it also because, so fire station is always used to have spiral staircases, which I think are slower to get down because... And you could injure yourself as well. Yeah. And the reason they had spiral staircases was because in the 19th century, when fire trucks were obviously drawn by horses, they kept the horses downstairs,

which is why fire at stations are built on two floors often. And there was a problem with horses running up the stairs and then not being able to get down the stairs again as they needed them. I think as well it's because you're about to do something extremely dangerous. Lives do get lost, and you can say, oh, he had some fun just before he went. Do you know about the first fire engine that we ever had? Like, that wasn't horse-drawn?

There was a guy called John Lofting, and he created what was called the Sucking Worm Fire Engine. That's great. Yeah, and that was his first, he sort of patented that. He could have worked on the name a bit. Why is it called that? Does it sucks water up? I guess because it sucks, it sucks something, and it looks like a worm. I'm guessing that's why it is.

He invented a number of things. He also invented a horse-powered thimble canerling machine. So I don't know what canerling is You know on the end of a fimbled They have the kind of bumpy bits That have you grip things It's making that That's horse-powered

Yeah he did that before it's powered So fire horses Quite useful Easily scared Hence the reason that Dalmatians are known as Fire Dogs So you know Dalmatians always Accompanied fire engines

The 19th century I did not know that And what were they used for Loads of things So first of all they would Keep the horses calm around the fire so horses will freak out around the fire and apparently they were there as a comforting influence

but also I like the idea that the first fire siren fire engine siren was Dalmatians barking because one of their purposes was to A, if once the alarm sounded in a fire station then Dalmatians would know that they had to run outside the fire station barking and the people would know to clear the way because the firemen would have to get out and get the fire and then they would run in front

because they can run really, really fast for really long distances they would run in front of or around the fire engine horse-drawn fire engine barking and raising the alarm to everyone around saying, get out of the way. That's fantastic. They're the original fire alarm. That's wonderful. Feynman these days,

they don't want to rescue animals from trees anymore. Do they not? Well, it's not that they don't want to. Those heartless bastards. They're saying that it's much more effective to call the RSPCA

because it costs about 300 quid every time somebody calls out a fire engine. I heard a thing from the RSPCA that says, if you see a cat up a tree, we advise you to leave it for 24 hours before calling the RSPCA

as they usually manage to get down by themselves. That's interesting. After all, When was the last time you saw a cat skeleton up a tree? Wow. Which is quite a good point. It's really grim, the RSPCA.

Also, the RSPCA have issued a press statement saying, can people please stop bringing them when there's a fire? It's much more effective to call the Fire Brigade, I'd say. Some animals at the London Fire Department have rescued recently. A kitten with its head stuck in a bongo, 2009. Two dogs in a toilet in Bromley in 2009. That's a big toilet, isn't it? It could be tiny dogs, couldn't it?

It could be, yeah. A chimp in a chimney in Tower Hamlets. Oh, a chimney. That's so cool. And an adult hamster trapped in a disabled lift in Greenwich. So I feel sorry for it. So they always release these press statements,

emergency department, saying these are the ridiculous calls we've got. And the reason we're saying this is because we want you to stop making them. And the only effect it has is that on podcast like this, I guess we repeat what they've told. It's a laugh at it. But so recent calls to the fire service include there are loads of people who get stuck in handcuffs. I think someone said about 70 people a year,

call his fire department. Nine instances of men with rings stuck in awkward places. Do you know what that means? It means penis. So it's not the ring going into something? Well, I have a statistic of nine instances of men with rings stuck on the penises, so I think it might be the same ring. That's the worst proposal ever, isn't it?

She'll say no, and you'll be asked to leave the restaurant. Other reasons people have called fire engine. Someone with a loose seat stuck on his head, which I really like that guy. He was only going in to get the dogs, to be fair. Did you guys know that George Washington was a volunteer firefighter? Oh, yeah. Not. Yeah.

Yeah, other famous firefighters, there was a guy who effectively was kind of like the evil-knevel of the firefighting world called the Red Adair. Have you heard of the Red Adair? Yeah, so he was, he was, he was, uh, he would fly in planes and you would put out fires from the skies. And I just read about one of the fires that he put out that I'd not heard of, which I find amazing. It was in the Sahara and it was nicknamed the devil's cigarette lighter. It was a plume of flame that went as high as 450 feet. Imagine that image of just a 450 foot pillar of flame down. What was it from?

Was it just a very deep hole in the ground that went down to the magma layer? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it'll probably be. They'll have a seam of coal and it would have set on fire one time. It's just all the fuel is coming back again. Of course. I don't know for sure that. Of course.

It will be that. And I'm always amazed that they leave it. It's like this office set on fire, me just strolling out into the street. Oh, never mind. By the way, that's what we're supposed to do if there's a fire. It goes to our designated fire spot. Yeah, don't stay at your desk, yeah. Yeah, so he had the biggest business.

And then, but all of his best kind of associates who he had just working for him to set up their own businesses, which is a shame. My favorite one was two of his top. right-hand men, Asgard Boots Hansen and Ed Coots Matthews left. And I think they only left so they could start a business called Boots and Coots. Yeah, which is what their business was called. That's great. Rome burned down, didn't it? In 64 AD. Is that the fiddling while Rombernt moment? Yes. What was the fiddling? Nero, the emperor supposedly caring so little about the fire that he was playing the fiddle. Well, there are two contrasting reports, one of which says he saved everyone from the fire, and one of which suggests that he started it

because he wanted to rebuild Rome, two thirds of it burned down. Is it in a day? May he probably claimed that. But I do like the fact that he blamed, when he realised that people were blaming the Great Fire of Rome on him, he diverted the blame to Christians, and he had a bunch of Christians burned.

Ironically. Yeah. And he would hold garden parties where he used the burning Christians' corpses as torches to light the garden party. Wow. You imagine being at that party? Yeah.

Isn't that Mike? Were you invited to the party? Yeah, I'm a bit nervous about that, actually. But I like that, it's the invitation. Does you say guest or outdoor heat? Let's just finish on some ways that things have caught fire in London. The last few years, this is another London Fire Department press release. There was a fire started after someone tried to dry out a toilet roll.

They had dropped down the loo by popping it in the microwave for a few minutes. Another one is A man using a pair of boxer shorts To vigorously apply linseed oil To a floor Cause the pants to overheat and fire to start That must have been so vigorous Why was he cleaning them with his pants?

He wasn't cleaning I think he was adding the oil To kind of make it more durable Is that what you do with lincide oil That's what he was putting linseed oil on the floor And then rubbing it with his pants Yes Right that's what I question

Oh, the use of pants rather than another rag Yeah Imagine if you employed a cleaner, they turned up. You don't seem to have brought a cloth. Yep, don't worry about it. Got these guys. You haven't got a vacuum cleaner. Meet my sucking one.

Okay, time for fact number two, and that is my fact. And my fact this week is astronauts do not snore. So they don't snore at all. You can't be an astronaut if you snore, or they don't snore once they're in space. A mixture of the both. Let's start it on Earth. Mostly when they're trying to find astronauts, they go through all sorts of rigorous challenges, and they test them for certain things that they know that won't work in space.

One of the things that they know won't work in space is that you'll become very irritated very quickly if one of the people in the International Space Station has a very loud snore. That's one of the things that I find. So they immediately disqualify people who have loud snores from being an astronaut, and they did a test where they showed five astronauts who snore roughly at 16. percent of the time of their sleeping time. In space, once they got there, that 16 was reduced to less than 1%.

So space actually reduces your snoring level. And they think it's because of the gravity. They think it's because your tongue is not touching and blocking in the same way in your head. 75% of astronauts take sleeping pills, which I find interesting if they're on the International Space Station,

because most sleeping pills to have warnings like may cause drowsiness, decrease mental alertness, problems with coordination, don't drive or operate machinery, don't to engage in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination. As possibly the heaviest machinery. It's a space station. Do not operate the international space station if you're taking this bill.

Okay, so you're not allowed to go into space if you snar too much. Yes. But when you go into space, people don't snar as much anyway. So it doesn't seem really fair that you're stopping the snarers from going in. Because you just don't snar as much anyway. I suppose there's too big a risk to send. too big a risk with no no

what's the greatest risk of outer space travel if you send a really heavy snora into space and then they have huge rows with their colleagues because their colleagues can't sleep at all that is a risk to a mission shortly yeah it is it's very odd

the amount of tests that or the amount of things that can get you disqualified from being an astronaut these days it's all to do with stuff that will irritate people who you're hanging out with so I got this fact by the way from a book called packing from Mars by Mary Roach.

And it's the most fantastic book. If anyone listening to this likes astronauts, space, Mars, read it. It's perfect as a book. And she has all these examples that the tiny things are the things that are going to irritate you most in space. So, and anywhere, people who are Arctic explorers and stuff, she has all these passages taken out from like French anthropologists saying, you know, it got to the point where the way he would sip his soup or the look or the way he'd blow out a candle pissed me off so much. slow out of candles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are you taking candles for the international space? No, no, this is, this would be like an Arctic explorer. Again. It's his birthday of the 18th. Make sure that we bring the candles.

We've got him one of those really funny candles that never goes out. Unlike him. Should we do snoring? Britain's loudest snora is a woman, as far as I could tell. And she, so she's 60 years old. She snores at 111.6 decibels,

which is 8 decibels louder than the raw. of a low-flying jet. Wow. Yeah. Presumably, she was snoring so loud that either her husband or her kids or something said, listen, this is ridiculously loud, but I feel like we could do something with this. We could at least get a bit of press out of this. Yeah, let's call, let's call the fire, the fire.

Let's call someone to come and register your snore as the loudest. The only way they realized it was so loud, it was quite sad, really. She went on that program that was on a couple of years ago, this like snore school thing where it was a reality TV. where people with sleep problems all hung out together in the same house. And so her husband said, please, can you do this? Because this is terrible for me. And she went on it, and everyone else who also had serious snoring problems heard her and went,

wow, this woman is out of this world. And that's when they tested it. Okay, well, that's good. She said that's when she realized that it wasn't normal. Okay. Okay, so you know when you see pictures of the astronauts on the moon and they're kind of hopping around? Yeah.

Do you know why they're hopping around? No. So you might think it's because there's less gravity, so that's just a good way of going about. It's actually because their spacesuits weren't built for walking. They were really solid. So the only way to move around really was to kind of saltate like a kangaroo. Like a kangaroo. That's amazing.

Kangaroos in space. Just speaking of them being on the moon, Buzz Aldrin did an AMA not too long ago on Reddit. Ask me anything on Reddit. And he revealed that when he jumped onto the moon, so when they landed, They didn't land hard enough that they'd gone, they expected the lunar module to go right into the moon, but it kind of just landed so softly that it didn't actually really dig into the ground. So the ladder from which they were meant to land on the moon on the outside was a lot higher than it should, than it was meant to be.

So they had to do a big drop to the moon. So Neil, you see him drop down and same with Buzz. Now, when they're wearing their astronaut suits, they all have this kind of diaper system for both urine and for, for crapping. And what happened was for feces, when Buzz Aldrin jumped down onto the moon, he landed so hard that he knocked the bit of the diaper system off that was meant to collect his urine completely away. And if we all remember, one of the first things he did on the moon was have a pee. And the pee went straight down into his boot. So his whole two hours on the moon was him, yeah, was him just with a full bladder's worth of pee hanging out in his left foot.

He had a terrible time. Yeah. Buzz Aldrin on the moon was hating it. he was hopping around, there was sloshing urine by his foot. That's going to spoil it, isn't it? A bit. You would, yeah, yeah, you would have that on your mind. Or maybe it's the one situation where it's big enough you don't mind about sloshing around in your own way. I don't know that because Yuri Gagarin, when he went back to Russia after coming back down,

he says one of the biggest moments was when he was presented to the nation effectively and he was being presented with some kind of award. And he looked down and he noticed that his shoe lace was untied. And that's all he can remember from the event, the nervousness of just knowing that shoelace was untied. So actually big moments don't necessarily... He didn't have pee in his shoes. Well, that was the other thing. He'd be then... You're in Gagarin.

Oh my God. You know there's no seats in space. What? Yeah, they used to have seats on Mir, and they realized you obviously just don't need seats in space. Who's using a seat? Is that why, when you come back down from space to reaclimatize, one of the first things I was reading about the crew, I think it was Chris Hadfield crew that arrived back on Earth a couple of years ago,

and one of the first things they give you, like this crew come and carry you out of the air ship that you've landed on and they put you in a specially designed reclining chair which apparently helps you as a one of the things have... Yeah, you sit for like half an hour to an hour just in these chairs once you get out, once you get pulled out. They do have chairs in the module that comes back into

Earth's atmosphere. So you do sit in a chair there, but apparently nowhere else is there a chair. You don't need it. I would be really gutted to get up there and find out there were no chairs. How would you even sit? I would try and strut myself into the chair. You'd have to because of the zero gravity. I appreciate that that's an obstacle. But what about He'd look like a...

You'd look like a dick. Like, you would be the one astronaut in space who's like, oh, what's Murray doing? That would be an irritant. Why is he sitting on a chair? We're in fucking space. Floating around on a rocking chair. Yeah.

Well, thanks to astronaut Murray, we have had to spend $18 million sending a lazy boy into space. Okay, time for fact number three. And that is Jasinski. My fact is that in March 1876, it rained mutton tasting meat in Kentucky. Well, actually, you say er, but the reason that they knew it was mutton tasting was obviously because they tasted it when it happened.

And it was pronounced by various people who tasted it as very palatable. And a fresh meat, a butcher tasted it and said that it tasted like sort of high-quality meat. Colonel Sanders tasted it and said, this is the best thing I've ever tasted. Yeah, so what I find interesting about this, obviously, there's lots of, you know, weird stuff fell from the sky stories, but we still have specimens of this meat and we're still trying to work out what it was. Do we know what it was? We don't know what it was. It went through various scientists at the time trying to work out what it was.

So bits of this meat kept getting posted from one scientist to the next. We're all tasted. And you said it went through several scientists. That sounds very disgusting, isn't it? So then it was sent to this guy called Leopold Brandeis, who said it tasted like frog or spring chicken legs. which was, and then I read in British newspaper at the time, and they were saying, we have heard of showers of frogs,

which ought to be acceptable in France, but we do prefer the idea of mutton tasting meat in Britain, which is just another nice example of 19th century newspaper racism, really? I read as well that someone, and this is a callback for long-term listeners, but someone after they thought that it wasn't mutton, they thought that it was star jelly, that they thought it was the mythical appearance of this. This was Leopold Brandeis.

Right, yeah. He said it tasted like frog and old chicken legs, and that's what he imagined Star Jelly would taste like, so it was that. And then it was sent to lots of other scientists who said, no, it's not. And they concluded it definitely had animal cartilage, lung tissue. Seven samples were examined by several scientists who confirmed some of it to be lung tissue, some of it be muscular tissue, and two samples to be made of cartilage. Can I tell you a theory that arose at the time?

This was from the New York Times. It was a journalist called William Olden. William Livingston Alden, he said, and he was not being entirely serious here, but it was a kind of meteor shower. Meets, meteor. He said, according to the present theory of astronomers, an enormous belt of meteoric stones constantly revolves around the sun, and where the Earth comes into contact with this belt, she is soundly pelted. Similarly, we may suppose that there revolves about the sun, a belt of venison, musson, and other meats, divided into small fragments which are precipitated upon the Earth.

Not a serious theory, he was trying to be funny. So the most serious theory, which arose at the time, and it's what they saw it was, is vulture vomit. Because vultures, as I think we know, vomit is a defence mechanism, and they can vomit quite a lot. And the combination of stuff it was seems to imply that vultures would have been soaring really high above, which they can saw up to seven miles above the ground. So it would have caused it to scatter that far. Seven miles? Yeah, seven miles in the air. The highest bird ever found was found when it crashed into a plane, actually.

But it was flying much higher than Mount Everest. Pretty harsh for this bird that's like, I'm higher than it must ever be smuck. Yeah. This is why they don't do that. So, vulture vomit is done as a defense mechanism. And one of the things I was reading about it was if a vulture has a predator attacking it, the reason it will vomit, one reason might be that it's quite, it's got a bit of acidic stuff in the vomit. And it could go in the eyes of the predator and sting and make them go off. But the other reason is that it's an offering to see.

say, if you're hungry, have this instead of me. I know coyotes can eat vulture vomit, but it is so acidic because vultures' stomachs, that's why vultures can eat like dead, rotting gross meat. Yeah, yeah. Their stomachs can really break that shit down because they're so acidic. So I'm surprised that many things can eat vulture vomit. But it doesn't, also, it doesn't sound like much of an offering, does it? It's like, oh, don't eat me.

Eat this disgusting, acidic, rotting meat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, I don't know. No, actually, I'm going to eat you. Yeah. Bearded vultures eat 70 to 90% bone That's amazing And that's as you say

Their stomach acid is what allows them Is incredibly strong And also it's what lets them have They can destroy cholera and anthrax bacteria Which is why they can eat such Rotting flesh Yeah, they've got lots of antibodies that nothing else has Yeah

Vultures will often peck at dead animals Through their anus I'm sorry to say How'd they get the beak back through their It's to get at the entrails, which are full of good stuff. Do you guys know what a group of vultures is cool? Yeah. What is it?

Kettle. Kettle, yes. That is one of many. There are other times. Is there another one of vault? Yep. There's five in total. Well, go on, what are the others?

Kettle, vault. Anna, do you want to throw one in? Oh, damn it. I can't remember. A culture of vultures. Oh, that'd be very good, but no. There's a wake and a committee. and a venue

and venue oh no that would be terrible wouldn't it if you're having a party hello I'd like to book

a venue please three weeks later a load of vultures turn up at your door heckle you'll get status

oh this is worse than Nero's party so yeah the kettle refers to vultures in flight committees

vault and venue refers to them when they're resting in trees and a week must be when they're eating dead stuff. It's when they're feeding. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.

Turkey vulture's wee on their own legs. Yeah. So does Buzz Aldrin. Yep. Was he doing it for the same reason? I was just trying to cool myself down. I think that's what they do it. They do it to cool themselves down. And also there's a theory that the urine is quite acidic and it might be a way of sterilizing their legs because they stand in a lot of rotting flesh to feed. That's a good idea. Yeah. I wanted to move on just quickly to things falling from the sky.

I found an article from a few years ago and this was a woman who described how a mysterious rock fell from the sky onto a Derby Street not a passing goose to the ground That is mysterious And she thought it might have been a meteorite or something like that But Dr Andrew Johnson, a geologist of the University of Derby didn't think he was, he thought it was something

like a piece of limestone from the Peak District And they asked him, yeah, but how come it came from the sky? And he said, I haven't got a clue where it came from unless somebody threw it in the air. Did you see that story this week about a guy in San Francisco who owned a Chinese restaurant who was trying to defrost some meat out on the street? He was caught tenderizing his meat by bashing it on the pavement and stamping on it. And so they examined the pavement, which was covered in blackened gum, cigarette butts,

and protract bacteria of all gut-twisting varieties. According to the article? At least it's tender. Okay, time for our final fact, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that the Victorians invented a coat which doubled up as a boat. Invented by whom? By coots and boots. By coats and boats.

They're a Scottish version, boots and boots. That's amazing. It was designed by a man called Peter Halkett, who was a naval officer. and he wanted something which you could go exploring with and take it over frozen terrain, but which would cope in extreme weather and which might get you out of a tight spot. So if the frozen terrain started melting, I guess.

The idea is it's getting warm, so I don't need my coat anymore. But I do need something. How did it work? It was amazing. It was made of rubber, and you should look for it online. We should try and put up a picture of it. You can put on your Twitter.

I'll put up one on my Twitter, which is it had four separate compartments. very sensibly in case one of the got punctured and it took a few minutes to inflate and then it can support the weight of eight people on it. Wow! Yeah. And I mean the designs, he tested a prototype on the River Thames and he went nine miles

on it and some explorers did genuinely take it with them. So I guess if you're one of the seven people who doesn't have the coat you have to not take the piss of the idiot in the huge boat-shaped rubber coat just in case it floods. Yeah, well it's like that bra-gas mask that won the Ignobe.

Prizes, yeah. A few years ago, it's got two cups, therefore can support two people. This is like an earlier version of that. Another thing that bras been made to do, it's called the wine rack,

and it's a bra that can carry more than a bottle's worth of wine, and so it has the double benefit of increasing your cup size. Wait, so you pour the wine into it and you can kind of suck it out. You pour the wine into it, it's got a straw attached,

it's made to hold the wine. Oh, like one of those cool sports hats that you have when you watch baseball. One of those cool sports hats. Yeah, Dan's wearing one now. He's been wearing one since the first episode. I'm actually wearing a bra as well. There's another one for men, which is the beer belly,

which is much less attractive, and it can carry a equivalent of a six-pack of beer. Oh, six-pack, very good. But then during the night, the man gets slimmer, and the woman's breast gets smaller, so he's getting more attractive while she's less attractive. It should have been, like, in his trousers to make his bulge look bigger, shouldn't it?

Yes. Yeah. The cocktail. That movie has no different meaning now, doesn't it? Yeah, so this boat, it's just a coatboat, fantastic convention. Yeah, how would you inflate it, or is it? I don't know. I think it was, I mean, it's quite a big thing,

so I presume you wouldn't have to be blowing it up. Yeah, they wouldn't have to pump it up. No, I think you'd have to pump it up. Yeah, because that'd be amazing at dinner when you're taking your coat off. And an eight-seater boat inflates around the table. Just come back to the restaurant cloakroom with your little ticket. Which one is yours? Yeah, it's the black one that looks like a boat.

Yeah, we've got eight of those. Which one is it? You explorers. The last time we're hosting the Royal Geographical Society dinner here. Well, the idea of the thing, it came with a walking stick, which can fold out into either a paddle or a large umbrella. And so you can set sail with the umbrella or row with a paddle. Actually, I read about a really interesting invention from roughly the same period, which was a cane.

It was a multi-purpose cane, effectively the Swiss Army knife of canes. And it could do a number of things. It could be transformed into a flute. So you can play your cane as a flute. You could catch butterflies with it. So it must have had some sort of net that came out of it. You could measure horses with it. That was one of the selling points.

I don't know who's measuring horses. You can measure horses with any cane. If you do it, this is three canes high. That's true. That's true. Well, this had a specific, I don't know what it is that you use for. Sorry, what was it? What was the, measure horses?

Butterfly net. Butterfly net. Flute. And then it could also be an umbrella. And this is my favorite thing in the advertising of it. It's a say that it can be an umbrella. Why an umbrella? Why?

Of course, to keep you dry. While you smoke your cane pipe. So it was also a pipe. Fantastic. And another one with more than one use, Albert Pratt invented a thing called a gun helmet, which was a helmet with a gun on it. You would aid your head towards targets and fire.

And it was very good, but the one minor disadvantage during trials was that the recoil broke the wearer's neck. The internal mystery. How did both armies end up completely wiped out? Do you think there's a fault with our gun helmet? No, no more than there is with our leg grenade. There's some really funny footage online which I think Richard Wiseman found first.

Or it might have been in this really good blog called Brain Pickings, but it's of when they were testing some bulletproof glass. And it's a man and woman testing it, and the man's holding this gun standing about 25 feet from this woman, who's just holding this tiny piece of bulletproof glass in front of her face and letting him shoot at her. Whoa. It's great.

And she just kind of rocks back and it's like, go again, hit me again. It's very terrifying seeing someone being shot at. It's really counterintuitive. Yeah, it's confusing to me why they always put the person behind the bulletproof glass to test it. Well, if they put in front of it, it's not really going to work. It was an ancestor of Anna's who invented the gun helmet. I found a patent in 1890 for a combined stepladder, cot, ironing board and chair. and it was designed, it was invented by one Stephen Frye.

Oh, really? Yeah. In what year? 1890. Wow, prodigious. Maybe that's what he was doing before Blackadder. I have one funny thing on coats. Okay.

So, Draco, who wrote down the first legal code, I think it was in the 7th century BC in which Draconian comes from. Where Draconian comes from. Do you guys know how he died? No. It is written that. It was a sign of appreciation if someone was done. doing a public performance, which he would, to in public throw your coat at him as like,

hello, I guess like we throw flowers or something at someone now. He threw your coat at him and the way he died was... There was one person had a boat. An eight-seed of boat. Crushed Draco. It was basically that. The way he died was he suffocated under a huge pile of appreciative coat. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. Because people actually liked him, didn't they? People liked him, yeah, despite his draconian measures. Oh, my. Why are there no pictures of people, most appreciated person of the year, and it's just a picture of coats? You don't see the person, it's just a mountain. If that was still true, cloakroom attendance would be the most respected people in society. That's true.

Someone's invented a jacket where you wear it as a normal jacket, but there's an extra arm that hangs out so that your girlfriend can get underneath the arm, but you don't need to have your arm over her, so you have two functioning arms, and it's a third arm. But does that not knock people over in the street when you're just a arm? just walking on. When you've been dumped. Yeah, that's a sad sight. Walking home. As you will be five minutes after you say, don't worry, darling, just put this fake arm over yourself and feel comforted.

I've delegated the touching of you to this product I have bought. They've also developed mattresses which have grooves in them so that you can put your arm underneath, rather than getting your arm trapped under whoever you're in bed with. Because there's always a problem that if you're lying on your side, where do you put your other arms? arm which is underneath you. Oh yeah, so it's got an armhole.

Okay, that's cool. The armhole, yeah, yeah. And then you can just... Hold on, you're saying the armhole is for a girlfriend. Well, as a man, you would lie in bed and put your arm in the groove, and then your girlfriend would lie on the other side of the bed, so you're able to... I'm with you. I'm with you.

I'm with... So that implies a horizontal groove. But then James's way, which I prefer, because I'm not running to the whole arms in bed, what's that about, um, with her boyfriend thing, um, is... I have a fake arm product. She might be interested in it. I like the idea of somewhere to put your arm. arm when it was...

That has been invented as well. I think they're two different inventions. Yeah, they are. I feel like someone was plagiarizing someone else there. From the people who brought you the horizontal bed group. The vertical bed group. One more thing about inventions. So, you know how car horns are kind of like...

Uh-huh. Like quite horrible noises. Yeah. They used to be much nicer. And they changed that because one of Edison's assistants had a car. And he nearly ran over someone in Newark and noted that his angel's harp noise of his horn didn't have any impact on the pedestrian. And he realized that he had to have a much harsher sounding horn. It'd be quite nice ending if you did actually hit someone because they didn't see your car coming.

And as they were dying, you play the angel noise to make them think they're going somewhere nice. That might be a nice comforting ending. That is a nice ending. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to get in touch with any of us about the things we've said during the course of this podcast, you can get us either on our at QI podcast Twitter feed, or you can get us individually on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, James, at Eggshaped, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, and Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com. And if you want to hear all of our previous episodes, you can. Just head to No Such Thing as a Fish.com. We have all of our episodes there, and we will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.