The Great Smog of London

Save more on what you need to get the job done right. Right now, at Lowe's. Get fifteen percent off, select custom entry and interterior doors. Plus, save eighty dollars on the DeWalt twenty Volt Max two tool combo kit, now just one hundred sixty nine dollars. And at the Lowe's Pro desesk, bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo, or even a sticky note is all you need Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget at lows. Vll it through seven eight while suppppies last. Selection varies by location. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Little Fish, the show where we put down our facts and we get the facts that have been sent to podcast andqQI. com by you. And he has gone through the mailbox. He's taken out the very, very best facts that you've sent and we're going go through them today. I'm James Harkin. I'm joined by Daniel Schreiber, Andrew Hunter Murray, and a whole bunch of facts. Who's got one? I've got one, G for it This is actually a very nice, rare example of a double headed fact. So it's the same it's one fact, but two people have sent it in. Oh okay. So There's a place near Chicago, the Argon National Lab. Okay, Have you heard of it? It's aar nuclear research US research laboratory. I'm gonna say it straight away. It's named by Mr. Argon. Oh How did I not see that coming? It's named after a forest. The Agone forest not the chemical element. Anyway. That's actually that is not the main fact. Oh really. Beuse my heckles are up for those at the moment. I'm looking out for them wherever I'm going. So there's a forest surrounding the lab, which is called Waterfall Glen, right No named after Mr. Waterfall or named after someone called Glad See more waterfall Okay. was a local forest commissioner. and apparently the waterfalls are truly rubbish Like there is water going downwards, but they're not good waterfalls.'s because they're meant to be waterfalls because it's named to Seemore waterfall. So we're off the blocks. Yeah. No veryy good. You're gonna have to do better than that Andy, I'm afraid. F facts of the show. I really thought I'd get it nice and fast. N No. It' it really is a whole new show that we're making now that you've forced into our existing show. It's just I'm actually a bit worried because we're going record a drop of line after this genuinely I'd say thirty percent of the content people have sent in is just names of things that you think are named for an obvious reasason, or not I don't know what we're going to do because we've got too many to make it a good show. Well, if you want to spend your hard, hard earned money, Hearing us discuss names. Patreon dot com slash cllubfish, everyone. Can I do a factax? Yeah, please.orm one, please. This has been sent in by Stephen Martinez, who says in twenty twelve, a man named Niles Gammons was arrested for drunk driving in Urbana, Ohio at one hundred eight AM He was arrested and released on bail And now we're later At one hundred eight AM, the same cop arrested the same man for drunk driving. Daylight savings. Yeah It must be daylight sa. Daylight savings. Always the criminal. Daylight savings. weren't okay. Har me out guys. Daylight savings cop. Yeah. only comes out twice a year to deal with little things like this. It's really good. It's the longest hour is what is the series name? the longest hour. And your second series is the shortest hour It doesn't exist. Yeah just doesn't do anything. J just didn to sleep. And you play the same episode twice right after each other. That's brilliant. on the hour. Yeah Is it short from different angles? like Rushamond Oh, like back to the future too. L does he see himself? O Kurosa's masterpiece rashon? Yeahah, yeah. I mean We've all got our cultural Overton window, haven't we? Wow. Yep, OkayK. Slam on Zemekus, who delivered one of the greatest series ever. It's a brilliant film back for the future, too. Thank you, and you' one as well, I'm surean. Okay, here is a fact from Eric. Eric says despite the absurd difference in distances, it takes four times longer for a character to appear on your screen after you tap your keyboard than it takes to send that keystroke across the Atlantic. Oh wow. So when you said character, I was thinking like Dlight saving C. Yeah Yeah. a letter. Yeah, a letter or a number in fact or a symbol. Okay Yeah. when I type that, when you type that, it basically comes onto your screen in about two hundred milliseconds. Okay And that's because there's a load of like According to Eric, invisible code that happens between your finger and the screen. so it has to basically it's not just you press that and your screen automatically knows what you're pressing. It has to turn the press into some zeros and ones, which then goes into your computer, which then turns it into the actual character itself. Yes. And you're saying that goes across the Atlantic. That goes from your finger to your computer in about two hundred milliseconds. but just for the information to go across the Atlantic and an undersea cable It takes about fifty milliseconds Stunning which is amazing. Bent he's never noticed a lag after typing H. Well, the reason is your reaction time is longer than two hundred milliseconds People have done like tests online where you kind of check people's reaction times. and it seems like the average is about two hundred and seventy three milliseconds So anything quicker than that is kind of pointless. Okay. There's no point going faster than that because no one, unless you're like a Formula one driver or an elite gamer, in which case your reaction time might be about one hundred milliseconds. Admittedly, elite gamers do use computers quite a lot ah Are they better at responding to emails and Formula One drivers? They They would notice the email arrived quicker. Yes, it does find me well, thank you. You know. Do you want another one? Yeah. This one comes from Natalie from Toronto Wh says I just paused in my workday because I came across this fantastic fact and had to send it your way There's a town in Ontario called Barry, right? Oh There's not named someone called Barry. No, no, no. Let see what you've done to yourself see who you've become on this show. And there it's got different council wards in it. You know, a ward is a little administrative area. And in Burry just it looks like it's just ward one, two, three and four. So anyway, there's a ward called Ward four in the town of Barry And the former Wardfall cououncselor for Barry is a guy called Barry Ward. Yeah And look I looked up Mister Ward and he's a regular contributor to Barry Today. Bry today. Yeah, it's about the town of Burry, not about people called Burry. What is Burry today? is it an online think? It's a website about Barry. Okay. the town of Burry. It's not a newspaper or anything like that. Well, I think it's a news website What's the difference these days? You know what I read about today, this is the reason I ask you In America, they used to have a lot of newspapers where you could only buy them if you bought another newspaper, which this newspaper was inside of. Oh So you know if you get like a Sunday broadsheet newspaper in the UK, it will have supplements in. Yeah. Well in America for some of them The supplement would be an actual different newspaper. and they wouldn't even be related to each other.. Your normal newspaper that you buy might be a right wing newspaper and the supplement one might be a left wing one. And it was because basically there was a problem with like newspapers were dying out in the seventies, obviously, they're still struggling In America, they came up with some new laws that meant that people would share printing pressices and share printing costs And so one newspaper would print it, but they would be forced to print another newspaper as well and put it inside their paper. That's really clever. 'causeuse if you live in a little town, maybe all the copies of the Times that go here also have the Barry Gazette. For example. Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's really clever. And also for some people, they liked it because it meant that you get different viewpoints So if you get the Daily Mail and the Guardian at the same time, then you can see different parts of it. Yeah The last one of them, which is in Las Vegas, think is about to shut down because there's some legal thing going on right now. It's a shame Yeah. Natalie from Toronto has a bit of Prraise for you, James. Thank you Was it about that fact that I just said? It wasn't, but it was about your Toronto knowledge. Toronto, you mean? We do in fact pronounce the city Toronto. I was very impressed that he knew that And my accent is so strong that I've had to change my pronunciation to Toronto when talking to British people in order for them to understand me. How interesting. I've never been to Toronto, but I've just heard people say s you sound like you're born and bred there though All right,, let's move away from praise for James. Let's get to another fact here. This is from Jonathan Hughes, who writes This may be a good fact for James. Thank you, Jonathan. I' actually liking what this show hass become now. This is a sort of complicated tennis fact, which it is kind of interesting. Since twenty twenty one, Carlos Alcaraz and Jank Sinner have played each other sixteen times on tour Alcaraz has won ten of the matches in Cinner six Alcaraz has won twenty six sets and Cinner has won twenty three sets And in that time, they played three thousand three hundred and two points So who's one more points, Andy? If Alcaraz has w more games, ten six, I would presume Alcaraza has one more oth tied on the exact same points one thousand six hundred and fifty one. And it'sly it's exactly. And it's the quirk of tennis that that can happen. Like you play tennis, James, and you play tennis Andy plays it more than I do. Yeah. And the other one, ye The other Andy Murray Yeah. I do' mean Anna and the other one. She'sone so last.'s's really good She's really good at tennis. Yeah. But you can you could effectively have a very close game, but lose at six love, six love, right? It's just that you might have gone down to a Yeah, exactly. The same happens in all spots, I would say, like in Snooker, for instance, you could lose lots of really close frames but then win ones where you win by one hundred points Yeah O in football, even your goal difference, you could be right at the top of the table but have a negative goal difference because all the games you've won will won Nil, but all the ones that you've lost with Nil ten Right Yeah ye ye. Sounds like that player sinner is the prisoner of Alcarz ice Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I don't know anymore ' sometimes when I make a joke it goes really badly. I actually think, Andy, that you would be perfect in like a tabloid sports department. I would love Because you're not gonna to get bogged down with knowledge. You can just go for the puns withithout like worrying about whether they make sense or not. Absolutely. O in this case, it made perfect. It made perfect sense. I would be flipping immediately to your article and Barry today just to get that murray gold. Thank you. That's very nice.. thank you.'sough'ing Daniel Studenmund of Binghampton, New York writes about The famous mathematician Harold Scott MacDonald Coxitater. who we've mentioned on the show before actually. But he said he was named so not to be mistaken for a ship. He was very nearly named Harold MacDonald Scott coxiter or HMS coxiter, but they decided to flip around his middle name, so he's not HMS, he's HSM. Daniel says he wanted to give Coxie to some love after you rudely mispronounced his name in the episode of Little Fish. Oh I think I might have done it again guys It must be Cxiter Coxit, I guess so. That's so weir. I had a factor about ship naming But I didn't mention just now, which is that Barry, the town Yeah is named after An English general called Robert Barry who commanded a ship called HMS Cockburn pect Cobburn. Yeah. And also HMS brilliant Oh Which is a nice name for a naval ship, I think. That was a good name. It is good. HMS brilliant. Yeah. Can I tell you more about Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter? Yes. So I went on to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And here is a paragraph from the end of his article. Gaunt, birdlike, acetic looking man, he attributed his longevity to his vegetarianism standing on his head even at the age of ninety for fifteen minutes each morning. A daily exercise regime of fifty press ups, a nightly cocktail of Kalua, peach snaps and soya milk and an abiding fascination with his subject How interesting. What a guy. What a guy. Hellua coffee liquer, isn't it? Coffee, peach, and what kind of milk cy milk? I've gotta say that It feels like the one rogue element that I' not keep you alive That's a toiletiz element, isn't it? Yeah. That could be why humans have never lived past like one hundred and twenty because this is the trick, but no one can stomach the kala pach thatide up Paul McCartney stands on his head for five minutes every day as well.ive. Yeah.ightwight. A Lightwight. Yeah yeah I've never tried it. Is it as good for you to stand on your head as it is to hang upside down? whichich I know is good for you. is it? I think so. I think Dan Brown does it, doesn't it? He used to do it to alleviate the writer's block that he had, right? Right? He would hang by upside down boots from a poll. I don't know if that was just author fluff to M might have been awful fluff to make those interviews better But you think Paul McConney does do it? Yeah, he does it for at least five minutes. That's all I get to see before I'm dragged out of his garden. butly he's definitely clocked five. I what does he do? Does he have like boots holding him upside down? or does he uses wings? I know the signs now. After twelve years, I've learned James, enough road But also unencumbered by any knowledge about the beatles. That's what's most surprising. You've made more Beatles gags on our show than anyone else said you've never heard him. James has memorized a list of all the Beatles songs. I've done that for so many different subjects just in case it comes up. Quite right. Quite right. Shall I give you another one? Yes. This is from Dan Gudgeen. Over ninety percent of the UK's unique species Don't live in the UK. What? What do you mean by unique as an endemicor here ninety percent. Okay, so ninety per British territories? Yeah, it's just overseas territories the UK Where have we still got? Where has Britain still got? Oh loads of ples. Listem. Give me one. Saint Helen. I love manan. Fkland. Yeah. Chagos still, alough we ha we haven't sign signed the deal yet, but like the Silly Isles. Yeah I don't know these are all territories as opposed to dependencies or crown dependencies. Like there are allort of categories. But the UK's overseas territories are around the world and some of them are, know, a tiny squrib of land, but then a huge bit of ocean around. Australia, Australia Oh Gonw. Thank you for listening everyone. We are hoping to t there again. we are We are. Yeah, and it's from the government website, the biodiversity there. They're very good. I found some species which exist only in these overseas territories. Kangaroo The Virgin Islands mute frog The Broadnose Seven Gill shhark. Yeahessent named after Andrew Broadnose, of course, That's right. And Stephanie Sevengill. they were married couple of dover barrel. Yeah Save more on what you need to get the job done right. Right now, add Lowe's. Get fifteen percent off, seelect custom entry and interior doors. Plus, save eighty dollars on the Dewalt twenty Volt Max two tool combo kit, now just one hundred sixty nine dollars. And at the Lowe's Pro desesk, bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo, or even a sticky note is all you need. Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget At lows. Vid through seven eight while supplies last. Selection v is by location Okay, I've got one more here. This is from Mr. Geeky. And mr. Geeky says, As you almost certainly know, many sea creatures have unimispheric sleep That is one half of the brain sleeps while the other one remains awake. Yeah, we all knew that, right Dolphin Dolphin on guys. mostost land mammals sleep with their whole brains at once Yeah But Mr. Geeky says fur seals do unimispheric sleep when in water brain sleep went on land. What? Oh Wow. That's so cool. Isn't it? So they've got no predator. Oh, they have predators In one place In the water. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why they're h. kill whales eat them together. Yeah, they do. But then they're safe on land so they can have a full night's sleep. And actually like tourists in South Africa will go and see these fur sharks being eaten by great white sharks. First can you say fur sealss? Fur seals? what did I say? Fur sharks? Fur sharks. Fur shark fur sharks sound kind kindind of cute actually. Fur shark. That's a trick, isn't it? You get close enough to stroke them and they'll have your hand off Fur seals. Yeah. if you go into South Africa, you can see the great white sharks eating them and that's because it's the majesty of nature. peoplee like to see this. Obviously it's not great for the seals. Yeah. But they have come up with a new way of dealing with it called mobbing Basically, a load of seals will harass this great white shark as it's coming up say no, no, no, no, no and kind of nibble around this face. And it really works. They'll brave. That's very brave. Yeah. It's amazing. Se feels braer than I thought they were. I think the thing is with them is like it's either that or you get eaten. Yeah, yeah. I'd be tempted to just sort of distance myself from the group and say hang out with a slower seal. Exactly. Yeah. But where are you? If you're away from the group, you're susceptible to have no one Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to be in the middle of the group Yeah, really. This is why I was fired from that union And Arthur Skargel has got itself another enormous pay rise Bing satire Okay, that is enough of your facts as amazing as they are. every I say this all the time, but your facts are so good. We can't help but be excited when they come into the inbox. And so send us some more. send them to podcast atQI. com and Andy will winow out the best for the next episode of Little Fish. We must do one more thing and that is hand out custodianship of some of our facts to people who are members of the friendriend of the podcast hereer on Patreon. So Dan, can you give us a fact please? Okay, here we go. This fact is now under the custodianship of Laurel Evans. and your fact is that in seventeen ten, the boys of Winchester College rioted over insufficient beer rations Very nice. Very good And it'll be it's presented as a nice story now, but they'll probably have killed and eaten three teachers. E groundskeepers. Yes. I went to Winter I visited Winchter College quite recently didid you? Yeah. Well I went past it I didn't go in. I Yeah But obvly it's of the oldestort of potter schools there is. Yeah. it's right next to the house where I think Jane Austin died I'm not bling you on any of these people who died in certain houses anymore. notot after Rod Hulgate. Oh yeah. yeah, a good point. Yeah. Did she definitely die there I didn't even know that she definitely died,. she might still be trading. I sure. another one. Well anyway, so you drove past it. I walked past it. Great story That's a. A You got up your game now Anna's back, Andy. She will not suffer these half anecotes. Weon't accept these in the way that we do Let's have another factlease. How about this one? This one goes out to Julie King Humphrey's terrific name And your fact now, July forever, is that the first man to discover the clitoris in fifteen fifty nine was Columbo. Was this your factight? This was my fight. Yeah. I think we did this at a live show. I feel like an creek memory coming into my head couldould have been could be so How did you find it? Was it difficult to fight I sometimes forget that when you ask me a question, it's pointless when I'm saying in between. I don't even listen to the answers. Yeah. It's just fluff to get you to where you need to be. Jes is playing tennis against a wall here. You can't win Yeah Yeah, a good fact. He was a old scientist, wasn't he? It was Lumbo. Okay, here is another fact. This one now is under the custodianship of Matt Janaway Your fact is that for two hundred years after the tomato reached England They were grown entirely for ornamental reasons. fununny Yeah because they're a member of the nightshade family.. So we had nightshades in Europe, which were very poisonous. The tomato came over and when it's growing, it looks like it might be one of these poisonous plants. So we thought it might be poisonous as well. Yeah. And no one really trusted it. I mean, reasonably, right? Yeah, completely. Was the same true of potatoes as well. Yeah, the same family. So potato and potato, and tomato and tomato were all thought to be unsafe Well just the two that are actual words. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. ye ye. You know those aren't four things, right? I keep being upsold at the supermarket. I just try to buy tomatoes but they sell me tomatoes. ties the price, but they are imported from America. All right, let's get to another one Congratulations, Sally Baker, because you are now the custodian of the fact that NASA is planning on giving the moon. A moon. Hm. This was another one of my faxs anded I guess this was so long ago. I don't know if it's now gone a new moon. I think we would have heard. We'd have heard. Yeah That's a bit quiet for a while, but they've come roaring back. so I imagine they're still working on it. When the astronauts went to the moon very recently Do we know which one they went to? This one goes out to Mark Wy And it's that the man who played Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, spent the First World War dressed as a tree. Basil Rathbone, very famous actor, most famous for being Sherlock Holmes. and During the First World War, he needed to be crawling towards enemy lines for reconnaissance. Oh I think it was a moving tree. which What is the point at that point? o, so if you go to the Imperial War Museum, I don't know if you've been, but they have a fantastic exhibition on all the ingenuity and all the amazing innovations for the wars. and you can see that tree there. The idea was that during night they went and cut down an existing tree And they'd remodeled it so that in the daylight it was still there, but it was this new hllow tree and they would have soldiers in there. and yeah. so you can see a tree in that museum, which is That's very very clever. Okay, here is another fact. This one is now under the custodianship of Oliver Porter. Oliver, your fact is that Abraham Lincoln hidid important documents in his stovepipe hat. I love this. It's such good storage space that just no one would ever to think of. How did we not just naturally know that he did that? I think what's great about it is because we all associate him so much with the hat Yeah. and just to learn that there was an extra thing that was happening under there is really exciting. Yeah. But I think did he not always wear his hat or was it that he didn't always have a beard that wasard He had't had the beard in the last few years of his life S child wrote to him saying you'd look quite nice with a beard and he ye throughrew it That's it. But no I think the hat was that was for a while And he was like six foot ive or something. He was a tall girl. And then he had the hat on top of it. So it's been about seven foot tall with the hat. Yeah, it must have been awful ? Well, just getting through doors Yeah. Yeah, you're the presresident aren't you? so you can probably of a door rebuilt. I think instead of building the lintel of the door higher, I would make a little ditch at the bottom of the door. much so that you go lower. That's really gooda. Much cleverer. Who's the most hatted world leader you can think of these days Alive right now.b actually it's probably Trump from the baseball caps he wears those a lot. Yeah. I've never seen Kirammer wearing a hat. No. Macron no No, Friedrich Matz No. And Narendra Modi don't think so know, Putin doesn't, Zelensky doesn't. Aarfat was the first person who came into my head, which shows where my cultural timings come from. Yeah James, I'm gonna say it. We've just done a main show and we've done this show. The number of references you've made to John Major. I know Really quite old school references. You know? I've been out of the country for a few weeks and I think it's reset my timings. so I've forgotten about all of modern culture. It's like you've had a bonk on the head there's only one answer for that. It's another bonk on the head. C here. No see, the problem is in my nineteen eighties and nineties mindset, Bonk means having sex with someone. Yeah, what do ye Yeah yeah, Yeah that's what I wasest U Another fact? Yeah. This one is going out to Dayton Canillie. and your fact now is that monorails were originally horse drawn Very nice. This was the my horse jobs period of no such thing as a fish. I obsessed over the number of jobs that horses used to have that slowly went out. They used to be days to do everything. They used days used to carry vacuum cleaners everywhere. They used to they used to be used in theater when they would run on treadmills. You know, there was a lot of horse jobs back in the day It's it's sad now. Yeah, now you just see them. If you go to like one of those farms that children are allowed to feed the animals, youll see them there. And occasionally in hor racing, but we don't really agree with that. No. An any more horse jobs you wantught to talk about? I can't remember I thought I had a lot of horse jobs, but I can't remember them now. just You you just mentioned the three that were in the archive. Oh, wow, okay. You've got perfect recollection of headline faction and then supplementary facts coming off the back of it. I I just remember my horse job period. No one else does. No No one thinks that classic bit of dad just took a hor job for eighteen months. Iot that didn't happen. I remember in the eighties we used to have horses that we would bring around. What do you call those people who would collect old bits of iron and stuff? Oh backack and bone. Rack and bone. and around where I used to live you used to have horses taking those guys didid. In your memory? In the eighties, yeah, Your living memory Rrag and Bone men. Absolutely. I'll tell you what as well, we had Dragon Bone men When I was in my twenties in Bolton. What? Yeah yeah. They were mostly like when the traveling community would come in and they would come round the Gins and just ask if we had any bits, but they would shout rag and bone That's stunning. I didn't think Ragenbone was still trading that late As I said, it was in the forties fifties. Yeah, I mean, they were definitely they were on the way out They weren't recruiting heavily, were they? Right And then of course there's Ragon Bonan, the singer. Oh yeah, but he's not That's just a name, isn't it? No, that was his original job. Get out No, it's not That's very good. Have you been on a horse, Andy? I know James has. I' been on a horse. Have you You know what? I've been on a horse the same number of times James has. is one. sameame here. All right. guysys, just don't go on about it all the time. One last one, Andy? Yes This one goes out to Mara Anderson, the Great smog of nineteen fifty two, was so bad that blind people led sighted people home from the train station Really good. Amazing. Because the air used to be so filthy in London and there were these increasingly severe smogs over the forties and fifties. And Yeah. I think nineteen fifty two was when it got so bad that no one could see anything for about three days. He supers He supers exactly Yeah. And just bit like people were falling into the Thames and it was really bad, you know peopleeople were having a horrible time of it. And I think that's when they thought Maybe we shouldn't burn Cand right in the middle of the city. Maybe we should move it out. I was reading Michael Palin's diaries recently and while they were doing Python There was huge electricity cuts due to union things. And so it's all these tales of while they're writing that Everyone would be writing by candlelight in nineteen sixty nine slash seventy. Yeah. Could I just say there was a lot of power cuts when I was a kid as well? Yeah, but I don't know, for some reason, if that feels weird to me that London would be going through that in the seventies as a decision as opposed to a genuine powercut. They were turning it off as a matter of action. I see. when they did the three day week maybe James, what was the general strike like There was definitely strikes going on when I was a kid. I remember like all the kids' TV shows they would stop being shown during like the summer holidays because there was industrial action and they just show other crap instead. Why? As children also have to suffer through this ind There's no reason why you guys should get to watch Rinbow while we're having a hard time. rem I just have really solid memories of