No Such Thing As A Fish - 39: No Such Thing As A Rocking Chair In Space

Episode Date: December 13, 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 ran it on QI a few years ago, which was there's no such thing as a fish. There's no such thing as a fish. No, seriously, it's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life. It says it right there, first paragraph, no such thing as 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 Chazinski, 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, why are they?

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, 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 climbing, not completely, but like, yeah. And so they use this, 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? Firemen's poles are made of wood, still, are 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 room 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 stations 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 downstairs.

That's very good, fine. 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. And yeah, and that was his first, that was, he sort of patented that. It worked on the name a bit.

Why is it called that? Because 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 conerling machine. I don't know what conerling is. You know, on the end of a thimble, they have the kind of bumpy bits that help you grip things.

It's making that, making those bumps. That's horse powered. Yeah, he did that before he was powered. So fire horses are quite useful, easily scared. Hence the reason that Dalmatians are known as fire dogs. So, you know, Dalmatians always accompanied fire engines in 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 fire men would have to get out and get in the way. 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. This is amazing.

They're the original fire alarm. That's wonderful. Fine in 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. After all, when was the last time you saw a cat skeleton up a tree? Wow. It's quite a good point. That'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. Yeah. 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?

That could be tiny dogs, couldn't it? It could be. Yeah. Sorry. A chimp in a chimney in Tower Hamlets. Oh, a chimney. That's so cool. And an adult hamster trapped in a disabled left in Greenwich.

So I feel sorry for the fire. So they always release these press statements, emergency departments 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 podcasts like this, I guess we repeat what they've told us in half of 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 we know what that means? It means penis. Is it not, 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.

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 engines. Someone with a loosey 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 Knievel of the firefighting world called the Red Adair. Have you heard of the Red Adair? Red Adair. Yeah, so he was, he was, he was a, 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 into the magma layer? Yeah, yeah, it totally is. 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. I don't know for sure, but I imagine that's. It will be that. And I'm always amazed that they leave it. It's like if this office set on fire, me just strolling out into the street. Oh, never mind. I don't know, that's what we're supposed to do if there's a fire. It goes, well, designate his fire spot.

Yeah, don't stay. Yeah, don't stay. 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, Asgar 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.

Roamburn down, didn't it? In 64 AD. Is that the fiddling while Roamburn? Moment. What was the fiddling? Nero, the emperor, supposed to be 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 Roam.

Two-thirds of it burned down. Was it in a day? Man, he probably claimed that. But I do like the fact that when he realized that people were blaming the Great Fire of Roam on him, he diverted the blame to Christians and he had a bunch of Christians burned and have their... Ironically. Yep. And he would hold garden parties where he used the burning Christians corpses as torches

to light the garden party. Wow. You know how much of being at that party? Yeah. I'm going, isn't that Mike? Were you invited to the party? Yeah, I've been nervous about that, actually. But I like that.

It's the invitation. Does yours say guest or outdoor heater? Let's just finish on some ways that things have caught fire in London in 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 caused 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 linseed oil? That's why 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. I wonder if you employed a cleaner. They turned up. You don't seem to have brought a cloth. Yeah, don't worry about it. Got these guys. You haven't got a vacuum cleaner.

Meet my sucking worm. 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 don't snore. Or they don't snore once they're in space. A mixture of the both.

Let's start 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 they 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% 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, decreased mental alertness, problems with coordination, don't drive or operate machinery, don't engage in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination. That's possibly the heaviest machinery. So they know to put a specific warning on there.

Do not operate the International Space Station if you're taking this pill. Okay, so you're not allowed to go into space if you snore too much. Yes. But when you go into space, people don't snore as much anyway. So it doesn't seem really fair that you're stopping the snores from going in. They should just don't snore as much anyway. I suppose it's too big a risk to send too big a risk. No, no.

What's the greatest risk of outer space travel? If you send a really heavy snore into space, and then they have huge rounds with their colleagues because their colleagues can't sleep at all, that is a risk to a mission surely. Yeah, it is. It's very odd. The amount of tests 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 for 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 French anthropologists saying, you know, it got to the point where the way he would sip his soup or the way he'd blow out a candle pissed me off so much. Blow out a candle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are you taking candles to the international space?

No, no, this would be like an Arctic explorer. Again. Again? It's Alex's birthday on the 18th. Surely 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 snorer 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 eight decibels louder than the roar 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 show

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 doing it 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 sultate 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, asked 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 was meant to be. So they had to do a big drop to the moon. So Neil, you see him drop down the same with Buzz. Now when they're wearing their astronaut suits, they all have this kind of diaper system for both urine and for crapping. And what happened to us 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. While 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 wee. 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 shoelace was untied. And that's all he can remember from the event, the nervousness of just knowing that his 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 been. Yuri Gagarin. You know, there's no seats in space. What? Yeah, they used to have seats on mirror 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 reclimatize,

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 airship that you've landed on, and they put you in a specially designed reclining chair, which apparently helps you as a one-on-one... Yeah, you sit for like half an hour to an hour just in these chairs once you get out. Learn how to sit again.

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 strap myself into the chair. You'd have to because of the zero gravity.

I appreciate that that's an obstacle, but what about if you look like it would you want to sit down? 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. 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 Josinski. My fact is that in March 1876, it rained mutton tasting meat in Kentucky. Well, actually you say, 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's tasted like sort of high quality meat. Colonel Sanders tasted it and said, this is the best thing I've ever tasted. Yes. 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 all tasted it. And you said it went through several sciences. That was very disgusting. 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 a 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, this is a callback for a long term listeners, but someone after they thought that it wasn't mutton,

they thought that it was star jelly, but they thought it was the mystical appearance. 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 and lung tissue. Seven samples were examined by several scientists who confirmed some of it to be lung tissue, some of it to 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 Alden, William Livingston Alden.

He said, and he was not being entirely serious here, but it was a kind of meteor shower. Meteor. He said, according to the present theory of astronomers, an enormous belt of meteorite stones constantly revolves around the sun, and where the earth comes into contact with this, it is soundly pelted. Similarly, we may suppose that there revolves about the sun,

a belt of venison, muslin, and other meat 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 this is what they thought it was, is vulture vomit. Because vultures, as I think we know, vomit is a defense 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 soar up to seven miles above the ground. So it would have caused it to scatter that far. Seven miles. Yes, seven miles in the air. They float. The highest bird ever found was found when it crashed into a plane,

actually, but it was flying much higher than Mount Everest. That's pretty harsh for this bird that's like, I'm higher than it must ever be. That's smack. 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 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 say, if you're hungry, have this instead of me. I know coyotes can eat vulture vomit, but it is so acidic, because vulture's stomachs,

that's why vultures can eat dead, rotting, gross meat. Their stomachs can really break that shit down, because they're so acidic. So I'm surprised that many things can eat vulture vomit. 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, no, actually, I'm going to eat you. Bearded vultures eat 70% to 90% bone. I don't know. 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... 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 do they get a beak back through their anus? It's to get at the entrails, which are full of good stuff. Do you guys know what a group of vultures is called?

Yeah, there is some. What is it? Kettle. Kettle, yes. That is one of many. There are other times. Is there another one of vult? Yep, there's five in total.

Well, I'll go on. What are the others? Kettle, vault. Anna, do you want to throw one in? Ah, 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 a venue. Oh, venue. That would be terrible, wouldn't it, if you were having a party? Hello, I'd like to book a venue, please. My party. Three weeks later, a load of vultures turn up at your door.

Pack full of good guests, ladies. Oh, this is worse than Nero's parties. Yeah, the kettle refers to vultures in flight. Committees, vault and venue refers to them when they're resting in trees. And a wake must be when they're eating dead stuff. It's when they're feeding. Yeah, makes sense.

Turkey vultures, we on their own legs. 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 why 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. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. I wanted to move on to just quickly two 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,

knocked 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 stabbing on it.

And so they examined the pavement, which was covered in blackened gum, cigarette butts, and track bacteria of all gut-twisting varieties. Oh. Want the article? At least it's tender. OK, 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. There was a Scottish version. Coots 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 warmer, so I don't need my coat anymore.

But I do need something. How did it work? It was amazing. Well, it was made of rubber, and you should look for it online. Well, we should try and put up a picture of it. You could put it on your Twitter. I'll put up one on my Twitter,

which is that it had four separate compartments, very sensibly in case one of them 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 out of the idiot in the huge boat shape rubber coat, just in case it floods. Yeah.

Well, it's like that bra gas mask that won the Ignobe Prize. Yeah, the Nobel Prize a few years ago. It's got two cups, therefore, can support two people. This is not an earlier version of that. Indeed. Yeah. Another thing that bras were 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. 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. Don'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 six-equipment 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 mean, like, in his trousers to make his bulge look bigger, shouldn't it? Yes. Yeah. The cocktail. That movie has an old different meaning now, doesn't it?

Yeah, so this boat. It's just a boat. Coat boat. Fantastic invention. 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 want the bad auto. No, I think you'd have to pump it up. 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. So 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 the 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 could 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 could 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.

So what was it? What was the measure horses? Butterfly net. Butterfly is one flute. And then it could also be an umbrella. And this is my favorite thing in the advertising of it. It's saying 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. So it's 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 the target 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 bullets and 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 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 it in front of it, it's not really going to work. It was an ancestor of Anna 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 Fry. Oh, really? Yeah.

In what year? 1890. Wow, prodigious. Maybe that's what he was doing before Blackadder. Yeah. I have one funny thing on coats. OK. So Draco, who wrote down the first legal code,

I think it was in the 7th century BC. Which draconian comes from. Which draconian comes from. Do you guys know how he died? No. It is written that it was a sign of appreciation if someone was doing a public performance, which he would, to, in public, throw your coat at him.

As like, hello, I guess that we throw flowers or something. It's someone now. He threw your coat at him. And the way he died was. Because one person had a boat. An eight-seater boat crushed Draco. It was basically that. The way he died was he suffocated under a huge pile

of appreciative coats. 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, like, 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. Yeah, 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 knock people over in the street when you're just walking along? When you've been dumped.

Yeah, that's a sad sign, walking home. As you will be five minutes after you say, don't worry, darling. Just put this fake arm over yourself if you're 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 arm, which is underneath you? Oh yeah, so it's got an arm hole. Hold on, you're saying the arm hole 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, but James... So that implies a horizontal groove. But then James's way, which I prefer because I'm not running into the whole arms in bed.

What's that about with a boyfriend thing? I have a fake arm product she might be interested in. I like the idea of the somewhere to put your arm when it was lying on your side. That has been inventive as well. I think they're two different inventions. Yeah, they are. Because you're like someone's plagiarising someone else there.

From the people who brought you the horizontal bed groove, the vertical bed groove. One more thing about inventions. So you know how car horns are kind of like... like quite horrible noises or whatever? 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 realised 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 atQIPodcast Twitter feed

or you can get us individually on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James, at Eggshaked, 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 knowsuchthingasafish.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. you