No Such Thing As A Fish - NSTAAF International Factball: France v Honduras

Episode Date: June 15, 2014

France v Honduras: The QI Elves in association with www.visitengland.com bring you the fourth episode of this No Such Thing As A Fish Factball special - the only football podcast that has absolutely nothing to do with football. Today Dan Schreiber (@schreiberland), James Harkin (@eggshaped), Andrew Hunter Murray (@andrewhunterm) and Anna Ptaszynski (@qikipedia) pit France against Honduras to find out which is the most Quite Interesting country.

Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish presents the world cup of facts This is the only world cup podcast out there that makes absolutely no mention of football whatsoever brought to you by the qi elves in Association with visitingland.com. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with James Harkin and a Chazinsky and Andy Murray And today's match is France versus Honduras France okay, um, I found a nice number of silly named places. Oh, France always love a silly name place So there are six places in France called silly 13 called Billy and A place called Pratt, which is great. There's also pissy corny punchy misery messy and pussy French seven dwarfs. Yeah

Potatoes were illegal in France between 1748 and 1772 What happened you weren't allowed to grow them people thought that they were very bad for your health and then a great hero chemist Called Antoine Augustin Palmentier is the man who? Rehabilitated them and said actually they are okay. He said this is nonsense. Yeah, this is fine I think bits of them can be harmful, but if you eat the actual potato bit, you're generally all right Oh, so they thought they were actually harmful. It wasn't just yeah atkins of the early No, they thought they made you very ill and in the 16th century France women were forbidden for eating arty chokes Because they were thought to be aphrodisiacs. Wow. Wow a lot of food banning going on

Yeah, that's a lot of good Kings France Charles the mad. He was one of the best wasn't he Charles the sixth who? Ruled in the 15th century. He thought he was made of glass and was terrified. He was gonna shatter I think he had iron rods installed in all of his clothes to make sure that he didn't shatter Oh, and people weren't allowed to touch him. Louie the 10th of France is the first tennis player whose name is known from history That's really yeah, was he any good? What was his forte topspin? I have no idea Louie the 15th Installed some people would say the first example of a lift as in a lift that carries humans and He installed a lift his flying chair. Is that what he called it the flying chair? Why did we stop calling lifts flying chairs?

Sitting in them Yeah, he installed his flying chair so that he could transport his mistress who was two floors above him in the palace at Versailles Up and down to visit him whenever she wanted to surely is much more obvious to install a massive lift You're so subtle And God you came this way the servants will never know But from the servant who's doing the door in the left and the bunch of people watching it going. What is this machine? This is amazing. He was great though He also installed a flying table his tableau volant which

Descended from the so he'd be having a big dinner in his dining room And then after one course it would a hole would appear in the floor and the table would sink down into the kitchens below and the servants Would load it up with all the food for their next course and then it would rise up again Wow That's proper showmanship See why you had a mistress now because that's a pretty impressive move it is it was to stop the invasive filthy servants being seen at the dinner table Oh Another Louis Louis the 18th of France supposedly could tell from smelling a rabbit stew which part of France the rabbit had been killed in Wow, but I think that might be hype

Because I just don't believe it In 1948 the French Olympic team sent the wine ahead a month in advance so that it had time to settle Very cool. Do you know where 85% of French people like to go on holiday. Oh wait, is it is it nowhere? They don't go anywhere. Well, they go to France. Yeah Yeah, 85% of French people go to France for their holidays They could come to England which invented champagne just thought I'd mentioned that. Oh, yeah Yeah, it's an English invention in the 15th century France one in every four days was an official holiday of some sort And that still is the case today. Yeah, and and they would they created their own saints such as Saint Coquette

The patron saint of talkative women and Saint Jean Bonn patron saint of ham That's amazing patron saint of ham The guillotine was only made legal was only outlawed in France in 1981 Wasn't it so it was and the last person to be guillotine in France is in 1977? Wow and the last public one was in 1939 and Christopher Lee went the actor Christopher Lee from all the Hammer horror films and the man with the God and young he was there He was 17 years old at the time and he saw France's last public guillotining. Wow pretty crazy

We have the French Revolution to thank for public zoos I think it was the French Revolution that caused the creation of the first public zoo because the National Assembly ruled that all privately owned exotic animals had to be donated to Versailles state and so they set up a zoo But I also really love the giraffe called Zarafa which was a gift to the French King Charles the 10th from the Ottoman Viceroy and She became so popular this giraffe and so famous that people in Paris started dressing like giraffes and having these giraffe hair Styles and like giraffe skin imitation coat skin really fashionable

Yeah giraffe hairstyles they were in 19th century Well, they also ate all the animals in the Paris Zoo in 1870 when there was a siege. Yeah, someone else wet my name's cat Really during that siege? I think wow, well, they had they had the great cat massacre. Didn't they? That was in France in Hold on I try remember in 1730s France It was a form of workers revolt and basically apprentice apprentice's were annoyed that they were being treated worse off than their bosses cats And so and then we've been fed rubbish cat food and everything So at night they imitated these howling cats that their bosses loved so much night after night until the printers bosses thought that the cats

Would like her word satanic and evil in order that they all be killed and then they made the apprentices go out and massacre them all And then they got hanged How do you hang that the cats they put them on so they killed them all they've then put them on trial postmortem And then they hanged them unfortunately witchcraft. They have to do it nine times for each cat Okay, that's the halftime whistle there which means it's time for our halftime show And that is brought to you by visitingland.com and comes in the form of a qi quiz And there are three questions today James the first question simply how many oaks are there in seven oaks? Is there a clue in the question? Is it a trick? Who knows could it be a trick? That would be so unlike you

Yes qi elf with a trick question. Who would have thought it or maybe it's a double bluff Andy your question What classic dad pastime has an entire museum in Merseyside devoted to it? Soiling asleep with a newspaper on your face Maybe you'll have to wait and find out And Anna, what's yours my question is which road in England has been used as a road since before Britain was an island Okay, so those are the three questions for today's quiz if you want to find out the answers to them We're gonna be revealing them at the end of this episode But now it's time for the second half of the match and it's Honduras

It's the original banana Republic as in the first ever phrase banana Republic was used to describe Honduras because the US banana companies had so much influence there and 66% of the whole country's imports were bananas in 1913 speaking of fruit companies You know Nixon after the moon landings gave a moon bit of moonrock to every country in the world And Honduras is one of those countries and the bit of moonrock mysteriously disappeared very soon after it had been given to the country And it was found in possession of it was bought by a fruit seller in 1993 I think for quite a lot of money. Wow Wow a fruit seller fruit selling Yeah, presumably a rich big business fruit seller not a guy with a stall. Yeah

Not a guy is just selling apples for 10 cents like apple 10 cents banana 15 cents moonrock $200,000 I wasn't I would just came out for an apple, but actually I like this This is something I read about these guys is that they have a lot of fish falling out of the sky in Honduras a Lot of fish really only falling out of the sky so much so that they have an annual festival now Called the Honduran festival of the reign of the fishes where they celebrate the kind of anticipation that it's gonna happen again It happens so regularly now. What what how what but they don't know They don't know where the fish come from but thousands of fish just fall out of the sky at the same time at the same time Not the same time every year, but it's happened enough times such a common occurrence that and it's a thing that happens worldwide where you know

I think it is every year in Honduras, isn't it? I think it's that is the claim Although it was gone to be here went to be verified by National Geographic in the 70s And they said there were fish all over the streets, but they still couldn't get any evidence of it falling from them falling from the sky One of the most famous things about Honduras. I know we're not supposed to mention football was the football war. Okay, of course Honduras versus El Salvador they met in a soccer match in 1970 It was a very tense match and then some fighting broke out on this stand and eventually it turned into a war Blasted six days and as usual there was no side that could declare themselves the winner

We were talking about bananas before and fruit. There was there's still a lot of bananas grown in Honduras But obviously as we all know bananas are in a bit of trouble with viruses and stuff and they might be dying out But there's some Honduran scientists who are trying to help with that and they Sivved 400 tons of bananas to find just 15 seeds for breeding a new type of It's pretty good work. Yeah, that's very exciting. I've never sift bananas. You need a big sieve. Yeah, I imagine Well, I think that was just a metaphor Sorry, I was thinking a colander at least Like the idea of new bananas, yeah a new species of bananas

There are a lot of species of bananas, but it's just that we only eat one of them Why why are there so many then are the others all in edible plantains or a type of banana? But there are other kinds of plantains that are more woody and with lots of seeds which are pretty inedible Okay, okay. Honduras was also the first spot of land where Columbus landed Columbus comes up in almost every one of these Busy boy, he did a lot. Yeah, it was true. Hello in Honduras. That was where that was the first bit of mainland America He landed on. Oh, wow. Yeah, they should be called Columbia Yeah, I think that would be quite confusing though because there already is a Columbia. I think I would have heard of a play school Columbia

The Honduran flag this is just a tiny little nugget But the Honduran flag, you know it has its three stripes and the two outer stripes are blue and that's to represent the ocean on either side of it So it's the Caribbean sea on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other Okay, there it is as the final whistle, but before we find out who's won today's match We are gonna quickly reveal the answers to that visiting Lynn quiz that we did as our half-time show and the answer to the first question James how many oaks in seven oaks? Yep. Is it seven? It's six. It's eight We should have known they had seven six of them blew down and then they planted another seven Okay, Andy what your question mine was about the classic dad pastime

Which has an entire Merseyside museum and that is mowing the lawn. There is a lawn mower museum there Okay, and question number three was yours Anna Yeah, so I asked which road in England has been used as a road since before Britain was an island and it is the Ridgeway Which I'm sure many of you know runs through a lot of these southern counties. Okay Fantastic. All right. Well, those are the answers if you would like to win a prize though You can actually head over to visiting Lynn calm where there's gonna be all sorts of QI goodies waiting there Possibly a signed QI book from Anna Chazinsky, which would be very exciting now It's time to decide who has won today's match and we are gonna go to Anna to make that decision France or Honduras

Well, I always like to send wine ahead of me wherever I go To make sure it arrives on time and is sufficiently cool And so I'm gonna go with France because they do it too. Okay. Okay, so that's it from us We're gonna be back again tomorrow with another match and that will be James. That is Germany against Portugal Germany versus Portugal. Great. If you want to ask us questions about this match though, you can get us on our Twitter handles I'm on that Shriver land James at egg shaped Andy at Andrew Hunter M. Add add a quicapedia Which is the QI to defeat not mine, but I'll reply. Okay. We'll see you guys again tomorrow. Goodbye