Chapter 1: What interesting facts do we learn in this episode?
Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray. I'm joined by Dan Schreiber and Anna Tijinsky. And we are here with some of your best facts from the last seven days. That's the whole intro.
Hello.
I like it.
This is my first time and I'm wowed.
Something to know. Andy's very good at intros.
I've heard that.
And that was a prime example. Well, the outros are where I shine. But anyway, let's get on. Does anyone have an audience fact they'd like to bring to the table?
Yeah, I've got one here. This is from Cara Eaton. And this is my first little fish fact, so it has to be really good, Cara. And it's the fact that up until 1999, the state of Montana didn't have speed limit signs along their highways. The sign simply said, drive what is reasonable and prudent.
I like that. Treat the public like grown-ups, and I'm sure they won't take the piss. What kind of debate do you have with the cop that's pulled you over when they don't think that you have been driving?
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Chapter 2: What unusual fact about Montana's speed limits is shared?
Drive what is reasonable and prudent.
Yes.
Drive what is reasonable. So I'm not sure that's exactly what they read. But anyway, it's true. I've checked it. And it was actually because there was a famous 55 mile an hour speed limit in America. What a snooze between the 70s and the 90s because of the oil crisis. Oh, really? Yeah. So Nixon imposed. I know it could come again.
Look forward to that.
Yes.
Coming back.
All electric car drivers will be allowed to go at 300 miles an hour. But then it was revoked in 1995 and Montana said, OK, we'll just say we've forgotten how to do speed limits, proper speed limits. So we'll just say drive however fast you like.
Yeah, that's almost like if it was to do with the gas, it's drive at a patriotic speed. One that will not disrupt the system around you. Nice.
That's great. Well done, Cara.
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Chapter 3: Who was Liver-Eating Johnson and why is he famous?
but he was really Garrison. So he was born Garrison. He changed his name to Johnston, but then the newspapers misprinted his name as Johnson. So he's sort of got three names. I feel like we're focusing on the wrong element of his name to really drill down into. Well, it's just a very confusing story because this is one of those characters who's sort of stuck in myth.
He became famous because his obituary came out and everyone found out about him, but he didn't die for another 20 years after his obituary came out.
What? Sorry, can we quickly talk about the liver eating thing? I know this is elephant in the room.
Okay, Dan, this is the most confusing way we could possibly introduce this. It's really easy. Okay, a man born in 1936 buried a man who died in 1900 whose name was either Garrison Johnson or Johnston, and he became famous in America 20 years before he died because his obituary was released. Okay. What are you not getting? Nothing, nothing. Why was he famous? No further questions. Okay.
So his obituary was accidentally released 20 years before he died. And yes, you wouldn't write an obituary for someone unless they were already famous. No, that's not true, because there are lots of people when you read the Times obituaries who you go, wow, how did I never hear about this person? They may have been famous in their own field.
It's never someone who's just done nothing. You never have the obituary, big full page in the Times, empty space. Absolutely. Born, lived, died. So had he done anything?
Yeah, I think John liver eating Johnston had done something, Anna. Yeah, he ate livers. So this was... Because James edits this show and he's not on. It's just incredible to see you laying this massive bear trap for him.
So early on as well.
He was an American frontiersman and he became famous because these myths went around about him that he was killing a lot of Native Americans of one particular tribe and it was in revenge of the fact that they had murdered his wife. And the idea was that he would kill them and he would remove their liver. And supposedly it was 300 of them that he'd done this with. Right.
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Chapter 4: What myths surround the life of Liver-Eating Johnson?
But he became particularly famous because Robert Redford starred in a movie about his life telling this story. And at the time that that was happening, there was a school, a middle school in America, and the teacher was telling the story of this guy who had died penniless and he died in an area of San Diego where he was basically buried under a freeway.
But he'd said he'd love to be buried in the Rockies. So there was a big push to have him reburied. And as a result, Robert Redford was a pallbearer. Because he'd played him in the film. Yeah, exactly.
And he had to carry the coffin from his original burial place to the Rockies. It was a long, long distance.
Yeah. So what I said at the start, like long delayed funeral, we could have just said yes to that. And...
No, you can't just leave it at that, can you?
I mean, it was general enough that... No, fair enough. Stunning.
I still don't feel like we got to the bottom of it.
Really? Interesting. No, I do. Okay. Here's one from John LaRiche. And John writes, I was talking with a friend who works in the pool and technology industry. She sells pool-related technology, like swimming pool or water pools. She says one of their biggest clients is Kerberg Nuclear Power Station here in the Western Cape of South Africa.
My fact is that Kerberg Nuclear Power Station uses kamikaze scuba roombers to help clean the water that's been used in the reactor. Wow. So these are vacuum cleaners, water vacuum cleaners, wet vacuum cleaners, because you get wet or dry ones, don't you? And the filter units they have are unable to filter out really small radioactive particles.
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Chapter 5: How did Robert Redford become connected to Liver-Eating Johnson?
And I don't know what I was thinking, but I thought I'll vacuum it out. And Fenella saw me and quickly explained that. Your wife shouting, you suck, from the doorway. You can get wet slash dry vacuum cleaners.
As in they can do both? Yes. They're amphibious?
Yes. Nice. That was the big revelation for me researching this fact.
Why? I can't work out what I'd use that for. If the bath is dirty but there's someone in it at the time so I can't empty it?
I mean, maybe that, yeah. That's really passive-aggressive cleaning, isn't it?
No, we love having you over. No, please.
Feel at home.
But I just invited you for lunch and now you're in my bath, Dan. Okay, do you want another fact? A fact for you from Paul Bernard. A fact for you, he says, related to an older segment you did about haiku poetry. So old that I remember that. The Northern California town of Ukiah hosts an annual haiku festival. Can you guys guess why?
Big Japanese population.
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Chapter 6: What surprising fact is revealed about the Toco Toucan?
They never played Kazakhstan. And this is an interesting point, I guess, that Alex is trying to make. That QI, or No Such Thing as a Fish, once covered that the furthest point on Earth from the ocean is in Urumqi, on the Kazakhstan-Chinese border, otherwise known as the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility. And this is a mere few hundred kilometers from Cocteau Bay in Almaty.
I'm going to claim that Cocteau Bay is the Beatles' Pole of Inaccessibility, being the furthest point that a Beatles' monument exists from a performance.
by any beetle um lovely yeah and they've said i'm open to being corrected and i had a quick look paul mccartney did play the red square he did play russia so okay it's still it's still a great distance but i i don't know uh whether or not there's anywhere closer they go down under the beetles Just as really obvious. Absolutely, they did. But without Ringo.
So if you're missing a Beatle, does that count? Did he not go?
What the hell?
The other three of them went. Yeah, and they had another drummer come in who was not Pete Best. It was a different one.
Did anyone notice?
Yeah, yeah, they were pretty famous at the time.
I just thought it was just a slam on Ringo's team.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the rhino named Kakareko in Brazilian politics?
It's...
This is a fact for Steph Delory. The first thing was a parliament and it was the old thing in Iceland. It's been going since the 10th century. This is one of James's, wasn't it?
It was James's.
The word thing, that's where we get the word thing, right? It's from that parliament and it's become meaningless enough to just mean thing now. Is that one of the many claims to have been the first parliamentary democracy?
I think it was, wasn't it? Yeah. I think it must have been. And we did a load of stuff about Icelandic horses. Do you remember this?
Yeah, because are they the ones that have the special trots as well? Icelandic horses, I think, have a special way of trotting where they trot with their feet the other way around to normal horses.
Something like that. That sounds plausible, yes.
I think they do. And it's got a special name, like trirting or something like that.
What we find, and you'll find as we do more Little Fishes, Anna, is that it's amazing what you do and don't remember. Yeah. It's amazing. Like Dan's story of the guy who swallowed a Faberge egg and the police were waiting for him to lay it.
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Chapter 8: What humorous stories are shared about unusual election candidates?
I don't think I would.
Okay. Killjoy.
But I'm just trying to remember the details of this fact. I think cacareco means rubbish.
Yeah, it does.
But I don't think that was a part of the electoral pitch. I don't think the pitch was, I'm a rubbish candidate. Okay. I think it was, I'm a rhino and you hate all the humans. Okay. Yeah, you're right, actually, Anna. I mean, given the choice, I probably would vote for a rhino. There you go. Yeah. What's the headline? We did the beak air conditioner. He'll give you the horn.
And that's what you want, is it, from your elected politicians?
Slightly too sexy. I regret saying that as a slogan. I've got it. To be a politician, you need thick skin.
Yes. Very good.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it.
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