Episode 249: No Such Thing As A Pint of Wine

**No Such Thing As A Pint of Wine** is the 4th New Year's Special of No Such Thing As A Fish, the 41st episode of the fifth year, and the 54th and final episode of 2018. It consists of clips removed from the previous episodes of the podcast.

It features regular presenters James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski, and Dan Schreiber. It also features clips of guest QI Elf Alex Bell and special guests Alex Edelman, Stephen Fry, and Paul Smith.

## Description

> A compilation of the best deleted bits from the last year of Fish. Happy New Year!
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## Facts

* According to old English folklore, if you dream of gathering nuts, it's a bad omen. (Harkin)
* The world's first aircraft carrier was for hot air balloons. (Murray)
* All the hay used in the first ever nativity scene was taken home by members of the congregation and fed to their livestock. (Ptaszynski)
* Winston Churchill would listen to translations of Hitler's speeches, and play back the parts where Hitler mentioned him by name. (Murray)
* In Sweden you have to park on alternate sides of the road depending on the date. (Ptaszynski)
* A study showed that 94% of people can type 70 words per minute, but can only write down where 15 of the letters are located when prompted. (Schreiber)
* The iron that makes up the Earth's core rained down in the form of molten metal before seeping into the centre. (Harkin)
* The centrepiece of a Bible-themed theme park in Buenos Aires is a 40-foot-tall animatronic Jesus who resurrects once every hour. (Schreiber)
* King Louis XIII of France didn't comb his hair until he was 9 months old, nobody washed his legs until he was 5, and his first bath was at the age of 7. (Harkin)
* There is a theory that the bread rolls on the table in the painting *The Last Supper* represent musical notes. (Murray)
* In 2009 thieves stole letters from shop signs in Norwich in order to spell out their own names. They took from 7 stores across 3 nights and names that they may have had include Sam, Danny, Alan, Lloyd, Glynn, or Manning. They are known as the Countdown Thieves. (Ptaszynski)
* Rubbing together your thumb and forefinger creates an ultrasonic signal, which can be used to tell if a bat detector is working. (Schreiber)
* In 1997 during a pigeon race from Nantes to the UK, 90% of the 60,000 pigeons taking part mysteriously disappeared over the channel. (Ptaszynski)
* A man in Bristol has built a device called an apostrophiser which adds or removes apostrophes from poorly written business signs. (Murray)
* 19th century "Dog Dramas" were stage shows with trained dogs. Troublemakers would throw meat onto the stage to distract the dog. (Schreiber)
* In 1986 the Worshipful Company of Bakers officially apologised for causing the Great Fire of London. 320 years late. (Schreiber)
* In 2010 in Belgium, funding was granted for a project to feed pigeons foods which would make them excrete soap. (Schreiber)
* One species of amphipod builds a shell for itself out of the algae it eats. (Murray)
* Syrians breed the best homing pigeons, but the war means it is not safe for them, so many pigeons are being smuggled out of the country. (Ptaszynski)
* The original manuscript of *On The Origin of Species* contains doodles by Charles Darwin's children. (Ptaszynski)
* Since the mid-19th century, French Canadians have argued that the Canadian national animal shouldn't be the beaver, as it represents English colonialism. (Ptaszynski)
* The Queen takes down her Christmas decorations on the 6th of February because her father died on that day. (Schreiber)

## Trivia

* This is the last episode of 2018.
	+ This is the fourth New Year's Special compilation, but the first one to be a numbered episode rather than a non-numbered one.
	+ This is the fourth compilation episode after No Such Thing As Unbroadcastable Material, Extra Bits, and No Such Thing As Wasted Material 2017.
* This episode features audio from many episodes, and thus many locations, primarily the QI Offices.
* Ptaszynski suggests that lost muscle memory "falls out when you cut your nails".
* *The Last Supper* was the subject of a headline fact in Episode 69: No Such Thing As The Pamplona Guinea Pig Run.
* Alex Edelman once convinced Dan Schreiber that God Save the Queen contained the line "Oscar Pistorius".
* The fact about Darwin's children doodling on the manuscript of *On The Origin of Species* was mentioned in Episode 74: No Such Thing As A Computer in the Oval Office.