446: No Such Thing As A Ninja Wearing Clogs

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Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast.

This week, coming to you live from Glasgow.

My name is Dan Shriver.

I'm sitting here with Anna Tashinski, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and James Harkin.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy.

My fact is that in 1907, a man named Charles W.

Aldreave won a huge bet simply by walking 1,500 miles on water.

I'd gone for the mysterious fact.

Was that a bet with Jesus?

It was a bet with Jesus.

Yeah, who got further without thinking?

No, and this is the guy here.

So just for the people in the room, this is him, Charles Aldrif.

Aldrif was such a hero, okay?

He was nicknamed the human water spider.

And

he basically

had a career which just involved going around walking on water and crowds absolutely ate it up and this was 1907 and he there was a big bet and he stood to gain five thousand dollars which was obviously way more at the time he was walking from cincinnati to new orleans and he had to do it but every step had to be on water and he had these special shoes uh which were

massive obviously um they're about four feet long and um apparently it took him five years to learn how to turn properly really

it was a full he was well trained yeah it was really it was it was described as kind of like walking through mud the way that he was propelling himself forward So he had as as the listener will have to picture it But it's a sort of like a long boat of a shoe and he would wear a Wellington boot before he put his foot in and then he would put a sort of watertight sort of elastic around it so that water couldn't get in so if he flipped over he couldn't get out of it it was just he was stuck

very dangerous but he was a very dangerous guy like he was a showman so he used to do things like take a stick of dynamite out of his back and he would light his cigar with the dynamite and then chuck it into the water.

A giant shooting 20 meter tall foot waves would go into the air off the back of it.

Cool, dude.

He was incredible.

It was weird that he was so into this very specific trick for his entire life, like three decades, basically.

So he claimed in 1898, he was actually going to walk across the Atlantic Ocean, which would have been...

a much better fact if he had actually done it.

I mean, it's unbelievable he thought he could do this.

He was planning to walk to Paris.

I I think because he wanted to walk to the Paris Exposition or something, but he said he was inspired to do this when he was giving a demonstration of his walking on water shoes on a beach in Florida, and he got sucked out to sea by a current.

And the boat that went to rescue him capsized, so they couldn't rescue him.

And everyone was like, oh, God, we've lost him.

He's like,

I've already done half a mile.

I might as well do the round.

Well, he went, he got dragged out to sea, you know, a mile or two.

And once the wind had died down, he was seen mounting the horizon horizon and walking back towards the beach on the sea and he thought god if i survive that i reckon i could do the whole ocean his idea was that he would um walk along the water and whenever there was like a big swell of a wave he would let it bring him up and then he would kind of ski down the end of the wave and then just wait for them to come yeah but you say it's like you know it's an impossible thing but someone has done that There's a guy called Remy Bricker from France.

He was indeed bricking it for most of the time.

I'm sure he was.

But he walked from Tenerife to Trinidad on boat.

He's a great boat.

What was it?

80s?

It was 1988.

And he survived.

Remy Bricker, the French guy, he survived by eating plankton, he claimed.

I mean, so this was it.

The guy that said that.

So what, like, if a blue whale eats plankton, it kind of just opens its mouth and just lets it go in.

Is that what he was doing?

Exactly.

It was, yeah.

And he was French, so he probably cooked them very brilliantly as well along the way.

And he had these polyester skiing floats.

He was was doing the same thing, basically.

He did suffer extreme hunger and vision problems as he tried to cross the Atlantic.

He did 40 days.

But then, Remy Bricker said, Okay, I've done the Atlantic on water.

I'm going to go for the Pacific.

And when asked why, I just love this answer.

Okay, it's so French.

He said, In this life, I have flesh and bone.

I know our time goes very quickly.

In eternity, our time is one second.

In this one second, I will use my time to realize my dream.

And one second later, he drowned.

Well, he failed.

He absolutely failed.

Did he?

He failed, despite the fact he was sponsored by an American sauerkraut company called Stuffler.

What, despffled?

Where he was dragging 22 pounds of sauerkraut with him as he tried to cross the business.

You need something to go with that plankton on the side.

You've got to keep the microbiome healthy when you're out at sea.

In normal life, he is a one-man band.

He you know the guys with the

one-man band.

Yeah, he's actually, in French, an homme orchestre.

Right?

That's the French are a one-man band.

And he has lots of instruments.

I mean, you've mimed it there, but just to be clear, he has lots of instruments rigged up on his body, does he?

We all know the one-man band.

We're just saying that mimes don't wear one in a podcast.

That's true.

Because he's French, I think I was thinking the mime.

Why has he not combined the two?

Why is he not bringing the band with him on the water?

I think if he can't bring a simple thing like 22 pounds of sauerkraut as he walks across an ocean, yeah.

Yeah, the full drum kit.

He's probably fishing.

I guess there's some like similar skills, isn't there?

Like it's lots of moving around, moving your legs.

Yeah.

He didn't make it like you say, but it was because on the first day a storm wrecked the catamaran that he towed behind him.

So all of his food and all of his bed and all of his supplies just went down.

Also,

he was towing a whole catamaran.

The interesting thing about that.

It was a catamaran in the case that it had two bows.

But the interesting thing about that is when Aldry was going to walk over the Atlantic, he decided, like I said, he was going to ski down these swells.

But he reckoned that when it was really calm weather, he would tow a boat with him.

So there would be, there was a boat nearby that would kind of follow him with supplies.

And he thought that what I would do is when it's calm, I'll just tow the boat.

It doesn't need sails.

That's brilliant.

In 1898, he walked from New York Harbor to Governor's Island, which is where the army base was.

And the New York Journal reported that when he arrived at the army base, the commandant felt the wonderful thigh muscles of the man who had made so wonderful a trip.

Oh.

Glasgow's up for it, but

that feels a bit...

like an excuse, doesn't it?

Or you've made such a wonderful trip.

Your thigh muscles must be wonderful as well.

And so

it feels a bit of a pretext.

I wonder, because it's a military base, right?

Did they think he was the sort of advance arm of an attack?

I wonder.

Well, that was the thing, though, wasn't it?

People were doing this already.

They were trying to make boat shoes and go out and walk waters.

And someone had an idea that what if we created an army battalion that could walk across water, then we would lose everyone.

And that's why it didn't happen.

But it was, yeah, this guy, Robert Kjellberg,

he trained some soldiers to wear a heavy backpack and fire a rifle while walking on water.

And he taught the whole of England he was known as the Water King.

And this was a huge, huge thing.

I think it was.

He wasn't a huge thing.

He was known as the Water King.

He wasn't the Water King.

Oh, look, it's the Water King.

It would definitely have the element of surprise, I think.

Exactly.

The Water King.

Yeah, especially presented like that.

There's another thing where you have these kind of round shoes that ninjas are supposed to have used to walk on water with.

So they're probably about the size of a dustbin lid.

And you strap your feet to them.

And the idea was that ninjas could get across moats and things like that.

And I've been to ninja school, and that's what they say.

Okay, well,

yeah, okay.

You've been to ninja school?

I've been to ninja school, and that's what they say anyway.

So the idea.

No, no, no, obviously.

When did you go to ninja school?

What qualifications?

That was in Kyoto.

Okay, that checks out so far.

So,

what qualifications did you do ninja GCSE?

I did, but I can't I'm not allowed to show you the certificate.

Wait, that's spy, so that's different.

No, I am.

Well, look, I did do that thing.

Um, I think I might have mentioned before that they taught me how to throw ninja stars, and they taught me how to throw chopsticks so I could kill a man.

Really?

Wow, right.

Have you proven?

Let's do it.

Are you volunteering?

Who's got chopsticks?

Come on.

Dan, you stand over there.

I'll see you in Wagamamas after the show.

Anyway, the point that I was trying to make is that they told me this in ninja school, but there's some new research.

Sorry.

Some old hanging things.

Hopkins, you're late.

I'm not late.

I've been here for 45 minutes.

The other thing they teach you how to do is to walk backwards while there are drawing pins on the floor.

What?

Is it the walking backwards thing?

Do you just keep your feet, the soles of the feet on the ground so you push the drawing pins out of the way?

Like a moonwalk, basically.

It's not like a moonwalk.

You kind of walk backwards, but you sweep your back foot.

And they also teach how to walk very slowly so no one can hear you walking.

Also, it was like curling, but backwards with your feet.

I feel like we've gone off the point of this.

I'm loving this.

I'm loving the amount of shit I got when I said I'd been to clown school for a short course.

This is all my Christmases at once, you know?

Anyway, so they said this at ninja school, and there's been some new research, and they found old ninja documents about these things called mizugumo, and they found the word sits next to them.

And what they reckon is they weren't actually used by ninjas to walk on water, they were actually like little boats you would sit on and paddle along.

Obviously, why didn't they draw that conclusion when they first saw these round things that go on water?

Why did they assume there were shoes before they assumed they were boats?

Because the ninjas spread the myth that they can walk on water, you know?

Oh, it's a clever bit of PR.

It's PR, yeah, right.

They're good on PR.

Very good.

Just on

the elephant in the room, Jesus of Nazareth.

Yeah.

Is he called that very often?

We've all been dancing around it.

Obviously, the Jesus walking on water thing on the Sea of Galilee.

In 2006, there was a suggestion, and it was published in a proper academic journal called the Journal of Paleolimnology, the study of ancient lakes, obviously,

which suggested that there was ice...

in the Sea of Galilee.

It's more of a lake than a sea, I think.

And so it has this rare property due to the salty and fresh water that feeds it.

And it has this rare property where you could have these bits of ice forming.

You know,

like part of it freezes over and part of it doesn't.

It's in the Middle East, isn't it?

Yeah, but it gets cold sometimes, you know.

And the suggestion is that spring's ice could have formed and made it look like a drink.

So do you think they said to Jesus, can you do that trick again, Walk on Water?

He's like, oh, give me a few months.

Yeah.

It's more of a Christmas miracle than anything.

Sorry, Mimus.

Well, never mind.

But I saw it genuinely on the way here today, I saw a duck basically doing this in a pond.

It It looked like it was walking on water, but actually it was just standing on a stone that was near the

surface of the water.

But it does make you think, doesn't it?

Well, on that note, we should move on to our next fact.

Thank you, Andy.

Yeah.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that zebra spiders chase laser pointers exactly like a cat does.

So, this is a very exciting fact.

This is a discovery that basically zebra spiders, which are jumping spiders, are really similar to cats in quite a lot of ways.

Come on, mate.

It's a disappointed kid you've got if they've asked for a pet cat.

You come home with a microscopic spider and say, they're really similar.

I heard it on a podcast.

I didn't know what these spiders were until you said zebra jerk.

And then I looked them up.

And they're basically, you know, the tiny ones that sort of jerk in their movements.

They're here, then they jerk, then they jerk again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're very, well, they pounce, right?

That's their big thing.

And this was noticed by a scientist.

She was in her lab and she was

having all these spiders that were falling off her roof.

And then someone said, Hey, have you seen that if you use a laser pointer, that you can actually get them to chase it?

And she tested it out with another colleague, and that's what happened.

And they thought, This is absolutely amazing.

And basically, what they think is, like a cat, that this is something that I need to attack, kill, and eat.

And so when they see the green laser pointer, that's what they do.

But they can't because it's a laser

but it's very cool it is really cool isn't it this is by the way the strommer Ed Young article who we had on the podcast not too long ago we said that we do raid his articles and once again we have plagiarized his work so thank you Ed sorry Ed the fact ninjas have been in you'll never notice

the thing I thought was that these astronomers lab um needs a clean

really who's got spiders falling off the ceilings of their lab?

And also, you're supposed to be astronomers, you're not naturalists.

What if they did they miss an eclipse?

You know, they're just coaxing spiders around.

I think part of it was also to work out what jumping spiders can see with their eyes.

Yeah.

Because their eyes are a bit like telescopes in that they're kind of a tube and there's a lens at both ends.

And you can work out what a telescope can see by working out the different lenses and the different distances and stuff like that.

And they worked out that most jumping spiders would be able to see the moon.

Yeah, which is amazing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Because they're small, so it doesn't sound amazing.

I wasn't amazed.

If it makes you feel better, anyone who doesn't think it's amazing, I wasn't amazed at first because I thought, well, I can see the moon.

But it's much harder to see the moon if you're away.

How many legs have you got?

But yeah, they're five to nine millimeters.

Exactly.

Like, that's tony to see the moon.

But I just don't think of what can see the moon.

And now here we are

thinking about it.

I mean,

moths can see the moon, can't they?

Well,

but can they?

Yeah, they can, because then they think lights are the moon.

And they're pretty small.

Come on, I think

the spiders bragging about this moon thing is.

Yeah.

But that means they presumably can see your face.

Because your face is a bit distant, it's a bit bigger.

In fact, it's way bigger than the moon, normally.

But they think your face is weird.

If you want to move around like a ninja, do it when there's no moon.

Oh.

But it is weird to think of a spider that can see your face.

Why is that weird?

I don't know.

Because I don't think of a spider as having a face.

Spiders absolutely have faces, right?

They have eyes.

What are you talking about?

They've got eyes, but they don't have a face, a proper face.

So you think if you don't have a proper face, you shouldn't be allowed to see other faces.

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying that at all.

I'm just saying it's a surprise to think that they could look up and think, oh, there's Dan.

That's a weird idea.

Can I just jump in here for a second?

Can I ask you?

Oh, we we didn't see you then.

Dan, I told you to put more drawing pins down before the show started.

I want to know if you're surprised/slash interested in this, and that is that there is a spider called the ogre-faced spider, and by looking at their eyes, we can work out that they can make out the Andromeda galaxy in the sky.

What?

That's cool.

I mean, we see that.

You can just about on a really dark day in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah.

But do they know what it is?

Do they say it's the Andromeda again?

No, they are cool.

One thing that zebra spiders do specifically, apparently, is they do respond to humans, which I do think is something that we don't think of non-mammals as doing.

Like, you see a cat, it sees you, it responds to you.

And they, if a human walks into the room while they're going about their business, they'll sort of turn around and look up at you.

And they do have, Andy says they can see our faces, but we can see theirs as well, obviously.

And they do have such good faces, jumping spiders, because they've got those two giant eyes, they just just look like something out of sci-fi there's two giant uh eyes in the middle and then two slightly smaller eyes either side look them up uh they're great stuff very cool and excitingly jumping spiders these specific zebra jumping spiders have been to space this is cool so they've got closer to the moon or other things they can see which is great oh it must have been they that must have been amazing yeah yeah it must be really cool so they There was this theory that because they jump and they pounce onto their prey, they obviously take gravity into into account when they're jumping so they jump they know they're going to fall at a certain rate they know they're going to hit their prey and there was a theory a question if we take them to a tiny microgravity environment and they jump they're not going to jump the same way will they keep on missing their prey or will they be able to learn about space basically learn about microgravity and this was a an 18 year old guy from egypt called amr muhammad and he won a competition to do this experiment on the issue not to go himself but just to like have the experiment done and the thesis was they won't be able to learn, and they did learn.

Yeah.

They learned how to adapt to zero gravity, which is very exciting.

And what they did was instead of jumping on their prey, they kind of just sidled up to it.

Yeah, didn't they?

And just learn, hey.

Yeah, there was one thought that they would, what they do do on Earth is that if they're jumping down from above on a prey, they need to make sure that they're going to land on the target.

So they tether themselves with one of their silk webs.

But it's a bit like Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise, going down.

Mission Impossible One.

Yep.

So they're sort of jumping down bungee style, but if they need to pull the cord to stop, they can do that and bring themselves back up if they can see they're missing the prey.

So one of the thoughts in space was they might be using their line to sort of tether themselves, bring themselves back down and help them along.

But no, instead, they just walked up the table.

It says to me the fruit flies that they deployed were not that energetic, to be honest.

If you can just stroll up to your fly.

Or it says that the pounce is just absolutely unnecessary on Earth as well.

Just walk, mate.

Walk up to it.

It was this.

Again, I think I've said this before, but I do find it funny the stuff they make these astronauts do in space.

And this one fell to Sunita Williams.

And I guess they dished them out at the start of an expedition.

They're like, Do you want to do this random 16-year-olds idea?

She was the one who activated the flies every day, and she sort of would release a plunger, which released all these flies into the den, and then the spiders would go for it.

And it was one zebra spider and one red-back jumping spider, and they were called Cleopatra and Nefertiti.

And they did jolly well, but then, of course, they did plummet towards Earth at breakneck speeds at the end of the mission.

And immediately, the zebra spider died on impact.

They were inside a capsule, just to add quickly.

It sounds like they just dumped them out.

No, no, they gave them their own little spaceship.

No, they were like the force of the re-entry killed them.

It's not actually true.

It's not both of them.

It was just the zebra spider, actually, Cleopatra.

And they're not clear on why she died, but something about the impact.

But Nefertiti did survive and went to the Smithsonian to live out her remaining sort of two months before she

copped it as well i thought she lived in a in an actual like display in a museum that you could visit right so people visited nefertiti but the other interesting thing i think that they found is that she learned how to do it the old way afterwards oh my god that's really nice yeah yeah really cool

this is slightly off topic but i found out about a a spider hunting thing okay um and it's a moth specifically called the metal mark moth which pretends to be a spider right?

So its wings have these marks on which look like big spider eyes and other parts of its wings look like the furry legs of a spider.

It looks like a huge spider actually to other spiders and it moves a bit like one and it's so good that actual jumping spiders will flirt with it rather than try to kill it.

Really?

Yeah.

I think we said before that they're kind of not that picky jumping spiders are they?

Then we said that they sometimes just dance with other spiders that are not jumping spiders and most of the time get eaten.

But that's the theory of the dance.

So they do this like courtship dance before the mating.

And the idea is the reason they do that is so that they're a certain distance away from the female.

That if they decide it's not worth it, then they have a chance to run away.

And apparently, there are certain moves that they have to do.

And if they do a perfect dance, then they're guaranteed to have sex.

So it's like, you know, in Strictly, where if everyone gets tense.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It works the same in Strictly, doesn't it?

I believe so, yeah.

Wow.

But is there a thing where if you don't do it perfectly, you will be killed and eaten?

You might.

Which also, weirdly, happens on Strictly.

Time to move on to our next fact.

It's time for fact number three, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that according to a law of 1656, chicken owners on the Scottish borders had to give their chickens clogs.

Okay.

Right.

So,

this is a thing that happened

not just down the road from here.

It's from the records of Peebles.

And this was about complaints of scraping of fowls in houses and yards, as in they'd been pooing over their neighbours' yards.

And they said that everyone who owned a hen or a capon, so any kind of chicken, would have to tie such a weight of timber to the foot that would stop them from flying.

And then it specifically says that they are clogs, and it says that

four shillings would be paid to the owner of any fowl going without the clog.

Sorry, they would have to pay four shillings.

The thing was, if you were to come across any chicken without clogs in that area, then you were allowed to dispose of that chicken.

But most people have sinister,

I guess, by eating it.

Yeah, sounds like it.

Yeah, yeah.

Most people have a lot of chickens, which means

not a lot of chickens, you mean?

Have a lot of chickens?

Sorry.

Let's do a poll of the room.

Yeah.

Do most people in the room have a lot of chickens?

Okay.

One, thank you.

Yeah.

So what I meant to say was, you know that guy in the crowd who came to our show tonight who has lots of chickens?

Out of curiosity, how many have you got?

Loads.

Thank you.

Loads.

So my point stated.

Who invited the colonel?

Yeah.

So you know how that guy has loads of chickens?

Yes.

I'm actually starting to doubt his account of how he's got loads of chickens now.

I'm just questioning

how many clogs you need to buy, the price point of the clogs.

I don't think these are beautiful carved painted clogs made by Dutch artisans.

I think it's more like a lump of wood tied to your chicken's foot.

I'm afraid so.

But they called them clogs in the log.

Oh.

So they didn't even carve an inside to put there.

We don't own any of these in any museum.

Sure, they would would have had some insoles at least, so they'd be comfortable as they walked around.

Oh, apology for me hearing a fact that said they wear clogs and assuming that maybe they wore a fucking clog.

Clogs are like there's a clogs can be anything.

No, they can't.

If I got you some clogs to wear, I'm not going to hand you a block of wood.

I'm going to give you a shoe.

Just on clogs.

Oh, yeah.

So you guys are familiar with clog fighting?

Oh, yeah, huh?

This is the thing.

Is that just the stick fight?

So this is...

Fair enough.

That's fair.

This is human clog fighting.

And this was, I think, a Lancashire sport slash way of fighting someone else where you...

We call that sport in Lancashire.

It was known as fighting Wigan fashion, which is great.

You would just kick each other.

You and one other person would just repeatedly kick each other while wearing heavy wooden clogs.

And you would either...

This is the great thing, you would either be wearing your finest clothing or be completely naked.

You would hope that you would like work that out before the day.

Oh, God, because it'd be awful if they turned up in their finest clothing.

Yeah, it sounds so rough.

So, what you would do is you would hold onto each other's shoulders, and then you were wearing very heavy clogs, and they would kind of say that you should sharpen them, really.

And you would just keep kicking until one of you shouted, sufficient.

This is shing kicking, right?

This is Lancastrian purring.

It was known as, or parring, or like you say, wiggin fashion fighting.

And they thought that it was like really turn of the 20th century that it happened and then it died out.

But a friend of mine called Anna F.

C.

Smith, who's an artist in Lancashire, she managed to find evidence of it up until the 50s.

So people were still doing it in the 50s.

Wow.

Yeah.

Were there rules on the like the size and like could Charles Aldreve have come with his big poet shoes?

That's a really good point.

Um, they would be your actual clogs because people in Lancashire wore clogs in those days,

and so you would wear your normal clogs, but you might sharpen them, you might put bits of metal on them.

Because there's sometimes the rules where the first to draw blood would be the one who got the right who got the win.

There was a thing, I read a story from 1838 where there was such a brutal clog fight that one of the guys fighting went deaf in one ear from being kicked in in the leg

as in

that's that's not there's no connection between those two no no it's sort of like a weird kind of reflexology your shin is connected to your ear and there was another thing where you would be holding this is another method of clog fighting both of you hold a handkerchief between your teeth and the one who drops it first loses like a tug of war with the handkerchief yeah but no no no no well is it the same handkerchief you're holding the same handkerchief between your two teeth and the one who drops it from there and loses but i think that's you may go ah and then it falls out yeah yeah right but i think there's a way of winning the fight never mind your legs you just start eating the handkerchief right

by the way

like lady at the tramp right

and then if you've got the hanky in your mouth he's lost the fight yeah it depends how deep you want your opponent to get inside your own mouth you might prefer to just be kicked in the shin

you're both naked

you're already on pretty intimate terms

they were the lancastrians were very into clogs weren't they yeah um and they're clog dancing they're very into that.

When they weren't fighting with them, they were dancing with them.

And it seemed very specific from about 1880 to 1904 or 05.

And people speculate that the reason they got into clog dancing was partly to warm up in the cold industrial northern towns, which I don't know, it's not that much colder.

But yeah, it was as popular as wrestling, boxing, clog dancing, the three big draws.

There was a group called the J.W.

Jackson's Clog Dancers, and they're a group of young boys, and they would wear football jerseys, And they had clogs with buckles on and bits of metal, so that sometimes when you did your dance, they would do sparks.

And they actually toured the whole of the UK, they were absolutely massive.

And one of the original guys dropped out in 1896, and he was replaced by an eight-year-old called Charlie Chaplin.

Oh,

the same.

The same?

No, completely dead.

No, it was the same.

Wow, very cool.

Was that his first job?

Basically.

Eight years old.

He'd been working for like eight years at this point.

The clog itself,

the full wooden one, the clomp, the clompen.

Klumpen.

It's really interesting reading about them because they're actually really safe shoes for you to wear.

If you're doing hard labor, if you're building on a building side, you're down in a coal mine or whatever.

They're incredibly sturdy, but also they're much better than, say, like a modern boot with a steel cap inside.

Because if something drops on them, the metal of a boot can bend inward and crush your foot and you get stuck in there.

Whereas with this, it just kind of splits the shoe open.

So, at least you're not sort of mangled within the shoe.

I feel like the makers of steel-capped shoes might object to the like they're much safer.

But this, this basically came out because the EU said in the 90s, clogs aren't safe.

And a lot of people in the Netherlands still then traditionally and still sometimes now traditionally wore clogs.

So, farmers, fishermen, factory workers, you know, there are lots of jobs where clogs would be the workman's boot of choice.

And the EU said these haven't been tested properly, and so I'm afraid you're going to have to ditch the clogs and wear steel-capped shoes.

And so, the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research ran a whole bunch of tests to prove that they were as safe.

So, they got all these clogs in to the factory, and they bashed them with a mechanical hammer.

They compressed, they put one ton weights on them to see how they survived.

So, that was like being run over by a car.

They pierced the soles with nails, they submerged them in water, they baked them in ovens at 300 degrees.

What?

And

I don't know in what circumstances you're suddenly in a furnace.

Like if you're there.

We've got great news.

The clogs have survived.

We managed to save his feet.

Here's a fact about Dutch wooden shoes.

Apparently there was a traditional Dutch marriage proposal where if you fancied someone, you would buy a pair of very ornate clogs and then you would secretly at night put them on the doorstep of the person you wanted to marry.

Well that'd be very hard to do, James.

I mean, you'd need someone with special training at

sneaking around in the dark.

Imagine trying to sneak around in clogs.

Clog ninjas.

I don't think you have to wear the clogs to you before you deposit the drugs.

That's why the Dutch have no ninja skills whatsoever.

Well, the idea was that you would return the next morning, and if your beloved was wearing the clogs, that meant she had accepted the proposal.

Oh, my God.

And then she would wear them till her wedding day.

Okay, question: Does she have you left a note to say these are from me?

It's really interesting.

Does she put them on and think, Yes, James has proposed?

And then I fear that might have been it because, as far as I can tell, there's no notes from the source that I read.

I assume you've let her know that that's going to happen or something, because otherwise it's a bit of a shot in the dark, isn't it?

Or maybe everyone had those doorbell cams back in the medieval Netherlands.

We're going to have to move on very soon.

Yeah.

I noticed very recently there's a new trend for we're talking about animals wearing shoes.

There's a new trend for dogs wearing shoes.

I found a company.

Well, to begin with, I got quite excited because Dolly Pardon has started a new company for animal, it's like apparel for animals called Doggy Parton.

And it's specifically for her dogs.

So you can get cowgirl hats for your dog.

You can get Dolly Pardon-esque wigs for your dog.

dog.

There's pink high heels, but it turns out it's a stuffed toy, so that doesn't count.

The dog's not in.

But then there's another company that's just started, I think it was last year, called Riff Ruff, who has designed...

all these dog shoes for and I think it was a pug in the website that I saw and they kind of look like they're wearing like Nike shoes and Addy Das and they've made a hoodie as well and it seems to be coming back in

to what extent I haven't seen so far dogs strutting the streets of Glasgow certainly with their stilettos on on.

No, but if you use the offer code FISH, you can get

20% off your first dog shoe on Rifra.

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Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that Einstein was so famous that women reportedly fainted in his presence, and a mob once broke down the door of a lecture hall screening one of his films.

Yeah, he made films.

Did he?

He was a big director.

He was like Spielberg.

I was thinking of Robert Pattinson.

That's who I'm thinking of.

He was the Robert Pattinson of his day.

I had no idea that he was such a heartthrob and just such a big celeb.

So

this particular lecture screening incident was quite a big deal.

I think it was called like the New York Einstein riots or something, but it was 1930 and the New York Amateur Astronomers Association was doing a showing.

Einstein wasn't even coming.

They were just doing a showing of a film explaining his theory of relativity.

So, you know, stuff that Einstein's, you know, recently got into and everyone's sort of started reading about.

And they sent out 1,500 invitations to their members.

And 4,500 people turned up.

And they mobbed the place.

And the guards couldn't keep control of them.

They were sort of bashing into exhibits and stuff in the, you know, in the central hall.

They had to call the police to try and calm them down.

And they did break down the door to the lecture theater in order to see the movie.

Right.

Wow.

What year was that?

Sorry?

1930.

1930.

Because he became quite big just after the First World War, didn't he?

Yeah.

And that was one of the reasons.

So he'd kind of made this prediction of where stars would be at a certain time due to his theory of relativity.

And there had been an eclipse.

And so because there was an eclipse there, they could measure these stars.

And the interesting thing was that the people who who did the measurement were British.

And so it was kind of seen this great moment.

So the war's finished, but we have the British scientists and the German scientists coming together and proving this new theory.

And that's

adding Einstein and Eddington, wasn't it?

Yeah.

So that's kind of why he became so famous at the time.

Right.

Yeah.

He was, he actually said, because he, as you say, it was the eclipse in, was it 1919?

Yeah.

Eclipse, total eclipse that sort of verified his theory of general relativity, which was basically explaining away Newton's theory of gravity.

So it was saying, actually, gravity is explained by kind of bends in the, you know, in space-time.

I think a really good analogy I read was he explained that if you have a huge mass,

then it bends space-time in the same way if you drop a heavy ball on a trampoline, then it creates a dent in the trampoline, and that pulls other objects on the trampoline a bit towards it.

And in the same way, it bends space-time.

But so he, it took the eclipse to prove this to everyone else.

But Einstein had his theory proved to himself in 1915 because he saw something in the orbit of Mercury that wasn't quite right.

And the only way to explain it was that his theory of general relativity was correct.

And he said when he found that anomaly in the orbit of Mercury, he was so excited that he had heart palpitations and couldn't work for three days.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah.

The one in 1919 took a lot of people by surprise.

They didn't realize it was going to be so huge.

And so the New York Times wanted to get someone to interview him or to go to his lectures.

But they didn't have anyone there who really understood it.

So they sent a guy called Henry Crouch, who was their golfing correspondent.

And Henry Crouch

didn't just not know anything about physics.

Because he didn't know anything about physics, they wouldn't let him into the press conference.

But he still had to send something to the New York Times.

And so he sent them an article that was headlined, Stars not where they seemed or calculated to be, but nobody need worry.

It's so good.

It's so good.

I read this theory that Einstein mania was actually a mistake.

Okay.

So he came to New York in 1921, and there was this huge crowd.

It was so exciting.

You know, there were thousands of people lining the streets waiting for him.

There's a really good theory that actually they weren't there for him at all.

What?

I know.

So he visited.

He was on someone else's trip.

There was a politician called Chaim Weizmann.

He was a politician and he was a poster child for creating an Israel, basically.

He was a Zionist politician.

And Einstein was the most famous Jewish person in the world.

And Einstein just sort of said, okay, I'll come along to be there.

So when the ship docked, thousands of supporters came to cheer.

They weren't cheering for Einstein.

They were cheering for Weizmann.

And all the Yiddish newspapers reported, oh, big crowd turned out for Weizmann.

That's great.

But all the English newspapers just thought, oh, Einstein, he's a crazy physicist.

He plays the violin.

He's so funny.

They're all here for Einstein.

And then it turned into mega Einstein mania.

And that was.

What do the banners say?

Come on.

Surely they're all waving posters.

What are they screaming?

Yeah.

Because he was undeniably huge.

He was also famous.

And you know, people

there was this rumor that women fainted in his presence.

He was mobbed wherever he went.

He'd land in airports.

And the London Palladium, after he'd been to New York and they'd seen this huge reception, the London Palladium asked him to do a three-week-long one-man show, which he turned down, the idiot.

Well, we did a one-day-long four-man show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're 121st of an Einstein between us.

I found the thing about him as well is that he really intimidated people.

You know, if you were in the presence of Einstein, it's...

How?

Well, it's kind of actually, I kind of remember the very first time when I started QI and met Stephen Fry, I genuinely felt intimidated that I was meeting someone of great intellect, that I just said stupid things the whole time.

He also intimidates people for fun with knuckle dusters.

Yeah, I mean, that was a bit weird, yeah.

And his real accent as well.

All right, mate.

There's it goes.

I didn't.

That was a shock, I gotta say.

Anyway, my legs are not broken anymore.

I remember seeing him going at you with those clogs.

It was something to behold.

Oh, my God.

That's not sufficient.

But so there was a story, and this was published in the New York Times, that when he was ill in 1928, there was a New York physician who attended to him while he was in Germany.

And the physician used to tell him anecdotes.

Like he had just anecdote after anecdote after anecdote.

And everyone thought that he was doing this because he was just wanting to make Einstein cheerful.

But he said, not at all.

He memorized 150 anecdotes because he was so worried of Einstein asking him any questions and the ignorance of his answers coming out that he quickly diverted everything into, oh, did you hear the one about the time when the person did that?

And he had 150 of them at the ready.

That's amazing.

So that he would never run out.

I want to see his one-man show, to be honest.

That would be good.

He was a real player.

Or

tart,

depending on which way you look at it.

Wow.

From the age of about 15, he was kind of had various girlfriends and he ended up age 17

in love with this other fellow physicist, the only female physicist studying where he was studying, Millevin Marriage.

And they did love each other, I think.

And he actually did get her pregnant.

But we have no idea what happened to that child.

Lizel.

We have no idea because they couldn't couldn't marry because he didn't have a job yet She went away child disappeared But anyway, he didn't stick with her for that long He fell in love with someone else while he was married to Maleva He fell in love with Elsa, but then I think as he was in love with Elsa He also fell in love with her daughter Ilse.

Sorry.

Wait, hang on.

Elsa and Ilsa.

Elsa.

Elsa was his first cousin.

Yeah.

But also on the other side of the family, she was his second cousin.

Yeah.

Is it possible Elsa and Ilsa were the same woman no it was definitely elsa's daughter because they talked about it because eventually that's why it was into relativity

very nice um no it was definitely two different people because he basically said to them look i really want to marry you both and uh do you want to choose which one i marry and sort of proposed to the daughter and the daughter eventually said i actually think of you as more like a father um And so do you want to marry my mom instead?

And so he did.

And that was just the kind of free love situation he ended up in.

We mentioned ages ago on the podcast that his adopted granddaughter was someone who actually believed that she was the love child and was actually the daughter of Albert Einstein.

And she went to her grave believing this and pushing this because she had people write to her, various people who knew Einstein.

She didn't even really meet him.

I think possibly she only met him once.

Yeah.

He did know some of his grandchildren.

Einstein once gave his grandson Cesar a three-hour lecture on the mathematical properties of soap bubbles, despite the fact that at the time, Cesar was eight years old.

He took him out on a boat trip and would not stop talking about soap bubbles for three hours.

Quite interesting, though, aren't they?

Quite interesting.

Yeah.

And eight years, I mean, Charlie Chaplin was clog dancing at eight years old.

You know, you can listen to a three-hour lecture.

Yeah, yeah.

And some maybe other famous people, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, very famous in his time.

And because he was so famous, he became really, really paranoid.

And at one stage, he thought that everyone was sending him these fan art.

And they were so bad that he thought there was a conspiracy happened, that people were mocking him with their terrible pictures.

Wow, I didn't think fan art existed like that.

He did.

People made drawings of him and paintings of him.

And he once had a visit from a couple of friends called Monsieur and Madame Bret.

And he found out that Madame Bret had an engraving of him that she kept above her mantelpiece, and she really loved it.

And he completely fell out with her because he thought this was such a bad bit of fan art that he didn't want to be friends with anyone who could even look at it.

Wow.

That's a high friend bar.

I mean, I've been to all of your houses and I don't think much of the art on your walls, but I don't.

Well, I've got a massive painting of you over my fireplace, Anna.

I can't believe you.

Yeah, and I take it as a parody of me, and I'm totally offended.

I'm going to have to wrap us up in a sec.

I've got just a quick thing.

James, you mentioned earlier Robert Pattinson,

which you reminded me.

There's a story, and you know, these celebrity stories, God knows if they're true.

But he obviously has a lot of fans.

He was in Twilight.

He's the new Batman.

And he had a stalker as well.

And he actually...

kind of hit it head-on and he took the stalker to dinner.

But at the dinner, he complained about his life so much that she got really bored and quit stalking to him.

Such a good idea.

That's how you deal with it.

Yeah.

Okay, that is it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, most of us can be found on Twitter, but James the Ninja is mysteriously

a lot harder to find.

We can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

James.

At James Harkin.

And Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are there, so do check them out.

There's also this new thing we're doing, Club Fish, where you can join up and you can get ad-free episodes.

We're also doing these really fun behind-the-scene episodes as well.

So, do check that out.

But the main thing to say is: Glasgow, thank you so much for having us tonight.

We will be back again.

And for the listener at home, we'll be back again specifically next week.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washable sofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this: it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply.