281: No Such Thing As A Chatty Cow

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This week comes to you live for

my name is Jerry Schneider.

I am sitting here with Anna Czaczynski, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and James Harkin.

And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order.

Here we go.

Starting with you, Czechinski.

My fact this week is that there was a Disneyland in England 569 years before there was one in America.

Yeah.

It must have been very bad for it.

It's just a slide and a swing.

Just a field overrun with mice.

Is that what you're saying?

Well,

it was a field, so you're half right.

This is from a book, a new book, called A New Dictionary of English Field Names, which is said to be a book.

That sounds like a hell of a read.

Welcome to Anna Tushinski's Book Club.

Membership one.

This, no, it sounds great.

And the Telegraph actually did a review of it, this obscure book.

And basically, it's this guy who's gone back and traced 45,000 field names from various things like old tithe records and things like that.

He's called Paul Cavill,

and he's warning that.

And he's single, ladies.

He's out there playing the field.

I'm not having this because I'm a huge fan of Paul's.

He's warned that these field names could be dying out.

No one seems to be naming their fields anymore.

Can you believe it?

Oh no.

Call the offenders.

And yet they used to.

So it's a really important thing.

I'm actually surprised farmers don't still name their fields because the reason you do it is if you've got to say like, oh, if you're like, you know, where's the collie?

Oh, I left him in, you know, that field that's like three along, five up, it's much easier to say, oh, I left him in Disneyland.

And so this one was called Disneyland because it was in, this was in 1386, he found the record.

I was in the record was in 1386.

He hasn't been writing the book for that long.

And it was the Disney family, and they were called that because they were originally from a place called Dissigny in France.

And so that was why it was called that.

I guess he had one field.

But yeah, they all used to be named.

Well there is there are still quite a lot of fields which do have names.

So there is a UK field named database with over 200,000 fields.

And do you know what the most popular name is?

What?

Big field.

Yeah, I saw people online, so on Twitter, they were sort of, it was asked, does anyone know of field names that might not be logged?

Or just is there one near you?

And a lot of people responded, my favourite one was from a guy called Tim, who said, We have a first humpy and a second humpy, so named as they're both humpy, and one is in front of the other.

There was Sodom Field and Gomorrah Close, those are field names.

That's quite creative.

So they did seem to be quite creative sometimes.

They had, um, well, they had ketchup piece in Northamptonshire, and that actually was a mushroom field because ketchup, the original ketchup, was made of mushrooms.

So the first ever ketchup was made in 1727 out of mushrooms.

That's ketchup please.

There was apparently there was a field called Please Your Honour, and this was in Essex.

And it's thought apparently to be the place where the Lord of the Manor arranged to meet local girls.

And you don't want to think too much about the connection there.

And actually, for the locals, it was useful to know these names, right?

Because if you had a field with the word dike or sitch in it, that meant that you knew that there was water in it, so you knew it was wet and boggy.

And you if it was called Yes, Your Honour, or whatever, you need to need to leave it alone on Friday nights.

But it meant that you knew something about these fields before you went there.

Yeah, yeah.

Like if they were a weird shape.

Um there was you got things like footed stocking and ladies' gown tail if they were shaped like well those things.

Okay.

Could you get in trouble if you sold your field with a misleading name?

If I had a tiny field and I called it big field, were

could I be sold for misselling?

No, because I think only the biggest idiot purchaser is going to buy a field off you without coming and checking it out.

Not even asking for the measurements if we invest that.

No, it's called Big Field.

I'm not telling you anymore.

I'm in.

What was the book called, Anna?

The book is called A New Dictionary of English Field Names.

Because there is a, so that's the new one, because there is a book called English Field Names, a Dictionary, which is a previous book of English Field Names.

And that is by a man called John Field.

No way.

Wow.

And it's not just a list of names in his own family.

That is amazing.

We need to move on to our next fact very short.

Oh my goodness.

Then we should do some Disneyland stuff, I guess.

Or some Disney stuff.

So between 1993 and 2010, Mirramax was owned by Disney, which means technically

these are Disney films, Pulp Fiction,

Bridget Jones's Diary, Scream, Gangs of New York, and Mansfield Park.

Disneyland actually has a special kind of invisible green.

I don't think you can be invisible and green, can you?

Or can you?

Well,

no, not really, but

it was designed to conceal the less glam bits, because obviously the park needs to have unsexy stuff like bins and fences and things, and it's not part of the cool Disney fantasy, is it?

So the designers came up with a particular kind of green which you don't really notice and they call it no seeum green because you can't really see it.

Although I don't know what happens if you're looking for a bin in Disneyland.

It must be quite irritating.

So there's a thing about fields which is that they have all

not all

there's a thing about fields

which is that a lot of them have changed shape in the last 40 years.

Really?

So they've gone from like ladies' gown to undone stocking or...

Exactly, yeah.

Well, they've gone from rectangular to circular.

Really?

If you look at the farms in America from above, they are circular.

All the fields are circular.

Crop circles.

No.

No.

No, no.

It's the aliens.

It's not the aliens.

They're here.

No, we know what it is.

It's circular fields because it's better for irrigation, so it's a more effective way you can have a well almost in the middle of the field, you know, and it's.

Yeah, you have one of these kind of um squirting fountains that goes in a circle round, so it only hits yeah, it's really efficient.

And we know the guy who invented it, but it's creating a massive problem because it's sucking up all America's water because it's so good that it means that farmers then plant more intensively and they grow crops which require more water because they've got this more efficient system.

So, there's a thing called the Ogalala Aquifer, which is under the Great Plains in America.

It's a huge underwater pond, basically,

which covers 174,000 square miles.

Wow.

One pond for a given value of pond.

And

it's being emptied really rapidly, and it's going to take hundreds of thousands of years of rain to replace it.

So there's a problem.

Oh, so they shouldn't have been so good, basically.

Yeah.

Because they are good farmers, the Americans.

So they're the world's number one exporter of food by value, which is kind of unsurprising.

They're a big country.

Do you guys know what number two is?

These guys know.

Is it Belgium?

It's Belgium, yeah.

Yeah.

Denmark, Denmark, it must be Denmark.

They're number three.

The poor old Dutch can't grow a thing, though.

It's embarrassing.

No, it is the Netherlands.

And this is kind of unbelievable.

How are you so good at farming?

So the number by amount, the world number two exporter of food by value, and they have 270 times smaller land mass than the US.

And, like, apparently, there have just been all these incredible farming innovations over the last sort of 20 years.

So, there are greenhouses that are like up to 175 acres big, one greenhouse.

I think all the greenhouses in the Netherlands take up the size of Manhattan or a bit bigger than Manhattan.

And yeah.

Wow.

So, here we were making fun of that field book, and yet everyone in the audience is like, give me a copy.

It's amazing.

The Netherlands is so good at farming, there is now a black market in cowpoo.

It's really more of a brown market, isn't it?

It's because there's loads of...

The Netherlands, as a country, produces 76 billion kilos of manure every year.

Okay, and who's buying it?

Well, you're only legally allowed to produce a certain amount because it's quite pollutive stuff if it's not treated right.

But there is manure fraud where people trade it secretly or they spread it on their land at night to avoid being spotted.

Wow.

Yeah, this is obviously a good fertiliser, but you're not allowed too much of it.

Oh, really?

Any poo smugglers in tonight?

That does sound like a euphemism for something, doesn't it?

It actually sounds like quite a cute name for your baby or something.

Do you call your baby that?

I feel like you could.

Pooh smuggler?

Yeah, to call your baby a poo smuggler.

That's what they're doing all the time, isn't it?

Smuggling poo?

Yeah, in their bottom.

That's why you smuggle things.

How often at an airport do the people go up and go, ah,

what's this then, sir?

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It is time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that every year in Japan, there is an annual anti-Valentine march held by a group known as the Revolutionary Alliance of Unpopular Men.

Wow.

Are they recruiting?

I don't think they'd let you in on the.

So yeah, this is an annual thing that happens in Japan.

These men are sick of what they say is romantic capitalism, and of course they're single, and they

go on street marches to sort of say this is too much.

And it's currently being led by a guy called Takeyuki Akimoto,

and he likes to have placards and he likes to take to the streets.

They only do it once a year, but obviously they like to have anything that has groups of people together to be protested against.

So Christmas is a big thing as well.

So they protest an annual Christmas march

but unfortunately in 2018 they couldn't get the permit for the park they wanted to do it in so they had to do it indoors in a room instead so no one really saw that one

and they had to clear all the video games out of the way

I mean apparently there aren't many of them are there no it's a handful it's double figures yes yeah

I hope it's double figures yeah

yeah it's quite controversial in Japan isn't it the whole Valentine's Day thing people have really gone off it.

And it's because this is something we've briefly mentioned before, but actually the 14th of February in places like Japan, Korea, Thailand, is just a day when women are supposed to give presents to men.

And then exactly a month later, men are supposed to give presents to women.

But apparently it's really an obligation, and so women are getting really pissed off because they feel like on the 14th of February, they have to give chocolates, for instance, to all of their male colleagues.

And so women are saying, you know, I'm spending hundreds and hundreds of pounds every year on colleagues I don't know or like, just giving giving them chocolates.

And then on the 14th of March, the men have to do it three or two times more, so then they have to spend even more.

It sounds like it's got kind of out of control.

Yeah, but I think you know, it's not that bad, especially for countries that export vast amounts of flowers.

Yeah.

But there's this whole vocabulary of the chocolate.

So this is called Geary Choco or

obligation chocolate, basically.

Obligation chocolate.

Nothing says I love you like obligation chocolate.

And there's also honme which is chocolate for your true love

and there are now tomo choco which is friend chocolates

and the best kind Jico choco which is chocolate given to yourself as an act of self-love.

Wow.

That's quite nice.

And apparently when you say self-love you just mean

I just mean

no funny business.

That's what it says on the card when you get your chocolates chocolates.

You say to yourself, all right, no funny business, man.

You know, in China, they also have a group that is like the Alliance of Unpopular Men in Japan.

They have single people who try to pull pranks on Valentine Day in order to stop people having a good night.

So there was one case in 2004 where a group of single people in Shanghai purchased every single odd-numbered seat for a cinema.

That is strong, isn't it?

It's very good.

It's really good.

Yeah, so yeah, it was a movie called Love Story, Beijing Love Story.

And yeah.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Valentine's was slightly different.

For some places in Europe, you would choose your Valentine by drawing lots

in a village.

So basically, it would be Valentine's Day, and everyone would write down their names and they put it in a big hat, and then you'd pick one out, and that would be your Valentine.

And some people said that then the courtship was obliged to last until the following Valentine's Day.

Whoa.

You don't want to get old John the Pooh smuggler, do you?

Oh, no.

Actually, this is a bit like how Romans did it.

So Romans basically had invented the origin of Valentine's Day, which was Lupicalia, which was around that February time.

And that was sort of morphed into Valentine's Day by a Pope a few centuries later.

But yeah, what they did was, first of all, the men sacrificed a goat and a dog, and then they got the hides of the animals they'd sacrificed, and they chased after women, whipping them.

And then,

and the women wanted it.

They queued up to be whipped because they believed it made them fertile.

But after all that happened, everyone was naked.

And then, I believe

you've buried the lead on this story.

I thought you'd assume it's ancient Rome.

And then everyone picked names from a jar, just like that.

And the name that you picked from a jar was the person you were paired up with to do sexy stuff with for the duration of the festival.

And that was their Valentine's.

And it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

There's another Old English

technique for Valentine's Day, which was your Valentine would be the first person you laid eyes on on the day.

Okay, so this led to some people hiding below the windows of the person they wanted to date.

And then as soon as they woke up just going, surprise!

and that's actually mentioned in Hamlet

is it yeah Ophelia says tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day all in the morning betime and I am made at your window to be your Valentine Wow

that's so cool yeah

Valentine cards okay

so there was a tradition in the 19th century as well as sending nice cards of sending horrible Valentines to people they were called vinegar Valentines and

there were specific cards for all kinds of things.

So there were cards where you could say the recipient was drunk, or ugly, or stuck up, all kinds of stuff.

There were specific cards for grocers being rude about them, saying, You've cheated me on my groceries.

Which doesn't feel strictly relevant to Valentine's Day, but it's just a good opportunity.

There was one with a picture of the man in the moon saying, This is the only man who smiles on you.

And they were sent without postage paid, so you had to pay to receive it.

And they were more popular.

Apparently, by the 1880s, they were more popular and better selling than actual Valentine's cards that said nice stuff.

And they're so weird.

If you look them up, there's one that's a coiled snake with the head of this gentleman wearing a top hat, and it just says, Beware the snake in the grass.

And there's another which has they have these really good rhymes quite often.

So there's one whose rhyme is, You're as vulgar a cad as I'd wish to meet, and what's more, you're devoured by pride and conceit.

But I fancy before very long you'll find out that everyone thinks you're an ignorant lout.

Imagine that on Valentine's Day.

Well, at least it's something.

Roses are red, violets are blue.

Tell the police, old John smuggles poo.

Very, very beaten.

Okay.

I feel like old John is now more important to this podcast than I am.

Here's a kind of fun thing that you can do on Valentine's Day.

There's a French inventor who has invented to make part of the experience of the day when you're in a couple

even better.

It's a flatulence pill.

So it's designed so that you have it at the beginning of the date.

And if you need to go and have a fart, you don't need to leave the table as I do.

My wife, no?

It's usually about this time of the podcast that you do, guys.

Guys, I'll be back.

I bring my mic.

Stupid move.

Sorry, so what effect does it have?

It stops you from farting.

No, no, it scents your fart.

So it makes it so it comes out smelling gingery or rose-like or violet.

How much more disturbed would you be by a date if there are smelled of ginger?

We need to move on to our next act in a second.

In 2015, Seattle Aquarium had a Valentine's event.

In fact, they have this every year where you can watch octopuses have sex.

But the one in 2015 they had to cancel, in fact,

due to cannibalism concerns

because they were worried that their male octopus called Kong was too big for his partner and that he was going to eat her.

When that happens, when one person is just a bit bigger than the other and they accidentally eat their partner.

Alan, should we move on to our next fact?

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

Okay, my fact this week is that during World War II, the guns of the ship the HMS Queen Elizabeth were cleaned by wrapping the priest in a large cloth and pulling him through the barrels like a human pipe cleaner.

So cool.

It does not sound very true, does it?

But this is true.

And this was, so I read this first of all in a book which is called A Field Guide, but it's not about field.

It's called A Field Guide to the English Clergy by Fergus Butler Gailey.

And it's about a guy called Lancelot Fleming.

And this guy was pretty amazing.

He was a priest, and he was a priest in

the services during the war.

But there's loads of amazing things about him.

He met his first wife after a a massive drinking binge where he picked up and put on a motorbike helmet and then saw her in the street and said to her I'm a space bishop

and three years later she married him

people weren't even going into space at this point were they no he was ahead he was a man ahead of his time wow

but they did know that space existed yes oh I guess they assumed you'd need to wear a helmet there.

I guess so.

Did he volunteer himself for the cannon cleaning?

Yes, he did.

He was a very slight man.

So it was only for the small cannons?

It was up, yeah.

So I looked at Wikipedia to see what the cannons were on the HMS Queen Elizabeth, and they had 16 6-inch guns, two 3-inch guns, and four 5-centimetre guns.

And I don't think it was those ones.

He could have cleaned them a bit.

Yeah.

Not like.

A five-inch gun?

No problem.

For anyone thinking of writing in, I know that's the diameter, not the length.

I thought you were just being incredibly...

Anyway, so, but...

They also had some 15-inch guns, which you could just about squeeze in if you had really thin shoulders, and a 21-inch torpedo tube, so I think it might have been one of those two.

Chaplains in the army, just very quickly, the modern-day chaplain in the US Army is flame-resistant.

What cool is that?

Okay, what do you mean by that?

So, this is from Mary Roach's book, Grunt, and she points out the man of cloth has various different cloths that he can wear when he's going into, say, a tank or if he's just out where there's combat.

So,

if he's sort of just traveling with a field artillery

He'll have us have his cloth which will be moderately flame retardant insect repellent as well

and 25% Kevlar if he's in a tank mission He's like really fire resistant.

It's a really strong fire resistant, but that's too expensive for day-to-day use So and then when he's back at just the camp, he's just wearing normal clothes.

But yeah, he's got three different outfits for not catching on fire.

Yeah.

Fetch the asbestos priest.

And he also doesn't carry any weapons, but he does have an assistant with him at all times who has a gun.

So

that's the protection.

And they do, they have all these things that they have, like they have portable confessionals, should they need to have a quick confessional out in the field.

They have containers that are turned into chapels, and they have extended shelf-life communion wafers.

Very cool.

No one likes a stale communion wafer today.

So I was trying to find out about more priests, and there was someone called Hugh Barrett Leonard, who was a British clergyman, who had a title which was Extraordinary Confessor, which I think is a proper title, but he really pushed it.

So once when a woman asked to hear confession outside a church, he just held up a tennis racket between them.

That served.

That's amazing.

The telegraph ran his obituary, and it said that although he mostly heard confessions in his room, he was prepared to do so behind a hedge.

That's so good.

We have such a tradition of weird clergy in the UK, don't we?

Yeah, there was a guy called the Reverend Edward Drax Free, and his congregation tried to get him out of the priesthood because he was repeatedly drunk and he was stealing lead from the church roof.

And to stop them from getting rid of him, he decided to lock himself in his study with his favourite maid, a brace of pistols, and a stack of French pornography.

That's a real slam on the maid, I think.

There was another guy from the 1800s called Reverend Robert Hawker, and he was both a priest and a mermaid.

That was the thing he really wanted to be.

So he made a wig out of seaweed, and then he was naked apart from oilskin around his legs, and he rode out to a rock, which was called Bude Harbour, and he sat on it and he just would sing

and then go home and, you you know go to church.

Well, wasn't didn't didn't his sort of mermaid reign end or merman reign end when he went out and he did this as a prank for the locals and everyone was looking at him through their eyeglasses they had at the time and then he overheard one of the like bigger burlier farmers go right I'm gonna go and get my gun we've got to shoot him down and he ducked underwater and never tried the prank again.

Some stuff on maybe cannons or guns or stuff like that.

That's what the fact's about.

So the cannon kind of came into into Europe in the 16th century.

Before that, they used trebuchets, which was where they flung stuff along.

And a lot of people liked them because of their phallicism

for obvious reasons.

So at the siege of Mirandola, the Pope at the time, Pope Julius, was quoted as saying, now we'll see whose bowls are bigger, mine or Louis's.

And they also thought, because they were so phallic in shape, they thought that if you could make them excited, it would stop them from working.

And so at the siege...

Honestly.

What?

Yep.

At the siege of Chekiang in 1861 to 1862, Taiping rebels had prostitutes take off their trousers and moon the forces in the hope that it would cause the cannon to misfire or burst.

Poor burst.

Honestly, it's history, Anna.

That's history.

That feels like a flimsy excuse by the Taiping rebels.

Wow.

Well, some ships' guns have things called tampillons, which comes from exactly the same root as tampons.

Okay.

And these are basically plugs for the guns, and it's to stop the guns inside rusting when they're not being used.

And there used to be an old method of doing it, which is really cool, to stop rust.

They would just put a cannonball inside the barrel and then slosh a load of olive oil inside.

And so then when the ship's bumping up and down, the cannonball rolls the olive oil up and down the barrel and it doesn't rust.

Oh, cool.

That's very very clever.

That's very good.

I read about a,

it's not a cannon, it's a gun type,

but it wasn't shooting bullets.

This is a thing that would shoot into the air a bunch of mines that would be attached to parachutes.

So mines like you would get in the ground.

And the idea is that this was to stop ships from being attacked by planes.

So the planes would come, the parachutes would latch onto the planes, tangle up, swing the mines into the plane and explode the plane.

So that was the idea.

It's an incredible idea.

The problem was they kept launching these into the sky, and the airplanes could see them and they knew what was coming, so they could get out of the way.

So it never got them.

And what actually they didn't really count on is there's a lot of wind out there, and very often the wind would blow the mines on the parachutes right back to the boat that launched them.

And they suffered more British deaths from that than they did.

When was that?

It was in, I believe it was in the Second World War.

Really?

But we can edit that out.

The torpedoes, So you could have torpedoes and ships.

And they've just invented a new torpedo that can fire humans.

What?

So this is I I believe even though I haven't seen it it's in You Only Live Twice James Bond gets in a torpedo gun and gets fired through it.

I read on the internet.

That may be true or maybe not true.

But apparently there's this new thing where you can get in a little kind of torpedo shaped thing with you and your mate and it will fire you off and it helps you to get closer to the enemy.

It's over a range of 10,

it says 10 nm, which I don't think is nanometers.

Oh, nautical miles.

Naughty nautical miles.

Hang on, it torpedoes you 10 nautical miles.

10 nautical miles, yeah.

How do you survive the landing?

Well, you're underwater the whole way.

Underwater?

It's a torpedo.

But these, some of the earliest torpedoes were.

Got it?

But some of the earliest torpedoes were underwater ones.

And there were so my god

It's catching

Some of the earliest torpedoes were

ridable

torpedoes Yeah, in fact some of the very first ones had two-man crews where you would get on it and motor yourself along and then you would leave the torpedo there next to the enemy ship and then hopefully sail around and back yeah I got one last thing which is on religion and boats bringing the two things in together

this is from this year two students from Christchurch Academy in Jacksonville, which is in Florida,

they were swept out to sea, and it was two of them.

Then they thought they were going to be lost, for they were going to die out there.

And they spent their whole time praying to God to be saved.

And they finally were saved by a passing boat, and that boat was called Amen.

How cool is that?

Very nice.

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

My fact is that between 1910 and 1912, the Washington Post frequently tried to interview the president's pet cow.

And was she just very coy, didn't give interviews?

She was very chatty, according to the reporters of the Washington Post.

So this was a specific cow.

She was owned by President William Taft, who was president at the time.

She was actually the last cow ever to graze freely on the White House lawn.

Her name was Pauline Wayne, which is a weird name for a cow.

But they ran over 20 stories about her in this short two-year period.

So one of them, the reporter from the Post, asked her if she was milked without her consent.

And

it reported that to each query, modest Pauline returned from her soft brown eyes a glance bespeaking reproach and indignation.

Which is to say in Bovine, bovine he did not

it's very hashtag me moo isn't it

she was very famous she was a very famous cow you could buy souvenir milk from pauline wayne she was and she used to go on tour didn't she yeah she got in fact she got lost at one point right so she would go on tour around the country and so her milk could be sold at agricultural fairs and stuff and once she was accidentally put on a standard cattle car with the masses instead with the masses of cows instead of her usual private luxury cow coach, and she was taken to the slaughter.

I think she was missing for two days, and there was panic across the land, and she was just saved.

This was in 1911, I think someone just spotted her in time and said, That looks like the president's cow.

How do you tell the difference between the president's cow and a non-president's cow?

She kept on singing the stars and stripes.

When she first came to the White House, she was actually a present from a Wisconsin senator to Taft.

And when she first arrived, she was pregnant.

And the president offered the calf to a local farmer because he couldn't look after them both.

And the Washington Times said that Pauline has not been consulted.

But as a government employee, she is subject to the executive mandate.

It just feels like in 1910, 11 and 12, there just wasn't that much going on.

And they really.

Well, we don't really hear much about Taft, do we?

Because who was...

It was, what, Theodore Roosevelt before him and Woodrow Wilson or someone after him, who were quite famous, and he just doesn't really come up much.

He's mostly famous for being very fat, isn't he?

He's the fattest ever president, right?

He is, although we're not quite sure about Trump.

But Trump is definitely in the top two, I think.

Yeah.

He's mostly known for a myth, isn't he?

Which is that he was said to have been stuck in his bathtub.

He went for a bath and he couldn't get back out again.

But it's a complete lie.

But that's one thing that a lot of people will say, oh, William Taft, the guy stuck in the bath.

Yeah, he wasn't that famous.

Like, Theodore Roosevelt was really famous, and one of the ways that he got he carried on being famous is he named the teddy bear, or it was named after him.

The teddy from Teddy Roosevelt comes from the teddy bear.

And when Theodore Roosevelt left office, toy manufacturers still needed to sell toys, and so they came up with something called a Billy Possum, which was named after Taft.

And we all have one of those today.

How awful for your pet cow to have been more famous than you as the president.

And she wasn't his first cow, was she?

He had another one who died in 1910, I think, and she was called Mooly Wooly.

And she died because she, so he loved them so much, he used to keep them stabled with the horses, and so she shared the horses' food.

And she died after eating too many oats.

Yeah.

Because she'd never been told the oats were for horses, apparently.

And even if they had told her, she wouldn't understand.

No.

It's a very human tragedy.

I think this is true.

You know, the name Fido for a dog.

Yes, sort of archetypal dog name.

This comes from Abraham Lincoln's dog, Fido, which I didn't know.

Where did he get the name from?

Do you know?

I don't know where he got it from.

I guess, I mean, it looks like Latin, I trust.

Yeah.

But Lincoln's dog Fido was also assassinated

a few months after President Lincoln was assassinated.

No way.

Way.

By a dog.

Yeah by a dog.

Wow.

It was at a dog theatre.

Yeah.

It's like Crofts.

I'm afraid I don't know who assassinated it.

But it was a deliberate assassination.

Yeah, I I feel like using the word assassination to describe Fido's death trivializes the death of Abraham Lincoln.

No, I think we need to elevate Fido's death.

Just on pet cows.

There's one quite famous cow, Emily the Cow, and this is a cow who's very well known in the 90s.

So in 1995, she was off to the slaughter in Massachusetts and she escaped.

So the workmen at the slaughterhouse were having lunch, I believe, and she leapt over a gate and fled.

And the workers saw her and chased after her, couldn't catch her.

And she wandered the state for 40 days.

And the police were sent out with instructions to kill on site.

And they couldn't catch her.

And she foraged in people's backyards and stuff.

And it's thought that people sort of helped her by leaving out bits of grass in their backyards.

Leaving out bits of grass.

Maybe some of their backyards already contained grass.

Where do they leave the grass on the lawn?

That cow must be wandering around going, I can't find any grass anywhere.

I can't see the grass for the grass.

So sorry.

Maybe it was made of invisible green grass.

So she spent 40 days and 40 nights effectively wandering in the wilderness.

Yes, she was the Jesus of the cow.

She was seen once running with a herd of deer and she told her.

A miracle, a holy miracle, go on.

She eluded capture.

Well, and she ended up in an abbey.

So there you go.

So there was an interface.

Wait, are you sure she didn't end up in an abattoir?

Because that just sounds

more likely.

No, there was a place called Peace Abbey, which was an interfaith movement, who saw the story, went to the abattoir and bought her for a dollar.

She's still on the run at this point.

And then they went to try and find her.

And they caught her and she lived with them for a further eight years happily.

And she ended up being a bridesmaid in two weddings.

Okay, that is it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we said in the course of this podcast, you can find us on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy.

At Old John the Pooh Smuggler.

James?

Joyce said, No one's fine.

You'll just have to keep in the poo smuggling bit now.

I'm really going to cut that out and just announce it.

Yeah.

For the next 20 episodes.

Who is the mysterious old Job the Pooh Swunger?

He sounds like Andrew Hansa Burry.

James?

At James Harkin.

And Czaczynski?

You can email podcast at QI.com.

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

We have everything up there from our previous episodes, upcoming tour dates, bits of merchandise.

Thank you so much, Amsterdam.

That was awesome.

We'll see you again.

Good night.