NSTAAF International Factball: Spain v Netherlands

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Hello, and welcome to No Such Thing as a Fish Presents, the World Cup of Facts.

This is the only football podcast out there that makes absolutely no mention of the sport whatsoever.

Brought to you by the QI Elves in association with visitingland.com.

My name is Dan Shriver, and joining me today is Andy Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Czaczynski.

And today's match is Spain versus Netherlands.

Okay, let's kick off.

What's quite interesting about Spain?

I want to mention the most brilliant festival in Spain, baby jumping.

It's a traditional Spanish holiday that dates back to 1620.

And you lay out babies on the street and people jump over them as far as they can.

And it's supposed to rid the babies of sin, which is pretty damn cool.

Brilliant.

Unless it's your baby.

I have a matching festival which involves goat tossing.

It's celebrated in Manganesis de la Polvarosa.

And a bit of the ceremony is where a group of young men throw a live goat from the top of a church and then a crowd catches it in a big sheet.

So it's animal rights groups got very annoyed about this.

The practice was banned,

but they did throw one in the 2014 celebration.

They have rat tossing as well, a rat tossing festival.

It's in El Puig in Spain.

I don't know if that's how you pronounce it.

They love to toss animals.

I have a fact about Spain.

Yeah.

When did the Spanish Armada end?

1588.

No, no, no, no.

It's still going.

What?

Yep.

The Spanish Navy is still called the Armada Española.

Well, Spain produces more wine than France.

It has the largest area of vineyards in the world.

And last year, for the first time, it overtook France in wine production.

Wow.

Also, they produce a lot of rabbits.

Yes.

Well, they farm rabbits more than 30 million a year.

That'll be why the word Spain means land of rabbits, doesn't it?

It comes from a Phoenician word meaning land of rabbits.

That's one of two theories.

The other is that it just means western land, which is a bit more boring, but it's nicer to think it means landlords.

Let's go with the rabbit one.

Yeah, I like the rabbit one.

On Spanish rodents, Spain doesn't have a tooth fairy, it has a tooth mouth, and you leave your tooth under a pillow, and raton chito takes away your tooth and brings you a present in return.

That's a fantastic name.

Is it true that the Spanish have the longest life expectancy?

I'm not sure they beat Japan, but they're the world's largest exporter of olive oil.

Yes.

So that's got to help.

Well, not if you're exporting at all.

Drinking all the olive oil, maybe.

That is surprising, right?

They beat France in wine and Italy in olive oil.

Yeah.

That is surprising, yeah.

And they invented the mop.

The Spanish inventory.

A Spanish man invented the mop.

He just stuck a stick on a rabbit.

Yep.

To give the guy credit who invented it, he also invented the two-piece disposable syringe.

How can you invent a mop?

He was an aeronautical engineer, so I don't really know how.

I think people have been mopping before they've been aeronautical engineers.

No one thought to put a stick on it.

What else did they invent?

Are the Spanish famous?

In the ninth century, Spain was by far and away the most forward-thinking place in the world.

In Cordoba, they had hospitals with running water, they had baths, they had specialist departments for different ailments.

The The hospitals had to stay open for 24 hours for anyone who was sick.

They had the world's first municipal bins and waste disposal, and they had Europe's first street lights

in Cordoba.

So it was like a proper awesome place to be.

It was during the Arab Spain time.

We're not saying it's an awesome place to be now because it is, but it's not as well lit.

Can I give you guys my favorite Spanish fact?

Yes, please.

I think it's probably the best Spanish fact.

They have

the longest person serving a jail sentence in the world.

Wait.

Sorry, in the talk.

Let me say that again.

Longest by minutes or inches.

A really high prison cell.

You have to keep them in the exercise yard.

The longest jail sentence ever given.

This was in March of 1972.

It was to a 22-year-old guy called Gabriel.

And

he got his sentence because he failed to deliver 42,768 letters.

So he was accused of fraud.

He got given a sentence of 384,911 years.

So the laws in Spain are quite strange.

There's a new child protection bill that means that children under 18 have a joint responsibility to help at home.

And in accordance with their age and regardless of their gender, they have to do housework by law.

What happens if they don't?

Extremely large.

Very long.

Extremely large.

Okay, this is cool.

The King Alfonso XIII of Spain was completely tone deaf.

And wherever he went, he was accompanied by an advisor called the Anthem Man,

whose job was to advise the king if any tune was the national anthem so he could stand up during it.

What a sweet job to audition for.

Can you imagine the interview for that job?

Yeah, but you could just any old music.

Oh, it's a national anthem again.

There's an ice screen bang going by.

Oh no, it's a national anthem.

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Okay, that was the halftime whistle there, which means it's time for our halftime show, which is brought to you by visitingland.com.

And that comes in the form of a QI quiz.

We've got three questions for you to ponder over as we make our way to the second half.

So the first question is from James.

Yes, my first question is, where in England do they make delicious brown ale?

Okay.

Question number two from Andy.

Okay, my question is, what historical event completely ruined William Shakespeare's 52nd birthday?

And question number three from Anna.

My question is, which English city has more trees per person than any other European city?

Okay, well if you want to find out the answers to those questions, stay tuned till the end of the match, where we will reveal them then.

But until then, it's time for the second half.

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And it's the Netherlands.

What have we got?

And so,

storming their way to victory is Spain.

Okay.

The all-time best QI fact about the Netherlands has got to be the fact that in 1672, an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their Prime Minister.

Wow.

He was called Johann de Witt, and

he was the Prime Minister, and they ended up lynching him, ripped his body apart and then some people apparently ate bits of it.

But it's not just prime ministers.

There was a TV show in the Netherlands.

It was called Prufkonienyen.

That is absolutely not how to pronounce that word.

And the two presenters underwent surgery to remove small pieces of flesh from their bodies and ate each other.

That was broadcast.

It was broadcast.

And one of the presenters says, it was just a few centimeters of meat.

And now I have a good story about that scar.

It's like come dine with me, but it's just come dine me.

So, if you want to insult someone in Dutch, you accuse them of having an illness, and loads of their swear words and insults are things like, I won't be able to pronounce any of these.

Klerolesia is a slang word meaning cholera sufferer, kriege de tering is catch the tuberculosis, or plurin is literally to tuberculosis off.

Tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis off.

Get the tuberculosis out of here.

Cancare, the word for cancer, you just shout cancare at people, or get cancer at people.

Get cancer.

Oh, tuberculosis yourself.

Yeah.

We want to hear those.

We should be using that.

There must be mild ones as well, like, oh, eczema.

Eczema yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

Snotty nose.

Yeah.

I have some other sayings.

So a lot of them seem to be monkey related.

So an urban legend is known as a monkey sandwich story, which is great.

If you wonder, if someone's given away something about themselves by mistake, you say, ah, the monkey comes out of the sleeve.

And

if you want to say, just do it, or you know, let's, hey, let's get on with it, let's go, you say, go with that banana.

The Dutch claim that they have the tallest people.

They can do that.

They do.

Yeah, sure, they do, yeah.

I think they have the tallest people because 25% of the Netherlands is below sea level.

So I've decided that they have the tallest people as like a survival thing so that they can keep their heads above water.

When the water rises,

that's a very sound thing.

I think it is.

They changed the rules so that DARS have to be higher now.

They have to be seven foot six and a half inches high because Dutch people are so tall.

In 1848, one man in four was rejected by the Dutch military because he was shorter than five foot two.

But today it's fewer than one in 1,000 people at that size.

Wow.

So they've grown massively in the last, like, hundred years, actually.

You know, they have the person who always accompanies Santa Claus in the Netherlands.

Black Peter, is it?

Black Peter.

People in the Netherlands do black up to celebrate.

It's an old tradition, but it is controversial now.

Yeah, there's a BBC News report here saying that they're calling time on black peep fun in the Netherlands.

Well, there's a big campaign to stop it, but there's also a big campaign to keep it because they think it's part of their tradition.

One bad thing about the Netherlands is the national anthem, where one of the lines is, to the King of Spain I've granted a lifelong loyalty.

Which, if they're up against Spain.

That's copy and paste gone badly wrong, isn't it?

Why does it say that?

Just for historical reasons from when they were...

They should have rewritten that.

Come on, they've had like 400 years.

They have the ultimate James Bond.

He was a Dutch MI6 agent called Peter Tazilar, and he was sent to The Hague as a spy undercover.

And he was in a wetsuit, and he washed up on the beach and unzipped his wetsuit.

This is in the Second World War, I think, unzipped his wetsuit, was wearing a tux underneath, swanned into a casino and did his spy work.

How do we know that?

It was only revealed about three years ago.

Was it him saying

how cool I was back then?

Check me out, guys.

He then lost £100,000 in the casino.

So they love their royal family.

They spend more money on their royal family than we do.

And their crown jewels are made partly of fish scales.

Oh, wow.

I think it was in the 19th century.

They remade the crown jewels.

And yeah, they're made of glue paste and tiny copper balls and gelatin and fish scales.

They're made from their version of blue peter.

Yeah, it was basically a DIY black peter.

Okay, that's the final whistle.

And before we decide who's won today's match, we're very quickly going to reveal the answers to the halftime show brought to you by visitingland.com.

And they are.

James?

Okay, and my question was: where in the UK do they make brown ale?

It's called Newcastle Brown Ale, but it's made in Tadcaster and has been done there since 2010.

Hmm.

It's a trick question.

Yeah.

Okay, Andy, Shakespeare.

The historical event which ruined Shakespeare's 52nd birthday was the death of William Shakespeare.

He died on the day that we think he was born.

We're not absolutely certain the day, but we think it was there.

It was St.

George's Day, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Okay, and Anna?

Yes, the city in England that has more trees per person than any other European city is the lovely Verdant Sheffield.

Sheffield?

Nice.

Okay, well, they're the answers, but now it's time to decide who has won today's match.

Is it Spain or is it Netherlands?

And I am going to Andy for today's decision.

I like the idea of the tooth fairy being a a mouse.

So I'm going to say Spain.

Okay, that's yeah, good call.

I like it.

All right, so Spain make it through to the next round.

That's the end of our match.

If you fancy winning some QI goodies, you can head on over to visitengland.com where they're going to be running another competition.

There's going to be books and so on.

And if you want to get in contact with us in the meantime, just about today's show, you can get us all on our Twitter handles.

I'm on at Shriberland.

James.

At eggshaped.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

And Anna.

You can get me at Wikipedia.

Yeah.

okay.

Well, we'll be back again tomorrow with the next match in our World Cup of Facts, and that is James.

That is Uruguay versus Costa Rica.

Uruguay versus Costa Rica.

Okay, we'll see you again tomorrow.

Goodbye.

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