QI

Sandi Toksvig puts the UK-US special relationship under the microscope with Kemah Bob, Alex Edelman, David Mitchell, and Alan Davies.

Topics

- Americans are so cheerful because of historic immigration levels. There is a direct correlation between immigration levels and happiness. In both the USA and Canada, the citizens come from a huge number of source countries - Canada has 63 and the USA has 83. If you have to cross over language boundaries, you have a greater reliance on facial expressions and gestures, which builds trust and cooperation.

- Tangent: Greater reliance on expressions and gestures can cause problems. In the early 2000s, Walmart decided to open stores in Germany. They trained all the staff to smile very broadly, as their American staff do, but they had to stop because the Germans thought it was either weird or they were being flirted with.

- Tangent: While the Americans break the ice by smiling, the British do it by talking about the weather. A 2015 survey revealed that 84% of British respondents had talked about the weather in the past six hours, and 38% had discussed it in the past hour. A sixth of all Beatles songs referenced the weather. Because Britain is an island and is in a place where five air masses meet, our weather is so unpredictable. Alan brings up the point that his wife's family live 300 miles away from him in Northumberland, so if she telephones them the weather will probably be different from where she is. David goes on to say that this ice-breaker is in danger because of climate change and the weather is no longer a harmless subject.

- XL Tangent: Sandi asks the panel if they are having a nice day. It all depends where you come from. An annual survey by the Pew Research Center interviewed about 50,000 people in 44 countries, asking them if they are having a nice day. The latest survey in 2017 revealed that globally 30% of people say that are having a good day, 62% said the day was typical and 6% that they were having a bad day. The UK is about average when it comes to similar responses, but in the USA about 44% of people will say they are having a good day.

- The panel are asked to name something as American as apple pie. The thing is apple pie is not American. The earliest known recipe is from a 1380s English cookbook called The Forme of Cury, but the recipe also includes pears, prunes, raisins, and adding either salmon or haddock. Pastry in medieval times was a kind of version of Tupperware and was known as a coffin. It was to keep food fresh and was not eaten itself. Apples themselves come from Kazakhstan, and the largest city in the country, Almaty, has a name meaning "father of apples".

- Tangent: The pie which did originate from the USA is pumpkin pie, which is usually eaten on Thanksgiving, and pumpkins originated in the southern USA and Mexico.

- Tangent: There are several American foods that don't sound American. These include the Cuban sandwich, which is made out of ham, cheese, pickles and mustard. English muffins are American, but first served by the English who brought them to America.

- Tangent: In 1972, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation held a contest to come up with a national slogan for Canada, which was going to be the equivalent of the American: "As American as apple pie." The winning entry was: "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." When Alex was a teenager, someone told him that the Canadians were going to change the title their national anthem because "O Canada" sounds so boring.

- XL: The biggest pest that crossed the Atlantic to terrorise America is pigs. Feral swine became a huge problem in North America. They were brought in by the Europeans, including Columbus. In the early 19th century there was one feral pig for every five people walking the streets of Manhattan. They ate anything they came across, attacked children, defecated on people and had sex in front of people. Today, feral pigs cause $2.5billion of damage annually, there are feral pig problems in 38 states, and there are over six million alive. These pigs have the most dominant qualities of any wild pig, being incredibly resilient to disease, very aggressive, and they are probably the most destructive invasive species in the USA.

- XL Tangent: HeliBacon is a Texan company where you can hire a helicopter with a mounted machinegun, which you can use to shoot feral pigs, and then you eat the bacon from the pig you have killed.

- XL Tangent: There was one wild pig in Georgia called Hogzilla, which was about 8ft long, has 28-inch tusks, and weighed 800lb. It was a hybrid of a wild hog and a domestic pig.

- XL Tangent: In 1988, there was a $16million fighter jet which was wrecked by pigs. The pilot was forced to eject out onto the runway as there were two pigs in the way.

- XL Tangent: Another unwelcome European pest to come to America was earthworms. All of the endemic American earthworms were wiped out 10,000 years ago by glaciation, but then they were inadvertently introduced by settlers who brought plants to America. As they had very few predators, these Eurasian earthworms changed the entire ecosystem. They reduced the biodiversity of forest plants, and have had a negative effect on birdlife, animal life and reptiles. Kemah says you cannot avoid them now, and asks why they are always crossing the street, to which everyone else replies: "To get to the other side."

- While horseracing is the sport of kings, the sport of presidents is cricket. In the early days of the USA, cricket was by far the most popular sport in the country, and "president" is a cricketing term. When the country was decided what to call its leader, John Adams wanted to the leader to be styled: "his exalted high mightiness", but "president" was chosen instead, which was the term used to call leaders of cricket clubs. (Forfeit: Affairs; Golf)

- Tangent: The first major defeat of the British on American soil was at Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh), during the French and Indian War in 1755. General Braddock, who lead the British forces, was so confident that he was going to beat the French that he brought with him a cricket roller so that he could roll out the ground after the battle and play cricket afterwards. Instead he was shot dead. George Washington, himself a big cricket fan, was at the battle on the side of the British, and was there when Braddock lay dying. Braddock's last words were: "Who would have thought...?" During the Revolutionary War, Washington allowed his troops to play cricket, and he played a rough-and-ready version of the game called Wickets at Valley Forge during the summer of 1778. Other American fans of cricket included Benjamin Franklin, who introduced the rules of the game to North America; and Abraham Lincoln went to see cricket matches. The very first international sports match of any kind was a cricket match between the USA and Canada in 1844, which Canada won.

- Tangent: Baseball became more popular than cricket in America because it could be played more easily in the cities, where there was limited space, and you needed less equipment. However, baseball is also a British sport, being mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

- XL: The cricket war of 1848 was won by the Mormons. The very first Latter-day Saints arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, the previous year. During that time their first crops were invaded by black crickets (the insect). They thus prayed for help, and as a result thousands of seagulls turned up and ate the crickets. In 1955, the Californian seagull was chosen as the state bird of Utah, despite being landlocked, and they have a statue to commemorate the event.

- XL Tangent: David says you have to be careful not to distract the seagulls with chips. Sandi was once in Brighton with her grandchildren, went to buy some fish and chips, and the seller warned her to mind the seagulls. As Sandi turned, a huge seagull descended and took the whole meal away.

- XL Tangent: Other Utah claims to fame are the salt flats on Bonneville, where many land-speed records are attempted and held. It is home to the world's longest skid mark. Norman Craig Breedlove drove the jet-powered Spirit of America, but he lost control of it, and left skid miles that were six miles long. In 1964, he did beat the world land speed record at 500mph.

- XL Tangent: Utah was the first US state to elect a female state Senator. Martha Hughes Cannon was a Democrat who defeat her own Republican husband Angus in the election. She was a doctor, was in a polygamous marriage (the fourth of Angus's six wives), and was a suffragist. Women had been voting in Utah since 1870, but in 1887 they took the vote away. She campaigned for it to return and in 1896 the vote was brought back. She thus stood for election, beating her own husband. She went on to write all the state sanitation laws, helped to found the state's first Board of Health, and when she studied to be a doctor she was the only woman out of 75 students at the University of Pennsylvania.

- Back in the 18th century, just before the War of Independence, the name given to the event where a load of tea was unceremoniously dumped into Boston Harbour was the "destruction of the tea". The event now known as the Boston Tea Party occurred because the British were able to impose taxes on the Americans, but it was more to do with a tax cut rather than a tax hike. A tax cut was given to the British East India Company, who were allowed to sell their tea directly to Americans, without the need of selling it through American tea merchants, who had to pay much higher taxes. (Forfeit: The Boston Tea Party)

- Tangent: Randall Munroe, creator of the comic xkcd, calculated that in order to make a good cup of tea, you need two grams of tea per 100ml of water. Boston Harbour is half a cubic kilometre. Thus the 44 tonnes of tea which was dumped at the Boston Tea Party into that water would result in tea that would be weak, bordering on homeopathic. If you dumped all the tea in the world into Boston Harbour, it would still be weak, and anyway it would also be cold.

- Tangent: When George VI visited Washington in 1939, the Americans were concerned that he should be able to have a decent cup of tea. Thus a lab called the Betz Laboratory synthesised London water, so his tea would be exactly the same as that at home for the King. The White House ordered five gallons, but about halfway through the visit they needed to order another 20 gallons.

- Tangent: In the UK, 95% of households have electric kettles to make their tea, while there are hardly any in the USA, because the UK has a much higher standard voltage in the electricity system. When Sandi visited a US high school friend, the friend made instant tea with a sachet in a glass, which she put in a microwave. Sandi says it was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen in her life.

- Tangent: In Teakettle Junction, California, people leave tea kettles with messages on them on a sign into town.

- The panel are asked to name an American state on the same latitude as London. The only one is Alaska. All of mainland USA is further south, and all of Alaska apart from one island is further north.

- The closest American state to Africa is Maine, due to the way the world is titled. (Forfeit: Florida)

- The thing that is exactly between the middle of American and the UK is Frances Bay, Newfoundland. The centre of the USA is Lebanon, Kansas (population: 178), with the nearest point in the UK being Derry / Londonderry. Lebanon, Kansas is named after Lebanon, Kentucky. Lebanon, Kentucky is named after cedar trees, which is what the country of Lebanon is also named after. (Forfeit: Atlantic Ocean)

- XL Tangent: Kemah went to college in Waco, Texas, and the city has a Londonderry Road in it. There is just random British stuff all around it. Having lived in Britain for the past six years, she has admitted say things like: "Oh! Old York."

General Ignorance

- The panel are shown some Pringles and are asked what the Americans call them. They do not call them potato chips because Pringles do not contain enough potato in them to qualify as chips, and thus have to be called crisps. Because of US law, they are required to be called crisps because they contain less than 50% potato. They are 40% potato, and the rest is oil and water in a top-secret mixture. (Forfeit: Chips)

- Tangent: David gets angry at the fact there is more than one flavour of Pringles, and that there should just be the original flavour. Alex says Oreos is an innovator in terms of new flavours, but David gets angry with that because now there are broken Oreos in Dairy Milk, ever since the merger/takeover of Cadbury's by Kraft. He exclaims that we will end up with cheese slices in Whole Nut.

- Tangent: The Pringles can was invented by an American organic chemist called Fred Baur, who created it for Procter & Gamble in 1966. He was so proud of it that when he died, his ashes were interred in a Pringles can. After his death, his son and siblings debated what flavour Pringles can they should use. In the end they said: "We need to use the original."

- Measured from top-to-bottom, the tallest species of tree is a fig tree in Limpopo, South Africa, due to its long roots. The tree is 10m above the ground and 120m underground. The roots are trying to reach water in the Echo Caves, which are some of the oldest caves in the world. The tallest tree from the ground to the top is a redwood in California called the Hyperion. It is 115.65m tall, which was measured by Prof. Steve Sillet, who climbed to the top and dropped a really long tape measure down the side. (Forfeit: Redwood)

- XL Tangent: Redwood or sequoia trees are named after Sequoyah, the man who created the written Cherokee language from scratch. He was fighting for the USA against Britain, and he saw that the white soldiers were able to write letters home and receive letters. The Cherokee could not do that because they had no written language. Over 12 years he used Roman, Greek and Cyrillic letters, but he didn't use conventional sounds in his alphabet. Thus the symbol "A" represents the sound "GO", while the symbol "4" represents the sound "SE". He showed his written language to the chiefs in 1821 and it was accepted. Seven years after the Cherokee adopted it, in 1828, the very first Cherokee-language newspaper was printed, the Cherokee Phoenix.

Scores

- Team UK: -22 points (Alan's 44th victory)
- Team USA: -38 points