Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,
a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden.
My name is Dan Shriver, I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, Ann Miller, 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 you, Chazinski.
My fact this week is that as part of the preparation for the D-Day landings,
the Allies used condoms to collect soil and sand from the Normandy beaches.
Why?
Because they just felt like it.
So this was called Operation Postage Able,
which was the operation that preceded the D-Day landings to check that they were going to work,
and it involved sending Allied forces out under the cover of night in mini submarines,
and then getting them to swim to the beach with a bunch of condoms and scoop up lots of sand in them,
because I guess condoms are just useful receptacle.
I think they started off with some sort of Tupperware and ran out and ended up using condoms,
and it was to check that the sand wasn't going to be difficult to walk on.
It was to check that it wasn't the wrong kind of sand.
I think they suspected that it was a sort of sinking sand.
Okay, right.