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, Andy Murray, and James Harkin,
and once again we have gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts from the last seven days,
and in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with you, Chazinski.
My fact is that, instead of being one of the founders of the USA,
Benjamin Franklin almost stayed in Britain to found a swimming school on the Thames.
This was his big idea in his early 20s.
So he lived in London, he was working for a printer, as the printer's apprentice, and he liked to swim,
and he, nobleman, used to queue up along the sides of the Thames and be like, what is this guy doing?
He's swimming.
Which bit of the Thames?
Is this sort of London?
So he used to swim from Blackfriars to Chelsea, which was three miles, I think, or roughly three miles.
So that bit of the Thames.
How long was he here for?
He came back and forth, I think.
So he was here initially for a few years,
and then he considered setting up a swimming school because he was teaching all these nobleman's kids to swim,