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 Schreiber, I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin,
and Andy Murray, and this is our UK General Election special podcast.
The only UK General Election special podcast out there that makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of the UK General Election.
So once again, we've gathered around the microphone with our four favourite facts from the last seven days,
and in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, James Harkin.
Okay, my fact this week is that the first thing was a parliament.
So the first thing called a thing.
First thing called a thing was a parliament.
This is an etymology thing.
I think you mean an etymology parliament.
Okay, so let me get this right.
The oldest known parliament, which is still going, is the alphang, which is in Iceland.
It's been going since the 10th century.
And that was called alphang from the Icelandic, which they used for parliament.
And then in Old English they used this word thing to mean a parliament as well.
And then they used thing to mean a place where people got together and decided on laws and stuff like that.
And then a thing was something you brought to the parliament if you had a problem,