Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,
a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covern Garden.
My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinski, Andrew Hunter Murray and James Harkin.
And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days,
and in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, that is, Andy.
My fact is that the first man to use the word avocado in English was a pirate.
Arvacardo.
Arvacardo.
That just sounds like you say that normally, Dan.
Wow, okay.
This is a guy called William Dampier, and he was an explorer.
He lived from 1651 to 1715, and he was lots of things actually.
He was a hydrographer, he was a scientist, a writer, a naturalist, royal navy captain,
and we have a picture of him, it's in the National Gallery, it's the only 100% genuine portrait of a British pirate.
Does he have a pirate on his shoulder?
Yeah, I patch, he's biting a gold doubloon and sort of making someone walk the plank.
Yeah, no, I don't think he is, I think he looks like a normal man.
But he is, he was a pirate, and among lots of other things.
And he wrote this account of the avocado pear tree, and that's in the OED,