QI: TPF

[Bouncy Castle]

But if the chicken hadn't been invented yet, who laid the egg?

[michelanCello]

But if the chicken hadn't been invented yet, who laid the egg?

Something that wasn't quite a chicken, but some pre-chicken

[Bouncy Castle]

A pheasant with attitude?

[michelanCello]

A pheasant with attitude?

Exactly

[Sister Jennifer]

Eggs because birds evolved from dinosaurs and dinosaurs laid eggs... Ta dah!

Somewhere in all that of course is the Hollywood Chickens.

[Dotsie]

A geniune QI question - how any moons does the Earth have?

[Sjoerd3000]

2!

[Dotsie]

Oh dear me no!

For shame Stephen Fry, leading young Sjoerd astray!

[Sjoerd3000]

Are you telling me Stephen was not telling the truth?

[CrysaniaMajere]

IfI remember Fry correctly he said that they are 5. they might be asteroids so you could either say one or five but "certainly not two"

[Sjoerd3000]

You're right it's 5

But it used to be 2, or something

[CrysaniaMajere]

Do I get a point? At least one?
Because I know it won't happen again

[Quatermass]

There is only one proper moon of the Earth, but many satellites. You are, of course, thinking about Cruithne, which itself was the centre of the plot of Stephen Baxter's novel Time.

And for the fingerprints answer, the answer is the Chinese. Although fingerprints were used as identification as far back as Babylonian times, and there is a reference to the possibility that criminals in those times were fingerprinted, the Chinese are the first to have been confirmed to do so. As far back as 300 AD, fingerprints were used as evidence in a trial for theft.

Quite Interestingly, the Chinese also wrote one of the first forensic science textbooks, called variously Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified, or The Washing Away of Wrongs. Besides discussing autopsies, the author, Song Ci, also describes one of the first cases to use forensic entomology, involving a hand sickle and flies attracted to the smell of blood.

[CrysaniaMajere]

I'm afraid I've never read Time, I just remember those early episodes of QI when they talked about it.

[Dotsie]

Bless those Chinese, they invented everything the Greeks didn't.

There is only one proper moon of the Earth, but many satellites.

Kind of, there's only one moon/satellite (they're the same thing), but lots of things occasionally get caught up, orbit a few times, then fly off again. That doesn't make them moons unfortunately. That Stephen's a wrong'un!