@@ThatPianoNoob I did recently learn that Picard & friends at least got to visit the Power Ranger HQ (also in Southern Cali) in the episode Decent part 1 & 2.
When zoologist George Shaw received the first remains of a Platypus ever seen in Europe, he wrote that at first he thought it was fake. And that only with "the most minute and rigid examination" he and his colleges could persuade themselves it was a real animal.
I love the implication that these are two eternal explorers who transcend human identities and by the time they reach Greenland Robert has just had enough
it was named Greenland by Eirik the Red to make it sound attractive to migrants/settlers. Also, Europe was a lot warmer back in the 11th century, due to the "middle warm period"
Apparently Viking Erik The Red called Greenland 'Greenland' in order to try and attract people there. Kind of like an estate agent calling a tiny property 'cosy'
@@AA-hg5fk Actually Greenland is mostly covered in green moss in summer. So it's no wonder they'd call it Greenland. What the first vikings saw when they first arrived was probably just green as far as the eye can see.
I remember seeing their live stage show years ago and they did that sketch about the two TV writers who can’t be bothered to do their research and it was a Star Trek parody.
@@magganon Right, you know that scene in X-men origins wolverine where it's revealed that Wolverine and Sabertooth have fought in every American war from the civil war to the Vietnam war? It's like that but with exploring.
My favorite naming story is someone was mapping the coast of Alaska. He found a cape, and figured someone must have got there before him and given it a name, so he just wrote "? name" on his map. When he got back, cartographers read that as "c. nome" and thus Nome, AK was born.
Even if someone did write "? Name" (and I'm not sure anyone would confuse "?" and "C.") near Cape Nome, I suspect the real reason is that Nome (the city) was founded by a Norwegian, and there are several places in Norway called Nome.
People talking about the odd chalk cliffs in what's supposed to be New South Wales, the fact that Columbus wasn't trying to prove that the Earth was round and all that, and I'm sitting here wondering why No1, who I assume is supposed to be first Lieutenant of Cook's ship, is wearing an enlisted man's uniform and not an officer's.
Oh, that is an enlisted man, the officer was off-screen parking the ship somewhere. Captain Cook is just having a private conversation with this guy he met in uni in Darmouth and who since then seemed to just follow him everywhere.
Actually you misheard - he's not the ship's no. 1, he is Able Seaman Numberwang, whose name would eventually be borrowed for a game based on his exploits.
I figured out which men Webb is supposed to represent In the first he is either Dieho de Salcedo or Luis de Torres, Colombus' servant and interpreter respectively. In the second he is Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh's half-brother. In the third he is Zachary Hicks, James Cook's second in command. No idea who they are supposed to be when in Greenland however.
Wales does at least have some sandy beaches. But as someone who is also from NSW I'm convinced one of the reasons our state identity seems not to be as strong as the other states (except when playing Queensland in rugby league State of Origin) is the 'South' in NSW. If it was just 'New Wales' we could be 'New Walers' (like 'New Yorkers'). But instead of the pithy 'New Wales' it's the gallumphing 'New South Wales.' If we have an identity, it comes from our city - Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong etc - not our state.
Acshually....lol, for the people in Australia commenting on the white cliffs, Captain Cook on his first recon, and one of the captains (King I think) on the first fleet, both stated they observed what looked like white cliffs very near Botany Bay...so I guess we should know better than to doubt Mitchell, the history buff.
Columbus didn't try to prove that the Earth was a globe. Everyone with education knew that it was. He wanted to prove that it was much smaller than … well, than it actually is.
No... he was sent on a suicide mission by a Queen whom he raped prior to her becoming a Queen... with the mission her "showing compassion and not being vindictive" They knew the world was round and the size of it. However Naval Technology was not yet advanced enough to have a mission crossing the ocean being a feasible idea. It was about as feasible as sending a crew of people to Mars and back--and have them prove they landed on the surface of Mars as part of the matter. The mission was, "prove our technology can do this (LOL, We know it cannot... fuck all of you, you get to die, and I get to look good)"
Not really, it was pretty much them spending a couple ten thousand dollars on something thats probably wrong but they had the money and if he was right they get fuck tons of cash.
I was today years old when I learned there's a place in Australia called "New South Wales". I don't quite know what I'm going to do with this information. Probably pepper it into my interesting trivia facts I sometimes tell people that invariably just annoy them.
The impressive thing about Mitchell and Webb is, you can see their punchlines coming from a mile off, but they're so well delivered that they still make you laugh!
"It's 90 degrees in the shade even though its November" The attention to detail is great here: 1) Cook would have used Fahrenheit as Celcius hadn't yet become standardised in Europe 2) in the southern hemisphere November would be the height of summer
It's not just Virginia that derives its name from British royalty. The Carolinas were named after Charles I and Georgia was named after George II. It remains curious that these states that so pride themselves in their independence kept such monarchic names.
@randomguy9777 Yes. Virtually everything that already had a name kept it. States, towns, counties, rivers, roads, whatever. Basic every town on the East Coast kept their "King St." Hell, the Georgetown neighborhood of DC is named after George III. Places are really hard to rename once they have a name. There's places all over that have names related to long gone features. Like Parole, Maryland. It was just a military camp where Union and Confederate prisoners of war were exchanged, or paroled. Now it is an Annapolis suburb with an odd name.
The pain and internal suffering all First Mates to their Captains is something that reverberates throughout all history. You'd think one of the First Mates would break the cycle when they become a Captain, but why do that when they can make someone else feel the pain and torment they went through instead.
"Does Lyndon, recalling when he was VP, Say "I'll do unto you like they did unto me"? Do you dream about staging a coup? Hubert what happened to you?" -- from Whatever Became of Hubbert by Tom Lehrer
@@markg.1159 When I will be a master I will be a kind and understanding lord, I will not pull this shit on my student 12 years later This new breed of sith students are just terrible, so overly critical and always forgetting their place, I was never like them, time to bring some pain on them.
+D. Lyrium I think it was Erik the Red who was exiled to the island and needed colonization to get back to wherever. But, I'm probably wrong so don't listen to me.
It's called Kalaallit Nunaat by the people who arrived a thousand years ago, kept themselves alive against all odds, and still lives there. It means the Land of Humans. Those who named it Grönland perished some 400 years after they came there when the contact with the rest of the world ended. Not a word about cultural imperialism.
+ganlesse The Inuit Thule culture didn't arrive from Alaska until around 1300. Before that Greenland was inhabited by various Paleo-Eskimo cultures. It is not known what exactly happened to most of those peoples but the genetic evidence suggests that they bred with the Inuit invaders, whether this was a result of peaceful coexistence or conquest is unknown. There are legends among many Inuit cultures about the people they drove away on their conquest who are said to have been gigantic and very strong but that's probably just poetic license. The area the Norse settled was largely uninhabited when they arrived but they had some contact with the remaining Dorset culture natives who lived to the north of them and later the Thule culture Inuits.
I do think 1300 is a little late. The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions the 12th century as the arrival to Greenland. One Danish book, the title of which I can't remember at the moment, mentions several waves of immigration not related to each other, the earliest around 800. But it seems a fact that the first settlers were in the northwest, the second a couple of hundred years later inthe area from Nuuk and down south. The last influx seem to be those who settled in the east. This is to some extend supported by the differences in language - and culture - between north, west, and east, which is known even to this day. The fact remains that no other race had what it took to survive there for centuries. Endurance, stamina and ingenuity. And that commands some respect.
the Columbia part originally comes from columbus, but british columbia itself is named after the columbia district and the river that flows there, the queen named it British Columbia herself
Fun fact: it's only spelled with an "s" in Italian, and only because Mussolini banned the letter "X" (along with J, K, W and Y). It's written with an X in every other romance language, and was written with an X in Latin as well. Even in English, the normal spelling was "expresso" until about 50 years ago, when Americans started adopting the Italian spelling (and the British inevitably end up following whatever Americans do). So if you ever say "expresso" and someone corrects you, remember: they're not being _grammar nazis,_ they're being *spelling fascists.*
@@RFC-3514 XD it's an italien coffe and has always been called "espresso" (it comes from the word "pressed" in italian) but it looks like "express" and I don't know why that coffee has been linked to that idea of "quickness", so in french and in english it's often (and wrongly) called like that.....but the Mussolini story made me laugh ^^
@@misterf2923 - "Espresso" means "squeezed out" (or "pressed out"), as does "expressed" in English. It's the same word. It's not "an Italian [or italien] coffee". It's a _method_ of preparing coffee (i.e., _forced out_ through a filter, rather than just allowed to drip through it due to gravity ), but also has the other meanings that "expressed" has in English. Basically, in any situation where you'd use "espresso" in Italian, you'd use "expressed" in English (ex., "Lui ha espresso il desiderio di bere un caffè." = "He expressed the desire to have a coffee."). And it's written with an "s" in Italian because the letter "x" was abolished from the Italian alphabet, as mentioned above. The Latin root of the word ("expressum", with the same meaning) used an "x". Naturally, the Romans didn't have coffee machines, but they were aware of (and used that word for) things that were "squeezed out". Just like Italians used (and still use) the word for other things, unrelated to coffee, namely expressing yourself (ex., verbally).
@@RFC-3514 when I say it's "an italian coffee" I'm incorrect I know, it's an italian word , it's what I meant, but what about the abolition of the "x" under Mussolini ?
@@misterf2923 - It wasn't just the "x". He also abolished "j", "k", "w" and "y" in 1929. The idea was to ban the use of foreign languages and regional dialects, and force everyone to write in "pure" Italian (at the time most people in Italy spoke local dialects, there wasn't a unified language).
Greenland was supposedly quite green when it was named and the guy who did it was an exiled murderer who thought calling it Greenland would encourage people to visit and settle there.
For Christ's sake... It's not Dover! It's not even Kent. Sussex has white cliffs too. And this particular one is quite famous (albeit for a sad reason)
No, they were both named their names from the beginning. The Scandinavians named Iceland that because it was quite icy, considering, and a Scandinavian was exiled from iceland for murder to Greenland who named it that to make it sound more appealing for potential settlers.
@@badmaniak When vikings settled in Greenland in the 10th century, the climate was relatively warm, making the name Greenland credible. The settlers became extinct in the 14th century partly because of the plague but also because of the climate getting a lot colder.
So why was New South wales named new south wales? That name is exceptional if you look at the way how they named the rest of Australia. Why wales? Why south wales?
Originally, Cook called it just New Wales. Nobody knows why he changed the name. Why Wales? Well, Australia was called New Holland at that time, maybe he wanted to piss the Dutch?
I think I got this from QI: it was because at that time south Wales was in an economic boom due to the mining industry. Cook probably thought it was a good idea to call it New South Wales to attract people and economic interest.
I re-view this regularly whenever I want a laugh - always has me ROFLMAO. Mitchell and Webb are two of the most brilliant comedians ever. Nobody does it better than the Brits.
***** I mean... There were other people from his era that argued with him about whether having actually reached India. Then, it's not like Europe hadn't contacted people from India before. I think it's kinda hard to confuse nude tribal people from a relatively advanced society with large buildings and such.
+DigGil3 They say that to his dying day, Columbus never admitted that he hadn't reached India. It's funny; the ancient Greeks had a more accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth (approximately 25,000 miles) than Columbus did. I say that we should keep on calling the native Americans "Indians" just to remind everyone that Columbus was an idiot.
+BigBen Hebdomadarius My history professor held that Columbus' stubbornness may have had a point--when you've taken a huge bunch of money from a monarch and mounted an expedition to beat out the Portugese in getting to India, it's really important to insist that these places are, sort of, the Indies, even if its evident that they're not.
When Mitchell & Webb's little skit has a better period wardrobe than like 40% of BBC historical work (apart from when it's Regency, which appears for some reason to be The Favoured Child).😂
Not that lush. The Greenland ice sheet has been there for at least 400 thousand years. The Vikings who discovered it named it "Greenland" to attract more vikings to come along from Iceland and Norway etc. to settle.
Striddernaut that is a Common myth. But with the years, our histotians and proffs think it is fare more likely they just came doing summer when its green.
plus that would really work would it. Surely upon getting there and discovering it wasn't green at all they'd just sail back home and tell everyone not to bother.
I read that they gave iceland and greenland their respective names to confuse enemies and not have them come to iceland? Never heard the settlement-thing.
Those two examples are the way I would use it aswell, and what i'd deem correct and what i usually here, although I mean I hear it used differently to that in North America (albeit alongside that usage aswell) and wondered what other definitions they had for it over there.
'We have colonised the most vast and prosperous land known to mapmakers all around, we may build the empire around it. Shall we name it after our lord God, as he provides it for us so thoughtfully, the pope as God's regent, maybe name it after yourself Christopher?' 'Well Amerigo has done a very nice picture of it so maybe I'll let him have it.'
didn't the name of greenland come from the original viking settlers who called it vinland, so as to lure others to it promising great agricultural lands?
+Bart De Bock The story, as I recall it from grammar school, is that Erik the Red named Greenland that despite the ice covering it, in order to lure settlers there; whereas he named Iceland that because he liked it so much he didn't want too many other people to move there. Vinland was the name the Vikings gave to what we now call Newfoundland and New Brunswick.
+BigBen Hebdomadarius Im from Denmark(we used to own Greenland and still support them financially) Im almost 100% sure its because there is almost no snow when its summertime in Greenland so when settlers came it was the first thing they saw; the grass
Nice to see David get to wear a few of his regular, everyday outfits for a change...
Only missing a bell to summon servants of course
@@kevinngoya5 his grandparents gave him a bell to ring if he was peckish
The exceptions to his philosophy, which is not too grand of a term, of not being too noticeable.
I live in New South Wales, I wasn't aware we had chalk cliffs that look suspiciously like Dover.
I live in New South Wales too, and I've never seen any chalk cliffs anywhere in the state either!
QueenKatz8 Comon you guys...you know those cliffs, the chalk ones...you know what im talking about...you know...those cliffs...
same. must be in wollongong or something.
Matty Arden wollongong is not that pretty
Exactly! See guys, this guy gets it!
You know how in Doctor Who, all the alien planets look like a quarry near Cardiff? Same principle applies.
or in stargate every planet looks like the british columbia countryside
Or when ever they are actually outside (not a set) in every Star Trek series, it looks so much like Southern California.
I mtb through that quarry weekly
@@Kefka. Im beginning to feel like some of these shows were actually filmed on earth which is a tremendous disappointment.
@@ThatPianoNoob I did recently learn that Picard & friends at least got to visit the Power Ranger HQ (also in Southern Cali) in the episode Decent part 1 & 2.
Webb's description made me suddenly realise how weird kangaroos must have come across to English explorers.
I know right. Look up the Europeans descriptions of the Quokkas that inhabit Rottnest Island. 'Oversized Rats'
Kangaroos remain weird to this day. Don't diminish them.
@@andrewdevine3920 they have actually gotten weirder, the laser eyes and boxing gloves are recent developments
When zoologist George Shaw received the first remains of a Platypus ever seen in Europe, he wrote that at first he thought it was fake.
And that only with "the most minute and rigid examination" he and his colleges could persuade themselves it was a real animal.
"Explorers" is a stretch.....
I love the implication that these are two eternal explorers who transcend human identities and by the time they reach Greenland Robert has just had enough
"Do I?" "Do I really?" "Welcome to Virginia." Brilliant.
alijohnny sic semper tyrannis
best line
Could be worse, could. Be West Virginia
The last one got me. “Number one’s like, “f*ck it, who cares?”.
My fav, too
David Mitchell looks so at home and so perfect in the uniform of an 18th century ship captain. "What news, number one?!"
Whereas it bugs me that Webb's in a junior rate's rig - not a first lieutenant.
@@nemo6686 NERD!
Well he did used to dress up as an 18th century nobleman
@@nemo6686haha! Me too!
The only time "Welcome to Virginia" can be said like a badass.
It has become the new Partridge "Jurassic Park" comment
"Meet Virgina. I'd like to..."
What is a badass ?
The name "Greenland" proves that trolls exists way before the internet age.
It was named that as a scam.
Exactly. Trolls. They pulled the same crap with Iceland.
Existed*. And there is a rather interesting story behind that has nothing to do with trolling.
it was named Greenland by Eirik the Red to make it sound attractive to migrants/settlers. Also, Europe was a lot warmer back in the 11th century, due to the "middle warm period"
Wikings where the trolls of Europe back in the day.
New South Wales looks an awful lot like Dover there...
but didn't you see the slight sepia tinge, surely that was Australia
Was thinking the same thing :))))))
ohmydinosare that's not Dover though
so you're saying it should be called New South Dover then?
ohmydinosare They didnt have the budget to go to NSW
Greenland killed me. Love those two.
The same here... Brilliant build up.
wahteva
Apparently Viking Erik The Red called Greenland 'Greenland' in order to try and attract people there. Kind of like an estate agent calling a tiny property 'cosy'
@@AA-hg5fk Actually Greenland is mostly covered in green moss in summer. So it's no wonder they'd call it Greenland. What the first vikings saw when they first arrived was probably just green as far as the eye can see.
Greenland is basically green (and really nice green) some part of year. And they landed there at that time. ;)
What, the vast terra incognita with fauna and flora hitherto undreamt of by science puts you in mind of nothing so much as Rhyl?
I thought he said Brill.
Brill is in England
marmentad aye my home town
I thought he said 'brill' and imagined brillo pads being made out of some rough plant, like sponges.
I guess David Mitchell calling someone "Number One" is the closest I'll get to my live action Mitchell and Webb Star Trek fanfic.
I remember seeing their live stage show years ago and they did that sketch about the two TV writers who can’t be bothered to do their research and it was a Star Trek parody.
Watch Daydream Believers, it’s basically their own mini-version of Star Trek
I'm loving the White Cliffs of Botany Bay XD
I like to think that they're two immortals with wanderlust and by the time they hit Greenland, he's done trying to talk him out of it.
Oh yeah. Makes it even more hilarious
what does this mean
@@magganon Right, you know that scene in X-men origins wolverine where it's revealed that Wolverine and Sabertooth have fought in every American war from the civil war to the Vietnam war? It's like that but with exploring.
@@darkfool2000 bloody brilliant. I don't know the movie but your telling of the mythology compliments the sketch nice, like. Ta.
Greenland is basically green (and really nice green) some part of year. And they landed there at that time. ;)
Fun fact, no-one believed the world was flat in those days. It probably has more followers today
My favorite naming story is someone was mapping the coast of Alaska. He found a cape, and figured someone must have got there before him and given it a name, so he just wrote "? name" on his map. When he got back, cartographers read that as "c. nome" and thus Nome, AK was born.
Ay girl whats ur Nome
C.
Even if someone did write "? Name" (and I'm not sure anyone would confuse "?" and "C.") near Cape Nome, I suspect the real reason is that Nome (the city) was founded by a Norwegian, and there are several places in Norway called Nome.
@@RFC-3514 You're wrong.
@@JohnyG29 You're wrong.
People talking about the odd chalk cliffs in what's supposed to be New South Wales, the fact that Columbus wasn't trying to prove that the Earth was round and all that, and I'm sitting here wondering why No1, who I assume is supposed to be first Lieutenant of Cook's ship, is wearing an enlisted man's uniform and not an officer's.
Oh, that is an enlisted man, the officer was off-screen parking the ship somewhere. Captain Cook is just having a private conversation with this guy he met in uni in Darmouth and who since then seemed to just follow him everywhere.
Actually you misheard - he's not the ship's no. 1, he is Able Seaman Numberwang, whose name would eventually be borrowed for a game based on his exploits.
I figured out which men Webb is supposed to represent
In the first he is either Dieho de Salcedo or Luis de Torres, Colombus' servant and interpreter respectively.
In the second he is Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh's half-brother.
In the third he is Zachary Hicks, James Cook's second in command.
No idea who they are supposed to be when in Greenland however.
Greenland was named by vikings and was basically to make it look better so people would settle there
Floki I guess.
I think that with "Whatever" he basicly is saying; "This is what you get when to don't let the captain give the land it's name."
Well, I'm from New South Wales and I have t admit that whenever I've seen photos or videos of the Welsh coast, it DOES look uncannily similar...
But only the south coast, right?
Wales does at least have some sandy beaches. But as someone who is also from NSW I'm convinced one of the reasons our state identity seems not to be as strong as the other states (except when playing Queensland in rugby league State of Origin) is the 'South' in NSW. If it was just 'New Wales' we could be 'New Walers' (like 'New Yorkers'). But instead of the pithy 'New Wales' it's the gallumphing 'New South Wales.' If we have an identity, it comes from our city - Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong etc - not our state.
@@Elitist20new Welsh surely?
Ahhhh yes, the majestic white cliffs of New South Wales. World-famous, they are. We've all seen them
Acshually....lol, for the people in Australia commenting on the white cliffs, Captain Cook on his first recon, and one of the captains (King I think) on the first fleet, both stated they observed what looked like white cliffs very near Botany Bay...so I guess we should know better than to doubt Mitchell, the history buff.
GREENLAND?
WHATEVER!!
BAHAHA! Gets me every time!!
Truly brilliant series of sketches.
New South Welshman and proud!
Greenland lmfao
Whatever!
Greenland is green!
...at least some parts of it...
...minor parts...
Greenland=ice
Iceland=green af
Brain=outside the head running away
This whole bit was written so David Mitchell could wear those outfits.
I keep watching this every 5 or 6 months, gets me laughing every time 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, me too!
One of their first sketches I saw, still come back after all these years. :)
Columbus didn't try to prove that the Earth was a globe. Everyone with education knew that it was. He wanted to prove that it was much smaller than … well, than it actually is.
Yeah, during Ancient Greece Erathosthenes proved it's round and even calculated a fairly accurate approximation of it's size
No... he was sent on a suicide mission by a Queen whom he raped prior to her becoming a Queen... with the mission her "showing compassion and not being vindictive"
They knew the world was round and the size of it. However Naval Technology was not yet advanced enough to have a mission crossing the ocean being a feasible idea. It was about as feasible as sending a crew of people to Mars and back--and have them prove they landed on the surface of Mars as part of the matter. The mission was, "prove our technology can do this (LOL, We know it cannot... fuck all of you, you get to die, and I get to look good)"
You guys do know the earth is flat, right?
Not really, it was pretty much them spending a couple ten thousand dollars on something thats probably wrong but they had the money and if he was right they get fuck tons of cash.
no he was trying to prove it was a globe. people thought he would sail right off the edge into hell.
Priceless! I've never given thought to those names before. lol
0:28 Actually, the whole point was to prove the earth was smaller than everyone thought it was. Turns out Columbus was wrong.
One of my favourite clips ... so funny!
"The vast terra incognita with flora and fauna hitherto undreamt of by science puts you in mind of nothing so much as Ryhl?"
"No of course not! Not north Wales, that's ridiculous! It's nothing like north Wales. No south Wales"
*Rhyl.
Mark & Jeremy were probably my best discovery during my stay in Britain. Gotta love Peep Show, never seems to be lack in laughter.
Your best 'discovery' you say?
What did you name them? ;-)
We see what you did there. 👏🏻
England not Britain for fecks sake... yes there is a difference...
@@datgrrl5698 England is in Britain. Scotland is in Britain. Wales is in Britain. How do you know where she stayed? 🧐
@@datgrrl5698 Oh you silly cow.
"Greenland?" 😂😂😂😂
The look the timing and simplicity.... soooo good.
I was today years old when I learned there's a place in Australia called "New South Wales". I don't quite know what I'm going to do with this information. Probably pepper it into my interesting trivia facts I sometimes tell people that invariably just annoy them.
"You're an ambitious man, why don't you name it?"
*I think we should call it New South Wales.*
"Good name..."
😂
mitchell and webb my favorite people in comedy
Brilliant pair
New South Wales. Even though it's north east of south Australia and the beaches are infested with sharks that aren't whales.
When you think about it it is funny how they came up with these names it is almost like they couldn't be bothered!😆
It'd be like if we landed on Mars and decided to name it New Earth...
"So the great Terra Incognita puts you in mind of nothing so much as... Rhyl?"
"No! Not NORTH Wales, it looks nothing at all like NORTH Wales!"
amazing
The impressive thing about Mitchell and Webb is, you can see their punchlines coming from a mile off, but they're so well delivered that they still make you laugh!
They did forget to make fun of new found land though.
"It's 90 degrees in the shade even though its November"
The attention to detail is great here:
1) Cook would have used Fahrenheit as Celcius hadn't yet become standardised in Europe
2) in the southern hemisphere November would be the height of summer
Agreed, even though November is technically the last month of spring.
90 degrees farenheit , is spoken as 90 degrees, why would you think he meant celcius ?
I assumed he meant fahrenheit. If it were centigrade it would be 194 F
@@stewartlancaster6155 they didn't...they're saying the fact that he gave a temperature in Fahrenheit was a good attention to detail.
It's not just Virginia that derives its name from British royalty. The Carolinas were named after Charles I and Georgia was named after George II.
It remains curious that these states that so pride themselves in their independence kept such monarchic names.
Also, New York was named for the future James II (then the Duke of York) and Louisiana named for Louis XIV of France.
They also fought a WAR to get out of the Empire, but they're almost the only country still using Imperial units. Weird.
The simple answer is we're stubborn in the states. We also don't come up with good names on our own.
@randomguy9777 Yes.
Virtually everything that already had a name kept it. States, towns, counties, rivers, roads, whatever. Basic every town on the East Coast kept their "King St." Hell, the Georgetown neighborhood of DC is named after George III.
Places are really hard to rename once they have a name. There's places all over that have names related to long gone features. Like Parole, Maryland. It was just a military camp where Union and Confederate prisoners of war were exchanged, or paroled. Now it is an Annapolis suburb with an odd name.
Notice how its a lot of the racist places who liked to own people the most.
Awesome! Thanks for that.
Now that was a good show.
If they had established a colony while Henry VIII was alive, they'd have had to call it Whoremongeria. Or Pervia.
_"Slutany"_
The pain and internal suffering all First Mates to their Captains is something that reverberates throughout all history.
You'd think one of the First Mates would break the cycle when they become a Captain, but why do that when they can make someone else feel the pain and torment they went through instead.
You were just crap as an XO.
"Does Lyndon, recalling when he was VP,
Say "I'll do unto you like they did unto me"?
Do you dream about staging a coup?
Hubert what happened to you?" -- from Whatever Became of Hubbert by Tom Lehrer
It's like the Sith.
@@markg.1159 When I will be a master I will be a kind and understanding lord, I will not pull this shit on my student
12 years later
This new breed of sith students are just terrible, so overly critical and always forgetting their place, I was never like them, time to bring some pain on them.
you are correct young man.
That first one and that last one always gets me. 😅😂
The best bit of this one is that Australia has got Dover in the background.
It's not Dover. It's Eastbourne.
Easy mistake to make, both places are filled with criminals.
OMG, more wide shots PLEASE. Show the group every once in a while.
Someone is either very silly, having a laugh. Or the wattage is very low.
Someone is either very silly, having a laugh. Or the wattage is very low.
The way he delivers Wales is amazing
Excellent. Except for the bit about Greenland. That has a very good story behind its name.
Damn that was funny
Do you think when people first saw a Joey emerging from a pouch, people thought kangaroos, koalas, etc. had two heads?
Our eyebrows disappear up into our hairlines when he calls a ship a "boat."
great sketch
Greenland was named Greenland on purpose so that people would think it was green and sunny and start colonizing it.
+D. Lyrium I think it was Erik the Red who was exiled to the island and needed colonization to get back to wherever. But, I'm probably wrong so don't listen to me.
It's called Kalaallit Nunaat by the people who arrived a thousand years ago, kept themselves alive against all odds, and still lives there. It means the Land of Humans. Those who named it Grönland perished some 400 years after they came there when the contact with the rest of the world ended. Not a word about cultural imperialism.
+ganlesse The Inuit Thule culture didn't arrive from Alaska until around 1300. Before that Greenland was inhabited by various Paleo-Eskimo cultures. It is not known what exactly happened to most of those peoples but the genetic evidence suggests that they bred with the Inuit invaders, whether this was a result of peaceful coexistence or conquest is unknown. There are legends among many Inuit cultures about the people they drove away on their conquest who are said to have been gigantic and very strong but that's probably just poetic license. The area the Norse settled was largely uninhabited when they arrived but they had some contact with the remaining Dorset culture natives who lived to the north of them and later the Thule culture Inuits.
I do think 1300 is a little late. The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions the 12th century as the arrival to Greenland. One Danish book, the title of which I can't remember at the moment, mentions several waves of immigration not related to each other, the earliest around 800. But it seems a fact that the first settlers were in the northwest, the second a couple of hundred years later inthe area from Nuuk and down south. The last influx seem to be those who settled in the east. This is to some extend supported by the differences in language - and culture - between north, west, and east, which is known even to this day. The fact remains that no other race had what it took to survive there for centuries. Endurance, stamina and ingenuity. And that commands some respect.
And the discoverers trolled the world until the end of history
i just discovered these guys and i feel cheated im 30 and missed this one
Nice!
the Columbia part originally comes from columbus, but british columbia itself is named after the columbia district and the river that flows there, the queen named it British Columbia herself
“It’s pronounced espresso!” God I love this show!
Fun fact: it's only spelled with an "s" in Italian, and only because Mussolini banned the letter "X" (along with J, K, W and Y). It's written with an X in every other romance language, and was written with an X in Latin as well. Even in English, the normal spelling was "expresso" until about 50 years ago, when Americans started adopting the Italian spelling (and the British inevitably end up following whatever Americans do).
So if you ever say "expresso" and someone corrects you, remember: they're not being _grammar nazis,_ they're being *spelling fascists.*
@@RFC-3514 XD it's an italien coffe and has always been called "espresso" (it comes from the word "pressed" in italian) but it looks like "express" and I don't know why that coffee has been linked to that idea of "quickness", so in french and in english it's often (and wrongly) called like that.....but the Mussolini story made me laugh ^^
@@misterf2923 - "Espresso" means "squeezed out" (or "pressed out"), as does "expressed" in English. It's the same word. It's not "an Italian [or italien] coffee". It's a _method_ of preparing coffee (i.e., _forced out_ through a filter, rather than just allowed to drip through it due to gravity ), but also has the other meanings that "expressed" has in English. Basically, in any situation where you'd use "espresso" in Italian, you'd use "expressed" in English (ex., "Lui ha espresso il desiderio di bere un caffè." = "He expressed the desire to have a coffee.").
And it's written with an "s" in Italian because the letter "x" was abolished from the Italian alphabet, as mentioned above. The Latin root of the word ("expressum", with the same meaning) used an "x". Naturally, the Romans didn't have coffee machines, but they were aware of (and used that word for) things that were "squeezed out". Just like Italians used (and still use) the word for other things, unrelated to coffee, namely expressing yourself (ex., verbally).
@@RFC-3514 when I say it's "an italian coffee" I'm incorrect I know, it's an italian word , it's what I meant, but what about the abolition of the "x" under Mussolini ?
@@misterf2923 - It wasn't just the "x". He also abolished "j", "k", "w" and "y" in 1929. The idea was to ban the use of foreign languages and regional dialects, and force everyone to write in "pure" Italian (at the time most people in Italy spoke local dialects, there wasn't a unified language).
thank you for explaining why I never understood geography.
Watching this in Brisbane, Queensland, under a bottlebrush tree, with a magpie warbling at me.
That wales burn
Greenland was supposedly quite green when it was named and the guy who did it was an exiled murderer who thought calling it Greenland would encourage people to visit and settle there.
grotbags and croc, thats all i can say.
ICEing on the cake!!!
Exactly! boss is always right.
new south wales looks almost cliffish, doesn't it? those are some nice cliffs dover there.
It's not like the BBC had the budget to go all the way to Australia just to film 1 sketch
For Christ's sake... It's not Dover! It's not even Kent.
Sussex has white cliffs too. And this particular one is quite famous (albeit for a sad reason)
With Australia the reason it was called New South Wales was because the land was as fertile and lush as south wales
I laugh imagining how many times this happened in history.
woooooooooooooooooshhhh,
Historically dubious, but one of their best!
As someone from New South Wales. I detest this name and enjoy this segment
So funny and so true.
it's interesting that they decided to put the white cliffs in the background when they are trying to be in Australia
No, they were both named their names from the beginning. The Scandinavians named Iceland that because it was quite icy, considering, and a Scandinavian was exiled from iceland for murder to Greenland who named it that to make it sound more appealing for potential settlers.
Greenland is basically green (and really nice green) some part of year. And they landed there at that time. ;)
@@badmaniak When vikings settled in Greenland in the 10th century, the climate was relatively warm, making the name Greenland credible. The settlers became extinct in the 14th century partly because of the plague but also because of the climate getting a lot colder.
@@anderspedersen7488 Greenland is still nicely green during one or two month during a year. ;)
@@badmaniak I’ll take your word for it, never had the pleasure myself!
So why was New South wales named new south wales?
That name is exceptional if you look at the way how they named the rest of Australia.
Why wales? Why south wales?
Originally, Cook called it just New Wales. Nobody knows why he changed the name. Why Wales? Well, Australia was called New Holland at that time, maybe he wanted to piss the Dutch?
why not?
Because it reminded them of South Wales.
Because it didn't look anything at all like Rhyl.
I think I got this from QI: it was because at that time south Wales was in an economic boom due to the mining industry. Cook probably thought it was a good idea to call it New South Wales to attract people and economic interest.
That's my boss.
This was great . Wish thete was more . 😂😂
*Who's still watching in 2018?*
Well, I just watched it. What's your point teach?
I re-view this regularly whenever I want a laugh - always has me ROFLMAO. Mitchell and Webb are two of the most brilliant comedians ever. Nobody does it better than the Brits.
In retrospective Columbus was kind of a doofus.
***** Too bad I can't edit this on a notification box.
***** I mean... There were other people from his era that argued with him about whether having actually reached India. Then, it's not like Europe hadn't contacted people from India before. I think it's kinda hard to confuse nude tribal people from a relatively advanced society with large buildings and such.
+DigGil3 They say that to his dying day, Columbus never admitted that he hadn't reached India. It's funny; the ancient Greeks had a more accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth (approximately 25,000 miles) than Columbus did. I say that we should keep on calling the native Americans "Indians" just to remind everyone that Columbus was an idiot.
+BigBen Hebdomadarius My history professor held that Columbus' stubbornness may have had a point--when you've taken a huge bunch of money from a monarch and mounted an expedition to beat out the Portugese in getting to India, it's really important to insist that these places are, sort of, the Indies, even if its evident that they're not.
+DigGil3 He was more than kind of a doofus. He was a full on idiot and monster. He doesn't deserve to be celebrated.
1492.
1584.
1770.
982.
The frustration of fed-up first mates knows not time itself!
I always wondered about the Virginia naming reason before.
When Mitchell & Webb's little skit has a better period wardrobe than like 40% of BBC historical work (apart from when it's Regency, which appears for some reason to be The Favoured Child).😂
Not that lush. The Greenland ice sheet has been there for at least 400 thousand years. The Vikings who discovered it named it "Greenland" to attract more vikings to come along from Iceland and Norway etc. to settle.
Striddernaut that is a Common myth. But with the years, our histotians and proffs think it is fare more likely they just came doing summer when its green.
plus that would really work would it. Surely upon getting there and discovering it wasn't green at all they'd just sail back home and tell everyone not to bother.
I read that they gave iceland and greenland their respective names to confuse enemies and not have them come to iceland? Never heard the settlement-thing.
the ending was the best
Those two examples are the way I would use it aswell, and what i'd deem correct and what i usually here, although I mean I hear it used differently to that in North America (albeit alongside that usage aswell) and wondered what other definitions they had for it over there.
This is so fucking funny! GREENLAND!!! ROFL
Greenland is basically green (and really nice green) some part of year. And they landed there at that time. ;)
'We have colonised the most vast and prosperous land known to mapmakers all around, we may build the empire around it. Shall we name it after our lord God, as he provides it for us so thoughtfully, the pope as God's regent, maybe name it after yourself Christopher?'
'Well Amerigo has done a very nice picture of it so maybe I'll let him have it.'
Always found that a beautiful irony...
As a Virginian, I say welcome. Welcome to Virginia.
"What news Number 1" omg xD
didn't the name of greenland come from the original viking settlers who called it vinland, so as to lure others to it promising great agricultural lands?
+Bart De Bock vinland was located in Newfoundland canada
+Bart De Bock The story, as I recall it from grammar school, is that Erik the Red named Greenland that despite the ice covering it, in order to lure settlers there; whereas he named Iceland that because he liked it so much he didn't want too many other people to move there. Vinland was the name the Vikings gave to what we now call Newfoundland and New Brunswick.
+BigBen Hebdomadarius Im from Denmark(we used to own Greenland and still support them financially) Im almost 100% sure its because there is almost no snow when its summertime in Greenland so when settlers came it was the first thing they saw; the grass
+Emilinho I also used to live in Greenland so I can assure you guys Greenland is very green when its summer
+Bart De Bock Whateva!
Rhyl. An awful place.
Rl'yeh?
Syobon Feels like it sometimes.
Poor Rhyl. It just to be considered an upmarket destination. Then it was ruined by a mass influx of Scousers and Mancs. Even the accent sounds Scouse.
.. which is in.. north wales
Surely all the Kangaroos make it better.
Greenland was such a top quality way to end that particular series of sketch 😂😂
Beach Head @2:12 with three forlorn palm seedlings sticking out or the gravel. No expense spared in the props dept.🤣