Ten Glasgow facts you REALLY probably didn't know

The QI “elves” – researchers on the hit TV quiz show – are bringing their awardwinning podcast No Such Thing as a Fish to Glasgow.

The Glasgow Times decided to put the collective brainpower of Dan Schreiber, James Harkin, Anna Ptaszynski and Andrew Hunter Murray to the test, to come up with 10 quite interesting, little-known Glasgow facts.

The QI Elves (Image: Matt Crockett)

They came up trumps – here is what they found out.

1 John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, went to college in Glasgow. At one point, he tried to turn graphite into a diamond using electricity and managed to cause a blackout in the city.

John Logie Baird (Image: NMPFT/Daily Herald Archive)

2 The patron Saint of Glasgow, St Mungo, is said to have died of shock after getting into a very hot bath.

3 The first ever comic strip with speech bubbles was made in Glasgow in 1825. It appeared in The Glasgow Looking Glass and was called The History of A Coat.

The Glasgow Looking Glass (Image: Newsquest)

4 Glasgow holds the world records for ‘largest can-can’, ‘largest cotton bud’ and ‘most people covered in slime, one after the other, in three minutes’. (The Glasgow Times team would like to point out also that the city, and in particular the Glasgow Times, also holds the Guinness World Record for the largest ever tea dance, which was hosted by us in George Square in 2010 as part of our health and fitness campaign, Glas-goals.)

Dancing in George Square (Image: Newsquest)

5 Glasgow was once voted the friendliest and the most dangerous city in the UK in the same year.

6 At the first robot Olympics, held in 1990 in Glasgow, the English competitor was disqualified from the climbing event because it tried to mount the Russian robot.

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7 The longest hangover in medical history belonged to a man from Glasgow. It lasted for four weeks and was reported on in medical journal The Lancet.

Glasgow's police force (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

8 In 2008, the Met Police in London were forced to retract the claim that they were the oldest police force in the world, when it was pointed out that Glasgow had already had three different forces before the London bobbies were created.

9 In 1842, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, the first person to ride a pedal bicycle, was fined for speeding while cycling to Glasgow.

10 The first ever international football match, between Scotland and England, took place in Glasgow in 1872. It ended 0-0 but Scotland might have won had a late attempt on goal not landed on the tape which was being used as a crossbar.

No Such Thing As A Fish is at the King's Theatre on September 17.