ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley: Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Fact of the Day (of the Week!) - Road Signs Week!

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Hello and welcome to Fact of the Day of the Week. In this episode,

Vaughn directs us through the narrow lanes of road sign history. It's time for...

Fact of the Day, Day, Day, Day, Day.

Today's Fact of the Day and the Fact of the Day theme for the week is road signs.

What drew this into your brain space?

I found one. The fact I'm giving you today was my introduction and then I found one other one

and I was like, I reckon I can find three more. Okay. So today's Fact of the Day and the first

Fact of the Day on Road Sign Week is there are no stop signs in Paris.

What?

There are no stop signs in Paris.

Are they just to give way nations?

They're a giveaway nation. No stop signs in Paris. I've never been to...

Oh my God, you simply must.

Have you driven there?

I've never driven on the roads, no. Been driven.

Been driven?

Been driven, yeah.

We're going to crash.

We're going to crash as soon as we got there.

It's like well known. I'm reading this article. It's well known for its chaotic driving,

yet no one thinks a stop sign is going to be the answer. Any stop sign is going to be the answer

because that's just going to cause more traffic.

Yeah. And they've got that famous, what's that, is it around the Arc de Triomphe?

Yeah.

Where you just drive and you just gun it.

Yes. The free-for-all that is the Paris-Ferre-Ferre-Nurk.

That one. That's a...

That's a...

...Ferre-Ferre-Ferre-Nurk.

That's actually what Hitler said when he invaded Paris. He's like,

Get me the...

That's the one around the Arc de Triomphe. That's the crazy roundabout.

I think it is.

Or there is a crazy roundabout. I remember that.

And then there's the other chaos of the...

French.

Oh my God.

E-T-O-I-L-E.

A tour.

A tour.

E-T-O-I-L-E.

E-T-O-I-L-E.

E-T-O-I-L-E.

E-T-O-I-L-E roundabout.

I apologize to our French.

Don't do your dear apologies to them.

Do your dear apologies to them.

They owe us.

What do they owe us?

So many apologies.

Rainbow Warrior.

Atomic.

Wow.

Atomic testing in the South Pacific.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Fair call.

You're right up.

One more.

One.

One more.

Two.

And baguettes.

Two crusty on the outside.

Two crusty.

Two crusty on the outside.

And they dry out quick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stale before you know it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, no.

They owe us.

Okay.

Don't you apologize to them.

I'm anti the French now.

So yeah, the whole, you're a what?

I'm not as bad in the bridge as a strong stance.

Because now you're anti the entire EU basically.

No.

No, I'm not.

You're pro.

Very pro at all.

I'm pro.

Yeah, I love Italy.

I love Europe.

Yeah, pro.

And they've brought us the USB-C charger.

Yes.

They forced that upon Apple, didn't they?

They did.

Just recently.

Yeah, they did.

They said do it.

So not a single stop sign.

No, stop sign.

Not a stop sign.

Okay.

Now there was one lonely stop sign

at the end of a construction facility driveway

going into the

in the 16th.

Arrodoso Minda.

Again, I apologize to our French sources.

But it got removed sometime between

sometime between 2012 and 2014

by someone who was not an official

like council worker, planner or anything.

Someone who's just like took it down

and the council's like, great, it's down now.

Great.

Great.

We just give way.

I think God wouldn't do that.

I mean, let's be honest.

Most people just roll over a stop anyway, don't they?

Oh, absolutely.

Maybe not meant to come for a complete stop.

I know.

I think the only time people do that

is when it's the drivers test.

Yeah, test test.

Now while Paris has a very high rate of accidents

on their roads,

it's actually well behind in road fatalities

because of the speed limit throughout Paris.

Right.

Road fatalities are one third of London

and a quarter of Rome.

Goodness.

Oh.

So that's saying we don't need the stop sign.

We just need people to go slow

and people like that slow.

So there's going to be accidents,

but they're not going to be fatal.

So today's factor of the day

and the first fact in road sign week,

there are no stop signs in Paris.

It's a road sign week here at Fact of the Day.

We every day, it's a fact about road signs.

Yesterday Paris has no stop signs

and today I'm delving into the history of the stop sign.

Wow.

Because you think about it,

when there were horses and carts,

there was no need for stop signs.

We just went.

Just kind of moved.

Everything was kind of moving at a pace where you just turn.

Yeah.

And then the automobile came along.

Yeah.

Goodness.

Well, the first ever stop sign was created

by a Detroit police sergeant, Harry Jackson.

Hello, Harry.

He was working at a traffic guard at a busy.

The home of the automobile.

Home of the automobile, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

All of the big American car manufacturers

were based in Detroit.

One of the cross streets

had a particularly low visibility turn

entering the intersection.

And he would have to slow people down

and hold back the traffic from entering that street.

So, but he had to keep an eye on that.

He had to keep it high.

He's doing everything.

Yeah.

Stop, stop, stop.

So one day he's like,

I'm going to make a sign.

Now he's thought a square sign

is not going to stand out enough.

So all he did was he cut the corners off.

Oh, it's Hexagon.

Huh?

It's Hexagon.

It's an octagon.

Hexagon six.

So four corners of a thing

and then you cut.

God, you're so dumb.

I knew that.

Hey, octagon, octagon.

You thought it was a Hexagon.

I was like, yeah, took a look at this.

Queer piece of plywood,

cut off the corners and wrote stop.

Over the set, painted it white

and wrote stop in black.

Oh, my lord.

Ah, and then he said,

it's worked so well.

Yeah.

Like, I can kind of like

leave that bit to that bit

and people will stop

and then they'll look

and then they'll go safer.

Wow.

Yeah.

And he told our fellow officers about it

and they said, oh, my, my, my turn.

So then they were adopted all across the state.

Black lettering on a white background

and we're 61 centimetres by 61 centimetres.

That's going to take measure.

Big.

So do you know,

do you know when they became red?

Is that in your fact?

So they became red later in the piece.

Now, I'm imagining at night

that wasn't easy to read.

Yeah, I imagine.

So the octagon was generally adopted

because he made it

because he wanted it to look different

to square signs,

which there were square signs around

with just like place names

and street names

and like different directions on them.

So he made them octagon.

But then they said it works perfectly

because no other signs that shape

and even at night time

were before reflective paints.

Yeah.

You would see this shape of the sign

and know that that was going to be a stop sign.

Wow.

So yellow originally got chosen

from 1924 to 1954.

It was either in red or black

but it was always on yellow

and then they changed it in 1954.

They put a white stop on a red background.

Okay.

Okay.

And it's actually universally accepted

that it's white writing on a red background

except for in Nigeria

where it is yellow writing on a red background

but octagon.

Because they ran out of red paint, didn't they?

Yeah.

Yeah, that no, no, they ran out of white.

Well, they wouldn't have run out of white paint

because they just started with a white background

but it's yellow on red.

Right.

But where have a guess

what part of the world a stop sign circular

not octagonal?

Nepal.

No.

I like that though.

New Zealand.

No.

I don't know.

I just thought it was going to be a rogue answer.

How long is the octagons as well aren't they?

How long is the octagons as well?

I knew that.

I was just sort of thought it maybe a rogue answer.

I know that's got eight sides

and I know that it's...

Round.

Is it somewhere in Europe?

Pacific Islands.

Tonga, it's circular

with a triangle on the inside.

Why are they doing that?

Why are they doing that?

Why are they odd aren't they?

In Vanuatu, it's also circular

with a white stop on a red background

and in Japan, it's a triangle.

But everywhere else in the world...

But no, that's a good way.

Universe, yeah, I know.

Oh, Japan.

Oh, Japan.

What are you up to?

Well, maybe we'll delve.

Maybe we can delve tomorrow into

a little bit more of what's Japan got going on.

Well, it's road sign week.

I'm nothing road sign week.

It's road sign week.

We're learning things.

So today's fact of the day

is the first ever stop sign was invented

by a police sergeant in Detroit

when he wanted to stop people

flying into an intersection

too quick and causing accidents.

Play Zodiacs, Fletch, Vaughn and Haley.

Today's fact of the day

is continuing road signs week.

I'm loving it, by the way.

I had some fun last night.

I've got the rest of the facts

for the rest of the week.

Oh!

I did a deep dive into road signs.

Good.

There's some real...

Like, oh, man, I got on the...

I got on the...

I got on the...

Weeds or reeds?

In the reeds.

I got on the reeds.

Does that mean I'm, like, bogging myself down?

Is that the origins of that?

Like, I'm getting amongst the reeds.

Like, I'm really getting in there.

What sort of swampy isn't it, the reeds?

Swampy.

Reeds famously only grow in a very moist place.

Swampy, you're looking up the origins of the saying.

Yeah, okay.

Well, I really got into it

and I really learned a lot about road signs,

New Zealand road signs and stuff.

No, it's getting in the weeds.

It's in the weeds.

It's in the weeds, yeah.

Sorry, I'll put your crook there.

So I'm like, getting amongst that.

Yeah.

Getting into the deep, dark parts.

I don't know.

Again, not really sure on that.

Fletcher's just looking blankly at us right now.

It's more if you get into a situation

that you can't get out of.

So I wouldn't say that's your thing.

I always thought it was like you were getting,

you were doing a bit of a deep dive.

Getting into the weeds.

No, I'm just saying you're doing some thorough.

Elbow deep.

Okay.

It reminds me like a golf sort of a situation.

You're in the weeds.

Well, I learned a lot about it,

but this one really tickled my fancy

because it's very unusual.

Okay.

In 1999, Progressive Insurance had a television ad

during the Super Bowl.

Okay.

And I just had to make sure that other thing

that I was listening to before was paused.

Olivia Rodrigo.

He can't stop.

I was listening to Olivia Rodrigo over there.

In the ad breaks, when we play a song,

he just puts Olivia Rodrigo on and puts his headphones on.

I'm going to have that happen in funky 19-year-old girl.

I know I was questioning that, bro.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And they had an ad.

In 1999, remember that?

Where they're showing a garage door going up

and the silhouette of E.T.

Okay.

Now, E.T., the movie came out in 1982,

so 17 years after E.T. came out.

Intelligent life in auto insurance.

Be progressive.

Intelligent life in auto insurance.

Be progressive.

Call 1-800-AUTO-PRO for savings that are out of this world.

And remember.

It is called one of the greatest misses in advertising.

They paid for it during Super Bowl.

It cost them a fortune.

They paid a fortune to use E.T.

Who were at this stage was 17 years out of date.

That would be the equivalent of us using a hot movie from 2006.

White chicks.

Time was classic.

Autonomous classic.

White chicks.

You know, one for the ages.

But they went further.

Progressive then said we have printed thousands and thousands

and thousands of signs of a road sign quality with road sign graphics E.T.,

holding up his finger.

Remember how his finger lit up in the movie E.T., saying buckle up.

What's that got to do with the price of it?

The ad aired very little and that printed thousands and thousands of these signs.

Signs.

Buckle up.

Because we're a car insurance.

Makes no sense.

You're insuring the car.

Doesn't matter if the driver's wearing a seatbelt.

Huge miss in the advertising industry.

Connecticut.

The state in America was like, we'll have some.

And the people were like, well, that's great because no one else has ordered any.

So you can have 4,000.

And the state of Connecticut had 4,000 road signs with E.T.

wearing a seatbelt, holding up his finger, saying buckle up.

Now these were put up around Connecticut because Connecticut was like, well,

it's a road safety sign.

We didn't have to pay for it.

We'll just put them over the ones we've already got encouraging road safety signs.

And then they just stayed up.

Now throughout Connecticut, there are still hundreds and hundreds of these signs up.

Understop signs.

From 1999.

From 1999.

A lot of them have lost their color.

Yeah, I would bet.

A lot of them are looking very aged, but they're all around.

Some of them still have progressive on them.

Some of them have had progressive peeled off because after a while,

a pair of people were like, we don't need this advertising.

Yeah.

We still love the idea of E.T. from 1982 telling people to buckle up.

And people in Connecticut who now weren't around when it happened are like,

why has this happened?

And they're still around.

People have catalogued a whole lot of photos of them.

How embarrassing.

So today's road sign factor of the day, if you were ever driving through Connecticut

and you see what it looks like E.T. wearing a seatbelt saying buckle up,

you were not wrong, my friends.

It was a horrific miss from the Advertising Department of Progressive Insurance in 1999.

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Today we're going to Hawaii.

Aloha.

Aloha to you all.

So today's effect of the day is in Hawaii, there is a road sign that says at the

Monarchia Observatory on the road to and from, beware of invisible cows.

You got to watch out for them.

You just don't, you can't see them, can you?

You got to be aware of these invisible cows.

What are the invisible cows?

I'm driven in Hawaii.

I never saw the sign.

Did you drive to the Monarchia Volcano?

Is this on the main island on Honolulu?

Um, I think so.

I've never been to the motherland.

Haven't you?

What, where Jason Momoa is from?

No, 1% Hawaiian, thank you.

All right, okay, yeah.

And Jason.

Yeah.

She would have said I've never been to the daddy land if she was specifically

talking about the baby Jason Momoa.

The daddy land.

Well, I'll take you back in history to the 1790s where a British officer gave King Kamehameha

the third.

Oh no, King Kamehameha, one of the earlier kings, a gift of cattle.

Oh, lovely.

And King Kamehameha said, oh, those are good eating, but you've only given us a few.

So what we're going to do is we're going to increase this population size.

And I'll do that by just releasing them into this environment of which there has never had

an animal of this nature in it before.

Right.

Okay.

And I will impose the death penalty on anyone who touches those animals.

Good Lord.

So as we can well speak to on our own Pacific Island, when you release a creature into the

environment and it's not used to being there, it can absolutely go ham and the numbers can fly.

So over the next 40 years, numbers of the cows got to the point where they were destroying a lot of

Hawaii.

Okay.

So they said, well, we're going to have to wrangle them.

So they trained up, some people came from California and trained up what they called

Hawaiian cowboys, panellos.

And then they would control and domesticate the cows, put up some fences, took them a little while.

But they still had, you'll remember, he gave them a few cattle.

So started off as a five.

By 1848, there was 35,000 of them roaming.

Wow.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

And they have to continue to eradicate them and take them out.

However, due to the eradication and the ones that could escape were smaller,

they've kind of evolved the smaller cattle survived.

So they would pass on those genes to the next lot of being smaller.

So eventually, over time, these have become smaller, smaller creatures.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also,

A little minute, a little minute to one.

Yeah.

And the ones that survived were also dark, dark in color.

So the ones that remain are a smaller, darker creature, which when they congregate

and sit down on the hot asphalt roads at the end of the day to absorb the heat off the road,

you just can't see them when you're driving.

Hence, invisible cows.

Invisible cows.

Hence the local legend of invisible cows, because people would be driving and be like,

What the hell was that?

And then they get out and they've had a cow and they're like, I didn't see it.

And then, you know, people would be like, well, it was invisible.

I couldn't see it.

And now that I've injured it, it lost its power to camouflage itself.

Yeah.

So they put up road signs.

It's all red and covered in guts.

Now I see it.

Yeah.

Its insides are on the outside now.

I don't know if your Mazda 3 would even dent a cow.

It would be dented.

It would just hit a wall.

It would stove in the front.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So they put up a sign saying beware of invisible cows and all the tourists would ask,

like, what's the deal with the invisible cows?

So much so that the observatory now sells stickers that says beware of invisible cows,

which is a copy of the road sign.

Oh, wow.

So today's fact of the day is the local legend of the invisible cows led to road signs being

put up in Hawaii, warning people to drive carefully due to invisible cows.

Today's fact of the day and the final fact of the day in road sign week.

I just have to say, Vaughn, I'm just loving these themed weeks.

You're doing such a good job.

Oh, thanks.

Thanks, Hailey.

You're, uh, thanks.

You're also here.

That's important.

No, I wasn't giving that compliment in order to get one in return, actually.

That was just just for you.

But if you were, that was not a compliment.

But if you were to say something nice, that was not it.

No, I appreciate your passion for fact of the day.

I do.

Often afterwards, you'll say that's very interesting, whereas Fletch has become complacent

with my love and, um, unappreciative of it.

Well, I just need high standards.

And a lot of the time they're not met.

Jesus.

I do not toe talk all that sentiment.

Thank you.

I think you do a great job.

Wow.

You come up with five freaking facts about road signs.

Work harder to impress me daily.

Carry on.

Here we go.

So today's fact of the day takes us to India to the area of Darjeeling,

which you may know from the 2007 Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited.

Not one of its most popular, but I love it.

Express or limited?

Limited.

Express.

Limited.

Limited.

They are on a train, which is why I had to Google it as well,

because I thought it was the express, but it wasn't.

It was some The Darjeeling Limited, which was in India on a train.

Now that's correct.

It is the same area of India, but it is the road beside that very famous railway that we want to

talk about because it has some of the most interesting road signs in the world.

It's a very unpaved, often unpaved mountainous and remote road, but the road signs on it have

become a tourist attraction because they're all a little bit quirky.

And by the way, they didn't start out meaning to be like, hey, we're quirky.

They wanted them to be ones that the locals would read and they're a little bit longer to

keep them alert because that is driving.

For example, some of the road signs says after whiskey, driving is risky.

Not wrong.

Yeah.

And they often got a lot of spelling mistakes in them as well.

Be cautious.

Life is precious.

Precious spelt very incorrectly.

The I, the O, and the U in the last part of precious all muddled up.

Some of the other ones, and traditionally these were road signs painted on concrete or rock.

So that kind of tells you how long they've been around and how old they are.

And often marked with the elevation at the site of the sign and how far down the road you are.

A cat has nine lives.

You only have one.

Use it wisely.

That's beautiful.

Actually put that on a t-shirt.

Please tell me they've got to make it click one.

Do they ever make it click?

They do have multiple ones about using your seatbelt.

Donate blood in the blood bank, not on this road.

Ruthless.

Oh, yeah.

Don't watch her.

Don't watch her behind.

Keep safety in mind.

Okay.

So don't perv.

Don't go looking around having to perv at a tush.

Yeah.

Keep watching the car in front of you so you don't make any mistakes.

Yeah.

Actually that's very heteronormative that the man's driving.

Yeah.

He's looking at a woman.

Woman perv too.

We do.

Don't they?

All the time.

The rule of the road is a paradox.

Quite keep to the left and you are always right.

Well, that's good.

What about make it?

Don't be a dick.

Make it click.

That'd be a good make click.

Yeah, that would be a good one, but they don't have any.

Are these signs all in English?

Yes.

Yeah, because otherwise the rhymes wouldn't work.

Yeah.

Are they for tourists?

Well, no, not originally.

A lot of the people, because you've got to remember India was a British colony.

Yes.

For many, many, many years.

So while people spoke a whole bunch of different languages,

primarily the written language they were taught in schools would have been English.

I will say I hate the colonisation of India from the British,

but I loved the aesthetic.

Oh, yeah, like Bangalore Polo Club.

You know, all this sort of like everyone's in like white cottons,

and there's always these bars.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they've got a bit of like.

Beautiful, like, beautiful purgolis, pergolas outside, often with a mosquito net.

That's terrible what they did to the country.

That was where Junentonic was invented, right?

Because of the

what is that thing in June?

Wait, so now we're pro colonisation?

Not Junipa.

No, it's in the tonic.

What's in the tonic?

Juniper berries.

Quinine something.

Quinine was a mosquito repellent.

So you drink Junitonic to keep the mosquitoes away.

Wow.

That's actually why you never get bitten, Haley.

We're not trying to.

That's great.

Yeah, that's great.

Some of the more controversial signs on the road.

Enjoy your ride.

Don't commit suicide, which obviously has been.

Taken down life for short.

Don't make it shorter and lots of them.

So if you're ever in the area in the high country of Dajaling,

keep an eye out for the road signs because they are quirky and interesting.

Fact of the day.

Day, day, day, day.

I just realised I did the whole show with my headphones on backwards.

So.

Well, that means the show's backwards, isn't it?

We're going to have to play this in reverse.

Well, should we speak in reverse and hopefully they'll work out the other way.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.