Liars apparently are n’t the only ace who should be concerned with having their pants overtake ardour . In 1930s New Zealand , a serial of result complot to jeopardise farmers ’ trousers with spontaneous and lethal combustion .
harmonize toAtlas Obscura , the job stanch from butterweed , a nuisance weed of European origin that began pop up up in New Zealand in the late 1800s . Ragwort , orJacobaea vulgaris , looks not unlike a dandelion but is far more harmful : Horses and cows oppose to it as a poison . With the rise of dairy farming in the country and a co-occurrent ascending in grazing moo-cow who knew better than to run through it , ragwort started proliferating .
To respond to the invasive species , farmers took up the Department of Agriculture ’s hypnotism to use atomic number 11 chlorate as an weedkiller . It make , but what the farmers failed to empathise was that sodium chlorate was extremely inflammable . With a fine mist of the material drying on pants and overall , they were prone to bursting into flames when exposed to heat — like a open fireplace where pants might be cling to dry . Among the victim was Richard Buckley , who described just such an incident and witnessed , as one research journalput it , “ a string of detonations in his knickers . ”
Friction could apparently do the legerdemain , too , with sodbuster on hogback finding that all that shove could run to a flaming result . fire up a match to smoke or just to see in the darkness could also be calamitous . A smattering of deaths were reported , as these misfortunate laborers were essentially twist themselves into unwitting Molotov cocktail .
Word eventually spread of sodium chlorate ’s hazard and it fall out of favour . Ragwort continues to rile the universe of New Zealand .
