Flaming Britches

James Watson, head of Massey University’s school of history, philosophy and politics in Palmerston North and author of agricultural study, ‘The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers’, won an Ig Nobel prize in 2005 for discovering that sodium chlorate becomes violently explosive when combined with organic fibres, such as cotton or wool. In the 1930s, the white crystalline solid was used by many New Zealand farmers as a weedkiller to destroy ragwort. Watson writes: “Numerous farmers and farmworkers discovered for the first time that smoking could be hazardous to their health, as items of their clothing lit up when they did. In a New Zealand version of Blazing Saddles, one farmer found that the seat of his pants was starting to smoulder as he was riding his horse.”