New Zealand farmers hate the invasive weed known as ragwort, as it is poison to horses and cattle. The old method of using sheep and goats to clear it no longer worked during an infestation in the 1930s. Luckily, modern technology provided farmers with a new miracle herbicide that eliminated ragwort. The problem was that it was new, and that meant it came with unintended consequences, like exploding pants.

One of the earliest cases of exploding pants, and the one most closely associated with the phenomenon, involved a farmer named Richard Buckley, who made the local news after some of his pants exploded in his house. After wearing them to spray the sodium chlorate, he hung them in front of the fire to dry out. Out of nowhere, his trousers exploded with a bang. According to a news report from the day, he was able to snag his now flaming pants and throw them out onto the grass where small explosions continued to erupt in the garment. Buckley was alarmed, but unharmed.

Around the same time, similar reports of spontaneously combusting pants began to appear, and not all of them were as harmless as Buckley’s. One report claimed that a farmer was riding his horse when the friction caused his pants to begin to smolder right there in the saddle. Another pair of pants were hanging out to dry when they suddenly burst into flames. Then there were the unfortunate souls who happened to be wearing their pants when the chemical reaction got started. Some survived with serious burns, while at least a handful of farmers died from the ignitions. One person, referenced in Watson’s paper, died after lighting a match in his electricity-free home, just trying to check on his baby.

Eventually the phenomena was connected with the herbicide, and steps were taken to prevent it from happening. During Pants Week at Atlas Obscura, we get to read the story of New Zealand's exploding pants.

Pumpkin is an iconic American food, as much as turkey, corn, and cranberries. Since the early European settlers first saw the squash, we've been trying to grow larger and larger pumpkins. The first world record pumpkin weighed 400 pounds in 1900. In recent years, they've surpassed a ton. But the current world record pumpkin was grown in Brussels, Belgium, last year. It weighed 2,624.6 pounds! How did Americans lose the title?

Yet for two out of the last three years, the world’s largest pumpkins have sprung up in Europe. “They’re doing very well, and I tip my hat to them,” says Ron Wallace, a country club manager in Greene, Rhode Island, who was paraded on the shoulders of jubilant pumpkin growers one glorious day in 2006 after his squash became the world’s first to break 1,500 pounds. Today, pumpkin growers are gaining on 3,000 pounds, but the Belgians, Swiss and British are in the lead.

Well, see, there was this American soldier stationed in Germany, and… an article at Smithsonian magazine looks at how the fascination with record-setting pumpkins spread to Europe.

(Image credit: Yourcsd) 

Once you've made it through high school and gotten yourself accepted to the college of your choice, maybe even with financial aid, then what? You've received plenty of advice about getting to that point, but there are several years to go as a student. One of the main pieces of advice I gave my kids about college is to make sure the professor knows you, and knows that you're interested in their subject and really want to learn it. They will help you, remember you, and rejoice in your success. College professors are happy to tell you what your high school guidance counselor did not about actually attending (and passing) college courses. Here's a sample:   

13. They only remember the names of the good students and the bad students. Everyone in between is a blur.

I know the names of two kinds of students: those who are doing very badly in my class, and those who are interested, engaged, and making an effort to do well. Please don't sit there for 16 weeks, with your hand down and mouth closed, and expect me to know who you are on the last day of class.—Rebecca Gibson, Facebook

 22. A 13-year-old could be grading the paper you pulled an all-nighter to complete.

My mom's a professor and the one thing her students NEVER know is that I've graded parts of their exams. It's been a tradition in our family to help grade exams and finals since we were around the age of 13, and none of her students know.—bonniereinsch

My father taught geology, and started me grading papers at a much younger age, at least for the multiple choice quizzes. Read more advice in the list 23 Secrets Your Professors Will Never Tell You (except they obviously will tell you) at Buzzfeed.

The 1987 movie Over the Top had Sylvester Stallone playing the sports underdog, as he did in Rocky, but this time the sport was arm wrestling. The movie was nominated for three Razzies and won two. Thirty years later, you might find that the things going on behind the scenes are more interesting than what made it onto the screen.

9. The movie had its own toy line.

For a brief period of time a line of Over the Top products were available in the toy aisles of many stores. They didn’t last all that long though, just like the movie.

8. Stallone literally pinned critic Roger Ebert against a slot machine to talk to him.

Anyone that remembers Siskel and Ebert recalls that these guys were brutal when it came to criticizing movies. They also weren’t that nice when it came to describing the actors either. So Stallone actually confronted Ebert and told him it was okay to criticize the movie, but not him.

The most surprising thing about Over the Top was that it contained more real physical action than you'd expect. Read the trivia list about Over the Top at TVOM.

How long has it been since you've been impressed by someone playing the spoons? This is Abby the Spoon Lady, accompanying Chris Rodrigues on the song "Angels in Heaven." They recorded this on Play Music on Your Porch Day in August, which sounds like a lovely thing to celebrate.

(YouTube link)

Anyone can play spoons, but it takes a lot of practice and dedication to play them this well. But Abby the Spoon Lady is more than just a spoon player. According to Wikipedia,

Abby first started street performing and busking as a means to make money traveling across the United States, primarily hopping freight trains. She taught herself to play the spoons and traveled all over the United States by hitchhiking and railroad. She states that landing in Asheville, North Carolina, was completely an accident and that she took the wrong train.[4] Today she hosts storytelling events where she discusses the lifestyle of the American hobo.[5] She spent a good amount of her time traveling recording the stories, interviews and songs of other American travelers.[6]

She is also a free speech advocate and has a radio show at  WSFM-LP in Asheville. -via reddit

Even the most innocuous internet communities can get pretty dramatic. Sure, there are arguments, but every once in a while, an intriguing story just pops up where you least expect it. The New York Times posted Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe, and in the comment section, Sydne Newberry typed this:

“This has been my go-to brownie recipe for 30 years. In the ’80s, an acquaintance in Germany to whom I brought some of the brownies, and who considered herself a great cook, asked for the recipe but was never able to get it to work. She kept asking me what she was doing wrong and I was never able to solve her problem. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and stole my husband!”

Well, that escalated quickly. The comment went viral, and two years later, The Cut looked Newberry up and got the rest of the story. -via Digg

(Image credit: Whitney)

Ah, there's nothing like a step outside in the fresh air and sunshine to improve one's attitude. Too bad this scenario is more likely to take place after dark. This is the latest from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

We learn in school that we have five senses: eyesight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. What we call the "sixth sense" is quite misnumbered, as there are plenty of other senses that are just too hard to explain to kids in school.

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Vox looks at some the other senses we have, such as the sense of knowing where our body parts, temperature perception, and a sense of balance. We only become aware of these other senses when something goes wrong with them. They don't speak of common sense or Spidey sense or a sense of humor. -via Laughing Squid

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

He was the most famous and beloved baseball player in the world. She was the movies' most glamorous sex goddess. But our story begins not with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, but with Marilyn and a much less famous ballplayer named Gus Zernial.

In 1952, rising starlet Marilyn Monroe went to the Chicago White Sox spring training camp in Pasadena, California, and posed for a few publicity photos with the upcoming Zernial, who, by a bizarre coincidence was being billed as "the new Joe DiMaggio."

Marilyn posed holding a bat in short shorts, a tight sweater and high heels with the much envied (and no doubt delighted) Zernial. No one thought much of the routine publicity shots until Zernial received a phone call from Joe DiMaggio himself. Joe had seen the publicity shots in the newspaper and, much intrigued, asked Gus how he could get in touch wth Marilyn. Gus recommended trying her press agent, which Joe did.

Captain Kirk fought the alien Gorn in the Star Trek episode "Arena" in 1967. It was a lame fight, often called the lamest fight ever. And the lamest move was Kirk's two-handed punch in the Gorn's back that barely registered. But then the move was used again and again in other episodes. It was still lame, but it became part of the Star Trek landscape.  

Maybe the move looked cool in 1967, when the episode first aired. After all, the airwaves at the time were filled with homelier fare like The Andy Griffith Show and Bonanza. The punch continued to make appearances in later Star Trek entries: It's featured in the 1980s TV series The Next Generation, and throughout the 90s in Deep Space Nine. Its resilience has led to a ton of speculation among fans: Is the punch somehow an official element of Star Trek's mythos? It doesn't look threatening at all, so there must be some other reason that explains why it's so prominent.

I can assure you it did not look cool even in 1967. It made my dad laugh. We were just glad to have a space show on TV. The double-handed punch didn't originate with Star Trek, but it survives because of Star Trek. Jordan Pearson talked to a Star Trek stunt coordinator about the history the move and why the show continued to use it so much that we think of it as an iconic part of Star Trek. -via Metafilter

Screen Junkies wades into the water to dare give us an Honest Trailer for Wonder Woman. Let's be honest, they liked the movie as much as the rest of us did. But they could still find some things about it to pick on, like how much the plot has the implausibility of a super hero comic book. Strange, that.  

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Pretty much the worst thing they can say about Wonder Woman is that it had everything a comic book super hero movie should have, and that it surprised us by having that and being good as well. This video does have some good puns, though. -via Tastefully Offensive

If you've ever worn transparent plastic shoes, you know how weird and sweaty they can be. Imagine if they were all that and liable to break into dangerous shards, and you can see that a glass slipper is not the best choice in footwear. The moral of the story is: don't look too closely into the details of your favorite fairy tale. That's the way I felt when I read the ancient Chinese version of Cinderella and realized it was, at its core, a tale of a foot fetish from the land of bound feet. This is the latest comic from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Smallpox is considered to be a leading factor in the European conquest of the Americas, as the accidental introduction of the disease wiped out entire populations of existing New World civilizations. While variolation was sometimes used to build up resistance to the disease, it had dangerous side effects. Then Edward Jenner introduced vaccination in 1797. King Charles IV had lost family members to smallpox, and was excited to use Jenner's technique to protect his subjects. To fight smallpox in the Spanish colonies, he sent a ship on a vaccination expedition under the supervision of Francisco Javier Balmis‎ in 1803. But how to make the "raw material" last long enough for a ship to sail around the world? The expedition included medical professionals and 22 orphans between the ages of eight and ten.

During the journey, the vaccine was kept viable by passing it from arm to arm in orphaned children, who were brought along expressly for that purpose and remained under the care of the orphanage's director. This expedition was the first large scale mass vaccination of its kind. The historic legacy of this pioneering event in international health should be revisited in the current era of persistent inequalities in global health.

The Balmis Expedition stopped at the Caribbean Islands, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines, Macau, and Canton over the next three years. Thousands of people were vaccinated, although some places already had the vaccine and others rejected it. It would be almost 200 more years before smallpox was eradicated, but the philanthropical expedition did much to spread the concept of the vaccine. Read about the Balmis Expedition in an article from the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

PS: In case you were wondering what happened to the orphans,

Happily they were settled in Mexico, educated at the expense of the Spanish treasury, and eventually adopted by local families.

-via Metafilter

The 2009 movie District 9 was Neill Blomkamp's first feature film, an expansion of his short Alive in Joberg. The movie was about an alien invasion, but was also a political allegory illustrating the effects of xenophobia and racism. And it gave Americans a serious look at how alien invasions might play out in other countries. If you liked the movie, you'll want to read some of the behind-the-scenes facts about it. 

7. The aliens are all played by the same actor.

The heavy use of CGI left some people wondering just how many different actors there were, but in truth there was only the one that did all the aliens.

6. The lead actor kind of stumbled into the role.

The man that played Wikus wasn’t exactly trying to be the lead but just happened to be in the right place at the right time. In fact he wasn’t even intent on acting at first.

Well, not all the trivia is about making a blockbuster on a small budget. Read the rest the trivia list about District 9 at TVOM.

Jonathan Stryker is a cosplayer who transforms himself into all kinds of characters, but last month, he staged his "Disney week" on Instagram. With the proper costumes, makeup, and wigs (and sometimes contact lenses), he turned himself into a realistic version of nine different animated Disney characters. Tap the video below to see them.

BOOM BABY! I'M BACK! Made it through the hurricane and have our power and internet back~ ALSO! Beyond honored to have been featured by such a huge outlet like Buzzfeed The previous two themed weeks got a ton of attention but I never imagined I'd be getting so much love so fast I went on a road trip this past summer after a shitty heart break. I felt the need to spend time with myself, reevaluate my life and find myself again. It was honestly the best thing I've ever done for myself. I really have a completely new outlook on life and consequently have been attracting so many positive things. Hard work and positivity will get you farther than you can imagine. This is just the beginning. Thank you for all the love guys! SOY UN PRINCIPE! Full video on my FB page. Link in bio #jstryker #disney #disneyweek #waltdisney #disneyworld #waltdisneyworld #cosplay #cosplayer #gaymer #gaygeek #gaynerd

A post shared by J Stryker (@strykerkun) on Sep 12, 2017 at 5:00pm PDT

See more of Stryker's cosplay at Instagram. Some images may be borderline NSFW. -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: J Stryker)