Catch a whiff of these recent stories all about natural gas. (They’re about farts is what we’re saying.)

The Air Up Here

On a February 2018 flight from Dubai to Amsterdam on Transavia Airlines (a discount Dutcher carrier), an elderly man just couldn’t stop farting…nor would he (or could he) hold it in. He was aggravating passengers seated in his bad-smelling radius, some of whom complained to flight attendants. The pilot even ordered the man to stop, but he was unable. The farting drove two men so mad that they tried to physically attack the guy. That forced the pilot to make an emergency landing…where the guys who started the fight were thrown off the plane and banned from Transavia Airlines. (As for the farter, he kept farting…and everybody else just had to deal with it.)

Ewww Tube

The movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop concerns a mall security guard. In 2018, a real-life security guard who called himself “Paul Flart” found fame as a viral video store for releasing a compilation of all the times he farted at work over the previous six months. (The clip consists of Paul Flart farting and making funny faces as he does so.) The video got so popular that it aroused the attention of Paul Flart’s bosses…who fired him. But don’t cry for him (his real name is Doug, by the way) — he told reporters he plans to start a line of Paul Flart merchandise and wants to make a TV show where he travels around the world to exotic locales…and farts there.

Faux Farts, Real Trouble

One Sunday afternoon in July 2018, 75-year-old Collin Mitchell got a knock on the door of his home in St. Albans, England. A neighbor noticed that whenever a woman walked by Mitchell’s house, “offensive human noises” would be unleased from inside. The cause, police realized: a handheld sound effects box called a “fart machine.” At the push of a button, it makes fart sounds. Mitchell had given one to his three-year-old great-grandchild, Charlie, to play with. “What an absolute waste of police time,” Mitchell told reporters. “They could be doing something better because there’s so many problems with the shortage of money in policing.”

Let it Go

In September 2018, University of Newcastle, New South Wales nutrition professor Clare Collins published an essay in The Conversation explaining the results of years of fart research. Apparently, humans can’t hold in a fart…or at least not for very long. According to Collins, clenching and not going with the flow will cause the body to reabsorb the gas bubbles into the bloodstream, and, since it can’t escape the back door…it will come out of the mouth. “Trying to hold it in leads to a buildup of pressure and major discomfort,” Collins added.