Farts are natural, but when cut in public are obviously unpleasant to those nearby. Your mileage might vary about just how unpleasant from “meh” to “deadly”. However, no matter how deadly whatever we let rip might be, it won’t be as deadly as history’s deadliest fart. That one led to the deaths of thousands of people.
The Science of Flatulence
Rocket and jet engines transform fuel into propulsive energy that exits a nozzle with and a loud roar. Likewise, we convert undigested food in our lower colon into intestinal gas that exits our natural nozzle. Although not always with a roar. The audible bit happens we blow our intestinal gasses through a narrow opening, the butthole, that surrounded by fatty flaps and folds. If the gas exits at velocity instead of just seep, they vibrate and create a fleshy clamor – the fart.
The overwhelming majority of our farts’ components – more than 99% – don’t stink. The average fart is 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 9% carbon dioxide, 7% methane, and 4% oxygen – none of them have an odor. A minute fraction, though – under 1% – consists of things hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and skatole (from the Greek skatos, meaning feces) that reek big time. Reek so much that we can smell fart particles even when they comprise only 1 part per 100 million parts of air.
A Blasphemous Fart
History’s deadliest fart was let rip in Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem in 44 AD. Thousands of Jewish worshippers were gathered for the Passover feast and festivities. That was when a Roman legionary stationed above the temple turned around, bared his behind, mooned the crowd, and farted. He probably thought it was funny, but the religious crowd below did not appreciate the humor. Enraged at the blasphemous insult, they rioted, and things escalated when more Roman legionaries were sent in to reassert control. The Romans were not known for their light touch, and by the time order was restored, more than ten thousand people had been killed.
First century AD Jewish historian Josephus described how the disturbance began: “The Jews’ ruin came on, for when the multitudes were come together to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and a Roman cohort stood over the cloisters of the temple (for they always were armed and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might take), one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech [ass] to the Jews, and spoke such words as you might expect at such a posture”. As seen below, the crowd did not react well to getting mooned by an occupation soldier at their holy temple.
History’s Deadliest Flatulence
Josephus went on to describe the worshippers response to the blasphemous disrespect of their temple: “At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus [the provincial Roman procurator], that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the most tumultuous, fell to fighting, and caught up stones, and threw them at the soldiers”. Widespread violence ensued, leading to copious death and destruction. Things escalated quickly, as the Romans, often brutal at the best of time, and extra brutal when it came to tamping down disturbances in their provinces, came down hard on the Jews.
When the Roman procurator heard of the rioting in Jerusalem: “Cumanus was afraid lest all the people should make an assault upon him, and sent to call for more men, who, when they came in great numbers into the cloisters, the Jews were in a very great consternation. Being beaten out of the temple, they ran into the city; and the violence with which they crowded to get out was so great, that they trod upon each other, and squeezed one another, till ten thousand of them were killed, insomuch that this feast became the cause for mourning to the whole nation, and every family lamented”. All because of a fart.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Daily Beast – How a Fart Killed 10,000 People
Dawson, Jim – Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart (1998)
Josephus – The Wars of the Jews, Book II
