Reuters: "A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday."

  • http://twitter.com/REAL_UK_FAN big blue nation

    very DeLillo

  • peregrinus

    Ai fahrt in yur jeneral directsion.

    • Wreckrob8

      Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

  • nixiebunny

    That’s what the French are saying, at least. We know the truth.

  • http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

    At least it’s not the Salton Sea this time.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Don’t remind me. Last year was the worst. We were blanketed by the stench almost daily for about a month.

  • http://www.epinardscaramel.com TokenFrenchDude

    Hey !

    • peregrinus

      zoiks!

  • Chris Hogan

    “What a dreadful smell!” said the uninitiated stranger. “It is the smell of the Continent, sir!” replied the man of experience. And so it was. (Frances Trollope)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DKQ6LPPTLNTI4S2C4WZQD5XZSE Brian

    If it smelled of rotten eggs it probably contained some hydrogen sulfide, which is not a harmless gas…

    • Luther Blissett

      Methanethiol, aka methyl mercaptane. Also a main ingredient of bad breath.

      Alternative headline: “+100k Brits calling the police because of bad french breath!”

  • kroeghe

    Yay, let’s make some xenophobic jokes about the French, it’s not like they’re real people anyway.

    • Luther Blissett

       Tell this YarYar Binks and Anakin, do ya? ;)

    • TheMudshark

      They´re awfully delicate people too. I can just picture them all drenched in tears over four or five mildly offensive jokes on boingboing.

    • Frank Lee Scarlett

      Ah, come on. The French have been joyously thumbing their noses at John Bull’s sneering for centuries. And farting in their general direction.

      I thought the Paris PD did rather a nice job of trolling them in the following statement:

      “[…] the gas posed no health risks but warned that it smelled like a mixture of sweat, garlic and rotten eggs.”

      Substitute drains for rotten eggs and you’re reading the stereotypical reaction of a John Bull Briton on his or her first (and probably, last) visit to Paris. It’s up there with “Coachman, the postilion has been struck by lightning” among snort-inducing literary clichés.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8834925 Chauncey Scott

    How could a gas that smells like B/O and eggs be harmless?