2026 World Baseball Classic

Huh? WTF? Or to just quote @Buck Turgidson , “WUT?”

 

An old one but a good one:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/19/weather

What's that smell? A whiff of Europe
The Met Office described it as an "atmospheric aroma". But those who caught a whiff of the foul smell hanging around southern England yesterday used rather less dainty language.

Within hours of the smell first hitting Britain's nostrils, people in London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, East Anglia and Devon were grumbling about the stink, and the big pong had become a national talking point, with websites espousing increasingly anti-European theories.

Conservative communities complained about a political stench emanating from the European commission; the Daily Mail complained of "Le Stink" (which later became Der Stink, when blame was shifted from France to Germany); and others named "garlic-eating surrender monkeys". But the Met Office stepped in to rule that it was basic pollution - the "odour of ordinary everyday life in northern Europe". Belgian chocolate factories, Dutch pig farms, German diesel engines and 1,000 other smells had become trapped under a motionless cloud hanging over continental farms and factories for several days.

"On Thursday night the wind picked up and it blew over to us. It's hard to say exactly what it is because we don't know. The air hadn't moved much so it's picked up all kinds of things. All we can do is wait for it to blow away. The intensity is likely to decrease but we don't expect a change in the air flow for a couple of days," said a Met Office spokeswoman.

Even the Queen wasn't safe barracked away in Windsor castle. A spokesman at Windsor's tourist office said: "When I left home this morning the smell was virtually unbearable. I think the Queen is in. I hope she has her windows closed." In nearby Reading things were no better. Cara Sheldrake, a barmaid at the Hobgoblin pub in the town centre, said she had been hit by the smell on her way to work. "I thought it was seaweed," she said. Julia Clarke, 16, from London, said: "It smelt like fertiliser - it really stank. I smelt it in Hyde Park at about 7.30 on my way to school."

The National Farmers' Union thought the odour could have been caused by Dutch farmers slurry spreading en masse at the end of their winter no-spread period. The NFU's communications director, Anthony Gibson, said: "This is what happens when farmers are forced to empty their slurry store all in one go at the same time instead of being able to apply it little and often during the winter. We are grateful to the Dutch farmers for laying on such a pungent demonstration of what could happen every spring here in the UK if the government presses ahead with its ill-conceived proposal to implement a blanket ban on winter slurry spreading."

The charity Water Aid yesterday claimed that London had not smelt as bad since the Great Stink of 1858, caused by raw sewage. But the Met Office stressed that yesterday's pong posed no danger to health.