First flushing toilet
Contrary to popular belief, the first flushing
toilet was not invented by Thomas Crapper
(UK, 1836–1910). The earliest known flush
mechanism was designed c. 1590, about 245
years before Crapper’s birth, by England’s Sir
John Harington – a godson of Queen Elizabeth I.
Harington’s invention, which he named Ajax,
after “jakes”, a slang word for toilet, featured a
cistern that, at the turn of a handle, sent clean
water into the “stool pot”, which in turn opened
a valve and flushed the contents down into a
cesspool. The first Ajax was built in Harington’s
home in Kelston, Somerset, and in 1592 he
had one installed for Her Majesty’s use in her
bedchamber at Richmond Palace.
The first patent for a flushing toilet
was obtained in 1775 by Alexander Cumming
(UK). The Scottish watchmaker and mechanic
improved upon Harington’s Ajax design with
the invention of an S-shaped double bend
in the waste pipe, which trapped water
and excluded noxious sewer gases. This
J-, U- or S-bend design is still in use today.First toilet to appear on stage
The first act of André Antoine’s
production of Edmond de Goncourt’s
(both FRA) La Fille Élisa in Paris, France,
on 24 Dec 1890 was set in a hotel room,
complete with toilet and washbasin.
Although stage productions can now show
a toilet on stage with impunity, the UK’s Lord
Chamberlain banned the sound of a lavatory
being flushed off-stage in Graham Greene’s
The Living Room as recently as 1953.
In the USA, toilets were not considered
suitable for depiction on movie screens either.
The first Hollywood movie to feature a
toilet was not to appear until 1960, when
a flushing loo was seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s
(UK) slasher movie Psycho.Smallest sculpture of a toilet
“Chisai Benjo” (“Small Toilet”) was created
in 2005 by Takahashi Kaito (JPN) of SII
Nanotechnology, Inc., by etching silicon with
an ion beam. The tiny toilet could only be seen
when magnified 15,000 times. A scanning
electron micrograph of the creation won the
Most Bizarre Award at the 49th International
Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam
Technology and Nanofabrication.MOST EXPENSIVE
TOILET SYSTEM
When the space
shuttle Endeavour
launched into orbit
on 13 Jan 1993, it
carried a new unisex
toilet facility. Housed
on the shuttle’s mid-
deck, the $23.4-m
(£15.1-m) facility was
described by NASA
as a “complete
sewage collection
and treatment
plant... contained
in a space one
half the size of a
telephone booth”.Fastest towed toilet
Brewton McCluskey (USA) achieved a speed
of 83.7 km/h (52.01 mph) on a towed toilet at
the South Georgia Motorsports Park in Cecil,
Georgia, USA, on 4 Apr 2011. McCluskey was
towed by a car driven by Brian Griffin (USA).Fastest marathon dressed as a toilet
Marcus Mumford (UK) ran the 2014 Virgin Money
London Marathon in a time of 2 hr 57 min 28 sec
while dressed as a toilet.Fastest time to topple 10 portable toilets
It took Philipp Reiche (DEU) just 11.30 sec to
topple 10 portable toilets – each measuring a
minimum of 2 m (6 ft 6 in) tall and 1 m (3 ft 3 in)
wide – at Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, on 22 Jun- The attempt was filmed for the TV show
Wir holen den Rekord nach Deutschland.
Most wooden toilet seats broken
with the head in a minute
Kevin Shelley (USA) smashed 46 wooden toilet
seats in half in 60 sec with his head on the
set of Guinness World Records - Die größten
Weltrekorde in Cologne, Germany, on 1 Sep 2007.Fastest time to pass through
a toilet seat three times
At the GWR Live! Roadshow at Forum Bornova in
Izmir, Turkey, on 25 May 2010, İlker Çevik (TUR)
wriggled his body through a toilet seat three
times in just 28.14 sec.
The following year, on 8 Apr 2011, the flexible
Turk appeared on Lo Show dei Record in Milan,
Italy, where he broke the record for the most
times to pass through a toilet seat in one
minute, achieving nine complete passes.Largest toilet roll
On 26 Aug 2011 – known to papyrophiles (paper
lovers) as National Toilet Paper Day – Charmin/
Procter & Gamble (USA) unveiled a roll of toilet
paper that measured 2.97 m (9 ft 8.9 in) in
diameter – wider than a school bus. The roll
was displayed at the company’s headquarters
in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and had enough paper
to make 95,000 regular rolls. It was estimated
by Procter & Gamble plant manager Darrick
Johnson that the tissue could cover more than
1 million sq ft (92,900 m^2 ), sufficient to paper
over 16 FIFA-sanctioned soccer pitches.Tallest toilet roll pyramid
Ivan Zarif Neto, Rafael Migani Monteiro
and Fernando Gama (all BRA) stacked
23,821 toilet rolls into a pyramid shape
that stood 4.1 m (13 ft 5 in) tall in
São Paulo, Brazil, on 20 Nov 2012.4,000:
rolls of toilet
paper you’ll get
through in a
lifetime: a stack
higher than the
Empire State
Buildingx1 = 400 rollsThere are 35 toilets in
the White HouseOne in three people do not
have access to a proper toiletOver or under?
Toilet-paper manufacturer
Cottonelle asked if
consumers hung their rolls
with the first sheet over or
under the roll. The results:The average
person spends
270 days
of their life
on the toilet72%
28%
27,000
trees are chopped
down every day to
make toilet paperToilets
SOCIETY
According to the United Nations, of the world’s 7 billion people,
6 billion have mobile phones, while only 4.5 billion have a toilet.
A toilet^ that
had
once belonged to
J D Salinger, author
of The^ Catcher in the
Rye, was offered for
sale on eBay in 2010 –
“uncleaned and in its
original condition” –
with an asking price
of $1,000,000!Q: How many Americans
are injured while going to
the toilet each year?
A: 40,000, according to US federal
statistics
LARGEST COLLECTION OF
TOILET‑RELATED ITEMS
As of 19 Oct 2015, Marina and Mykola
Bogdanenko of Kiev, in Ukraine, were the
proud owners of 524 different toilet-themed
curios. The potty pair’s obsession with
collecting lavatorial knick-knacks began
in 1995 after they opened a “sanitary
engineering” business in Kiev.