Toilets – we all use them but seldom like to talk about them. The flushing toilet was invented by Sir John Harrington in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth I. He was originally barred from the Royal Court for spreading smutty stories, but after his invention, he was allowed back. Having whet your appetite for fascinating toilet facts, let us look at 15 more.
1. The film “Psycho” was the first movie to show a toilet flushing – the scene caused an inpouring of complaints about indecency
2. Pomegranates studded with cloves were used as the first attempt at making toilet air-freshner
3. Hermann Goering refused to use regulation toilet paper – instead he bought soft white handkerchiefs in bulk and used them
4. Over $100,000 US dollars was spent on a study to determine whether most people put their toilet paper on the holder with the flap in front or behind; the answer: three out of four people have the flap in the front
5. King George II of Great Britain died falling off a toilet on the 25th of October 1760
6. The average person spends three whole years of their life sitting on the toilet
7. The first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used (and consequently cleanest)
8. An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, particularly in rural areas of China and India.
9. The Roman army didn’t have toilet paper so they used a water soaked sponge on the end of a stick instead!
10. The toilet is flushed more times during the super bowl halftime than at any time during the year.
11. 90% of pharmaceuticals taken by people are excreted through urination. Therefore our sewer systems contain heavy doses of drugs. A recent study by the EPA has found fish containing trace amounts of estrogen, cholesterol-lowering drugs, pain relievers, antibiotics, caffeine and even anti-depressants.
12. Lack of suitable toilets and sanitation kills approximately 1.8 million people a year, many of them children.
13. The toilet handle in a public restroom can have up to 40,000 germs per square inch.
14. While he didn’t invent the toilet, Thomas Crapper perfected the siphon flush system we use today. He was born in the village of Thorne – which is an anagram of throne.
15. In a 1992 survey, British public toilets were voted the worst in the world. Following quickly behind were Thailand, Greece, and France.
AHAHAHAH thomas crapper
Awesome!!!
dare i saw….This list is the “*****”
@Mary Jo (59): Welcome aboard! Keep commenting.
@Shifty (56): That reminded me of Walter from Jeff Dunham!
The most infamous crapper:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070404cbgb.jpg
@Diogenes (64): That brings a whole new level to the word -disgusting- and I’m not referring to the graffiti.
Clouds: I have been in that very restroom on the Swazi border and thought the exact same thing as you did. Small world!
I always use the handicapped stall – it is never occupied and almost always roomier and spotless.
Interesting list, but more interesting comments! Seems as if everyone has had a run-in with a strange public bathroom, as have I, and which I will now share.
On a shoot, in a foreign land, a place not meant for tourists at all, we were one night filming in a bar/pool hall. The men’s room was a gully which ran along the long side of one wall. There was a slow trickle of water running through the gully, just enough to eventually rid the room of urine, but not the urine smell. I’ll leave the rest of the bathroom needs to your lively imaginations.
I was the only female on the shooting crew, so special arrangements had to be made for me. There was a house katterkorner to the bar which the production company paid to allow me to use their bathroom as needed during the shooting.
I only needed to use it once, but once was enough. The entire upper story of the house, the third floor, had no roof. That floor contained the kitchen, the living-room and the bathroom.
The bathroom was a largish room, square, with a tiled floor, a bathtub, a shower in the middle created with pipes and designed along some kind of Rube Goldberg lines, a basin, and a toilet with a gravity flush. Even though there was a door, the fact that there was no roof made you feel *exposed* somehow.
In any case, it was an interesting experience.
ugh the worst kind of toilets have to be porta loos.
copperdragon, your comment reminded me of a this scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm. The end of the clip is pretty funny. It’s hard to believe all of these guys would be so disciplined as to not the use the handicap stall.
By the way the clip above has foul language just in case you are at work.
wow people r interested in weird subjects…
@Bob (38): I think Bob is correct that the Super Bowl toilet flushing is a myth. It’s also said that there are more cases of domestic violence that day, which is also not true.
@Mary Jo (59): I was in a bathroom at a restaurant called ESPN which was affiliated with the sports network. There were TV’s in the bathrooms so patrons wouldn’t miss any sports coverage. Weird.
#9 “The Roman army didn’t have toilet paper so they used a water soaked sponge on the end of a stick instead!” I once heard that the expression, “he got the wrong end of the stick” came from this, but I can’t find evidence that proves it.
moonbeam: how do you know these aren’t true? did you do a study or something?
HAHA! Thomas crapper! He was destined to have something to do with poop
*farts*
@Looser (75): I wish I could site proof, that’s why I started with “I think.” I remember reading somewhere that these were Urban Legends, but I can’t recall where I saw the information.
“did you do a study or something?” Too funny, no I didn’t do a study! I found this from about.com: “[A] Salt Lake City water main did burst open right in the middle of a Super Bowl broadcast back in the 1980s. But though news stories at the time attributed the mishap to an excess of toilet flushings, no evidence has ever been found to substantiate that, or even the likelihood of such an event..”
A few years ago, cable channel Nickelodeon sponsored some off the shoulder tales told by seniors, recalling some event from their life. An old New Yorker told this tale:
As a kid, toilet paper was not easily available, so everyone would salvage whatever paper they could for the task at hand. The softer the paper, the more prized it was.
In the neighborhood was a green grocer, who often had his fruits arrive individually wrapped with tissue, said tissue becoming a coveted item to the neighbors.
At this point the storyteller lets us know about the stingy, hateful old lady of the neighborhood, and how he supplied her with a handful of the greengrocer’s tissue.
Tissue that was harvested from the delivery of a crate of Prickly Pear Cactus fruits that had arrived. And then he bursts out laughing, close to tears, as he remembers the woman’s encounter with the micro-spine covered tissue.
I just couldn’t see the humor–guess you had to be there.
3 years using the toilet= 25,632 hours. If you live to 72 years old and spend 3 years of that on the toilet you have to spend about 1 hour a day on the toilet. That does seem a little off.
I guess if you are sick and when you get older you make a lot of that up by going to the bathroom 3 times throughout the night.
Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end the faster it goes
I live on a property in the tropical rainforests of North Queensland in Australia and Thomas Crapper’s grandson (or great-grandson) built the house I live in! The funny thing is he followed in the family’s footsteps and was a plumber, however, the plumbing in my house is crap! The pipes sing and some are exposed and the toilet is not insulated, in the middle of the house under stairs so you can be heard from anywhere in the house!
@rufus (82):
That’s pretty interesting. Who would have thought we would hear from someone who lived in the same house as somebody’s grandson or great grandson mentioned in this list. Judging by your description of his work maybe plumbers are like shoemakers: “The Shoemakers Children have no Shoes”
Do a lot of men prefer to urinate in the cubicle than the toilets hanging on the wall ?
The worst public toilets in the world are in New Orleans
Lets not forget that Elvis Presley died on the toilet lol.
#84: I’ve noticed that. These guys are probably too bashful to go “in public,” but then they go into a stall and splash away for all to hear. That really bugs me.
Ah toilets… very interesting list (although I’ve always heard that you spend 9 months not 3 years on the loo during your lifetime – reference: old wives tales).
I’ve always found that I can hold a quite detailed conversation about toilets and the activities that take place therein with any of my male friends. My female friends on the other hand… Following are a few of my own ‘fascinating facts’ on the subject of the humble dunny:
I agree with Lifeschool (50) that the toilets at music festivals are the worst (that I’ve seen anyway). By the end of one 3 day event there were a few people that had stopped using them completely (for both 1s and 2s). However it was quite funny to see the long line of guys in the morning waiting to take a dump with their own personal roll of paper under one arm.
When I was at uni I ‘sampled’ numerous toilets around campus, and by the end of my degrees I’d identified a couple of locations that were my first preference when in need. I hate going to busy public toilets so it was important to find a nice quiet out-of-the-way spot.
NOTHING can beat home ground advantage when it comes to toilets…
Toilet graffiti most likely warrants an entire top 10 list, but the most amusing thing I’ve read is (apologies for the French):
“Here I sit
Brokenhearted
Tried to $hit
But only farted”
I know a lot of people that take pride in going to toilet at work, and about getting paid for partaking in said activity.
Finally, I highly recommend the Australian movie “Kenny” to anyone that enjoyed this list. While some of the film’s humour might be lost in translation (different nationalities find different things funny and all that), I personally thought it was hilarious.
Precision: My fiance LOVE getting paid to sit on the toilet! He used to send text messages to his friends while sitting. I like it because it keeps our bathroom less smelly!
Anyone know where the term “the loo” originated? I asked a guy when I was in London (one of the information guys at the Tower of London who seemed to know just about everything, except this!) Still don’t know the answer:(
the worst toilet is the so called squatting pan, which is not a toilet but a method for inadvertently soiling oneself.
good topic…I started traveling late in life and was shocked and apalled when I went to Greece and was told I could not “flush” toilet paper…sicily and parts of tuscanny were the same way…and after all my research before my trips NOT ONE mentioned the “toilet” problem…
it’s been a running joke in my family about the “toilet habits” in europe…is it just me or shoud travel books tell you that in all of athens, nobody flushes and the place is a festering ecoli epidemic waiting to happen
Hmmm… so what’s the next $100,000 study? whether people crumple toilet paper into a ball before using it to wipe their behinds, or do they fold it neatly?
After a long day of work I came on here expecting another sub par list. To my astonishment this is the best list thats been on here in weeks. Yo JF the only thing better than this would be if you put up that list I sent you. Its sweet!
kappakapp… June 15th, 2009 at 2:33 am:
“3 years?? that doesn’t sound right. its like an hour a day, everyday.”
AN HOUR A DAY? 60 minutes total of sitting on the John? Every single day? Dude/dudette… you really need to eat more raisin bran. Some of us (male and female) are in ‘n out kind of people. There is life outside of the bathroom walls, you know. Here’s what you can do: wait until critical alert level… THEN head to the toilet. I guarantee you won’t waste an hour of your day sitting and waiting, trying to prematurely evacuate.
Ya man unless you are reading, making calls, or doing some other worth while activity while crapping, an hour is far to much time to waste on the pot.
Reading Precision’s poem jogged my memory. Here’s one found at a community college:
“Some come here to sit and think,
others come to sh*t and stink,
but I am here to scratch my balls,
and read the writing on the walls”
This was painted over after awhile and then this was written:
“With paint they try to cover my pen,
but the sh*thouse poet strikes again!”
Some more graffiti:
“The toilet paper here is like Clint Eastwood – rough, tough and takes no sh*t”
At the bottom of toilet door written in tiny writing: “You are now sh*tting at 30 degrees”
Written above the men’s urinal “Why are you looking up here? The joke’s in your hands”
On a construction site: “OSHA regulation 42-2 : All turds over 6 inches must be hand lowered.”
In a restaurant: “Flush twice – it’s a long way to the kitchen.”
It seems there are quite a number of websites dedicated to this type of humour.
they missed out Malaysian public toilets from the “worst public toilets” study. I have lived in the UK and Malaysia. I think Malaysian public toilets are scary.
#26 – Your story is not really so unique…most public restrooms have some history of *****ual deviancy, particularly male restrooms. It’s a rather widespread and common phenomena.
I have seen my fair share of strange toilets and bathrooms in my travels over the years, but I have to say that one of the strangest happens to be on the side of St. Catherine’s Cathedral in Brussels where there is a *****ing wall…literally on the side of the church. It’s a concrete area against the church that smells horrific and is, evidently, a public urinal.
Actually, come to think of it, I have a delightful story concerning a good friend of mine and a public restroom.
She and I were visiting the beach in Cassis, France, some years ago when she decided she needed to find a restroom. There happened to be a public one that cost about 50 Euro cents to enter. So I left her to her business and I wandered off a bit down to the water again. It was a particularly long period of time that she was absent and I started to get curious to know what happened to her…finally when I turned around I saw her approaching, partially soaking wet! Apparently, it was also a self-cleaning bathroom and the way she described the experience was that she inserted the coin to enter, the light turned on and she closed the door. She proceeded to do her business and after finishing, her hand slipped while opening the door and it accidentally closed again. The lights turned off and in the next moment water began to appear from the corner of the room spraying in the direction of the toilet for which she used her (thankfully rather large) pocketbook as a shield. She said she was mortified and thought she was going to be locked in their forever and was hoping that I would come to look for her or that someone else would pay the 50 cents to use it so she could get out. Fortunately, after being assaulted by various sprays of water, she discovered that the bathroom does not lock from the inside and she was able to escape.
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life, and I’m already losing it just recalling the story here!
#7 has changed my life forever
From the introduction:
Sir John Harrington … was originally barred from the Royal Court for spreading smutty stories, but after his invention, he was allowed back –
flushed with success, no doubt.
deeeziner (52)… it’s okay =] I know which emoticon you mean.
again, a very interesting list on listverse. is it cool, Thomas “Crapper” has something he contributed to toilets.
I just got back from a trip to London and I need too dispute England as having the worst Public toilets. You have to HAVE public toilets to have the worst and they don’t have public toilets!
@ #1 Jono
-your storys funny, hehehe
I guess we better have a holiday called “STAY as LONG as U CAN in the TOILET DAY” and a law giving everyone a designated half-hour chance to do whatever he wants inside that mistery room..
#74
Yeah, I have heard the same thing regarding the origin of the saying “The wrong end of the stick”.
So three years sitting on the pot. Let’s say you live for 80 years:
80years x 365 days = 29200 days
3years x 365 days x 24hrs = 26280 hours
26280hrs/29200days = 0.9hrs/day
That’s almost an hour a day, no way is the average life span 80 for the world and no way that many people sit on the toilet for an hour a day. Sorry, bad source you got that one from. I sit on the toilet for like 10 minutes a day.
Freshies: See my post #80. I also came to that conclusion using different math though.
Maybe they take into an account for the times you are sick (diarrhea) and the elderly spend a lot more time then younger people. Also, some people spend more time on the toilet than others (if you have IBS) so they make the average time go up for everyone else.
So what about the toilet in Slumdog Millionaire?
But the again it does say the average person…
I’m one of the 25% (along with my parents) who are exclusively back-rollers on toilet paper. My aunt, a front-roller, swears that you can tear the paper easier when it hangs down the front. I say exactly the same about back-rolling. We also back-roll the paper towels.
I was reading this thing in a book were it talked about people who died on the toilet. It was pretty interesting.
How about that toilet in Slum Dog Millionaire ?
Oh so cranky!! Don’t publish that fact about the first toilet stall in a public restroom! I’ve been using that stall and feeling cleaner for it for years!
I remember on my trip to Italy, France, and Spain, the worst part was having to pay to use the toilets, especially when you had to find a bank to cash the traveller’s cheque first! I remember being on Capri (Italy) and I had to pee SO BAD. There was only one bank on the island that would take my traveller’s cheque, and I couldn’t find it. Once I did find the bank, I then couldn’t find the public washrooms. I was so sad. The upside, of course, is that the bathrooms were always clean and well stocked.
(The bathrooms that you didn’t have to pay for, you needed to provide your own toilet paper; this is a suggestion for anyone travelling to Europe soon!)
LMAO @ #1
You knew that the direction of the spinning toilet water is random? the coriosole power, or something like that, only affects on hurricanes. Also, some companys finnally realized, that toilets use CLEAN water to flush down DIRTY water. So they now make toilets, that use already used water, and even use the water used in toilets, is used to gardening. I swear this is all true
@Clouds (19): Clouds, sometimes that superpower becomes a puddle.