19 November: World Toilet Day

Today is World Toilet day. Here are ten facts about toilets.

1. The word "toilet" derives from an old French word meaning to wash, dress, and generally prepare oneself to be seen in public. Where the word "loo", commonly used in the UK, comes from is a bit more obscure. Theories include: a corruption of French l'eau ("Water") or lieu d'aisance ("place of ease", used euphemistically for a toilet); a euphemism derived from historical shyness about bathrooms where the toilet in a hotel wasn't labelled as such, but placed in room 100; or from a 17th-century preacher called Louis Bourdaloue, whose sermons were so long that his parishioners used to bring chamber pots to his services.
2. On average, people in the UK use the toilet between six and eight times a day. That’s about 2500 times every year, amounting to about three years of an average person's lifespan.
3. Toilet paper is rumoured to have been invented in China in the 6th century. Each sheet was two feet by three feet. We've come a long way since then, and we use a lot of the stuff. It takes 384 trees to make the toilet paper used by one person during their lifetime. 83,048,116 toilet rolls are produced per day. 636 toilet paper rolls are used each day by the Pentagon alone. Over $100,000 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 conclusion: three out of four people have the flap in the front.
4. China also boasts the earliest known toilet: a hut above a Pig pen in Xian built around 3000 BC. The oldest toilet which still works is in a small castle in Knossos, Greece. This one is 4,000 years old.
5. In America, most toilets flush in the key of E flat.
6. There's a toilet-themed restaurant in Taiwan, where food is served on miniature toilets, and a museum and theme park dedicated to toilets in South Korea.
7. Invention of the flush toilet is often attributed to the appropriately named Thomas Crapper, when in fact the first flush toilet was designed in 1596 by John Harington for Elizabeth I. Harington had been banned from court for telling smutty stories, but after his invention, he was allowed back. Mr. Crapper did, however, perfect the siphon flush system we use today. Flushing the toilet once uses up to 26 litres of water.
8. One of the sources I consulted in making this list claimed that the most expensive toilet in the world was the one on the International Space Station which cost $23.4 million. However, I'm not sure it counts as it isn't, strictly speaking, "in the world". Which means the most expensive toilets come from The Kowloon shop of Hong Kong based Hang Fung Gold Technology Ltd, which makes gem-encrusted toilets from 24 carat Gold.
9. A Ashwell patented the Vacant/Engaged sign for public lavatories in 1883, while John Nevil Maskelyne patented the coin-operated lock for public lavatories in 1892. On the subject of public toilets, the first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used (and consequently is the cleanest).
10. In ancient Rome, there was a god of toilets - Crepitus.

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