Have a heart, give a toilet

As well as being my lil sister’s birthday today, it is also World Toilet Day. Oh the joys of sanitation systems! They keep us from getting all sorts of poo-borne diseases...and may even provide cheaper (and renewable) domestic heating solutions…

So in general celebration, some statistics:

In 1990, only 1.1% of US households did not have full indoor plumbing
In 1940, that figure was 45%

The first separate male/female toilets were built at a fancy party in Paris in 1739

Sir John Harrington, godson to Queen Elizabeth I, developed the first toilet in England in 1596.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 movie Psycho was supposedly the first to show a flushing toilet. Scandale!

In 315 A.D. there were 144 public toilets in Rome.

In 69 AD, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire levied a tax on toilets.

In 1391 in China, The Bureau of Imperial Supplies began producing 720,000 sheets of toilet paper a year, each sheet measuring two feet by three feet..it was only for Emperors.

Around 2.4 billion people don’t have access to adequate sanitation and 2 million people (mostly kids) die from sanitation-linked diseases (mostly diarrhoeal diseases)