All About The Toilet...!

No, I don't mean that my blog has gone down thew toilet, but that I have some interesting facts about said toilet for your consideration.

15 Fascinating Facts About Toilets

LISTVERSE STAFF JUNE 15, 2009

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.

I do hope you found this list interesting. If nothing else, it will give you some new reading material for the next trip to the...well, you know! I got this list from the staff over at the Listverse group.

Coffee out on the patio this morning. Temps back up to the 80s again.

Cumberland Road For Western Wednesday...!

Sometimes in old days, the gap between Congress giving a project the green light and the actual funding could take a while. Not that much has changed, I reckon.

The Cumberland Road got off to a slow start, but proved to be invaluable in the long run.

1806

Congress authorizes survey of Cumberland Road

Congress authorizes surveying to begin for the construction of the Cumberland Road, which sped the way for thousands of Americans heading west.

Four years earlier, Congress had recognized the importance of building a network of national roads to facilitate western immigration. The 1803 act that admitted Ohio into the Union included a provision setting aside money from the sale of public lands to use in “laying out, opening, and making roads.” By 1806, enough funds had accumulated to begin surveying a proposed national road from Cumberland, Maryland, through the Appalachian Mountains to Wheeling, Virginia, on the Ohio River.

The task of surveying the route for the new national road went to the Army’s Corps of Engineers, setting an important precedent for the military’s involvement in building transportation routes that would be used for non-military purposes. The Corps of Engineers also built the road once construction began in 1811. Progress was slow, and the Corps did not complete the 130-mile road until 1818. Its value, though, became apparent well before it was completed. Stagecoaches, heavy freight wagons, and droves of stock animals soon crowded the route in numbers far surpassing those expected. The Corps even had to maintain and repair older sections of the road before the entire route was completed.

The Cumberland Road proved such a success that Congress agreed to continue extending it westward. By 1850, this National Road, as it came to be called, reached all the way to Indianapolis. By that time, mid-western excitement over the National Road was fading in favor of a fever for canal building. The Cumberland-National Road, however, set the precedent for further government involvement in road building. The resulting network of roads greatly facilitated American expansion into western territory, and parts of the route blazed for the Cumberland Road are still followed to this day by interstate and state highways.

Seems to me that the Corps of Engineers still has a lot of projects in the works that are not finished. I'll bet you probably have some around the area where you live.

Coffee inside this morning. Kinda stormy on the patio.

Another Reminder Of Unit 731...!

I've posted about this terrible place once before. I think it's time to revisit it.

Forgotten Horrors: The Human Experiments of Unit 731

By Morris M. on Tuesday, July 23, 2013

During the occupation of China, the Japanese army set up the secretive Unit 731. Behind closed doors doctors infected civilians with plague, subjected them to extreme temperature changes, and had them dissected alive.

When the bombs landed in China’s Quzhou province, locals didn’t know what to make of them. Instead of exploding, they merely cracked open – spilling rice, wheat and microscopic fleas across villages. It wasn’t for another week that their purpose became apparent, when an outbreak of Bubonic Plague began to decimate the countryside.

Such plague bombs are only one of the atrocities linked with Unit 731: the Japanese answer to Mengele’s Auschwitz. In a vast complex on the edge of the Chinese mainland, surgeons took turns at dissecting civilians alive, removing organs one by one until the patient died. Some were hung up and vivisected without anesthetic. Others were tied to the ground in freezing weather to see how quickly they would succumb to frostbite. Yet others were gassed or herded into decompression chambers, where researchers timed how long it took their eyeballs to explode. And then there were the germs.

Cholera, typhoid, dysentery and anthrax were spread over Chinese cities. As many as 200,000 people died in outbreaks that lasted until 1948. Russian, Filipino and Allied prisoners were infected then pickled in formaldehyde. Yet, for all this brutality, no-one was ever punished. US forces exchanged immunity for data and helped cover-up the evidence. There has been no apology, no compensation, no recognition. Unit 731 remains a darkly open secret—one its victims still suffer with 70 years later.

War is hell on Earth...I understand that. What I will never understand is the depths of darkness that Mankind can reach in finding ways to torture or kill his own kind.

Coffee out on the patio this morning. In the mid 80s once again.

Space Related Monday Mystery Solved...?

We know so little about space, it's almost embarrassing. No matter how much we know or learn, it isn't enough.

Sometimes an answer is figured out to one of our many questions, but we can't prove or disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Ceres Mystery Lights

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft approached the dwarf planet Ceres, it captured some very mysterious images. One of these, taken 47,000 kilometers (29,000 mi) away from the planet, showed abnormally bright spots inside an 80-kilometer-wide (50 mi) crater. Many immediately took these images and ran with them, thinking that they were signs of an alien civilization.

For a few months, even NASA wasn’t exactly sure what these mysterious bright spots were. Theories ranged from aliens to ice, but in late 2015, a study was published in Nature that debunked all those theories. It claimed that the spots were nothing more than salt. The study stated, “These unusual areas are consistent with hydrated magnesium sulfates mixed with dark background material, although other compositions are possible.” Unfortunately, this explanation is not as exciting as aliens, but there are plenty of other space mysteries to keep us baffled for a long time.

I'm a little disappointed that it had to be a simple explanation. I wanted something a bit more exotic, I reckon. Oh well, it is what it is...!

Coffee out on the patio this morning!

Here Are The Sunday 'Toons...!

I know it seems like it's way too msoon to be Sunday again, but here it is!

It's getting harder to remember which ones we've already seen recently, so pardon me if I repeat myself...OK?







And maybe one more for good measure.



One of the real classics from many years ago.

Coffee out on the patio today!

Lewis And Clark Weren't The First...!

When we think of the expedition of Lewis and Clark, we think of them being the first to complete the trip across the new American territories. It turns out that this isn't the case at all.

Alexander MacKenzie’s Transcontinental Trek

Photo credit: John Harvey

Alexander MacKenzie is remembered as a great explorer in Canada and his native Scotland, but he doesn’t get the global recognition that he deserves. He is not on the same level as some of his contemporaries, such as Lewis and Clark.

In 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark set out on an expedition to explore the new American territories, claim the Pacific Northwest for the US, and reach the Pacific Ocean.

They completed their transcontinental trek in 1806, ensuring their place in the history books. But Alexander MacKenzie had done the same thing more than a decade before them. In 1793, MacKenzie became the first European to cross North America. He could have done it even sooner if his first trip had been successful.

He originally set out for the Pacific Ocean in 1789 by following the largest river in Canada. MacKenzie hoped that it flowed into the Pacific, but the river actually went north into the Arctic Ocean. Even though the trip was a failure, that river is now named MacKenzie in his honor.

His second trip went much better. In 1792, MacKenzie set out from Fort Chipewyan in Alberta and followed the Peace River into the Rockies. After crossing the Great Divide, he followed the Bella Coola River and reached the Pacific Coast. There, he painted a simple message on a rock face that said: “Alex MacKenzie from Canada by land 22d July 1793.”

It's always strange to find out that history doesn't always match what we were taught. Kinda makes you want to question some of what we learn today! Thanks to the folks at Listverse for this article.

Coffee out on the patio today!

Let's Talk About Passports...!

Most of us think that the passport is a fairly new thing, but that's not correct.

Passports have been around since the time of the Monguls That's a very long time!

The Passport Is Surprisingly Ancient

By Debra Kelly on Sunday, March 20, 2016

The first mention of anything like modern-day passports comes from a Bible verse in Nehemiah. The Mongols issued one of the earliest passports in the form of an iron medallion presented to foreigners who were in Mongol territory and under the protection of the Khan. It wasn’t until nearly World War I that the more familiar format (which included details like height and eye color) was implemented. British government officials fought that idea for decades, claiming it was “degrading.”

You’re finally heading off on that vacation that you’ve been waiting for all year, but before you can even get your first taste of a foreign land, you’re going to be stuck in airport hell. There are lines and lines, plus the tedious passport examination. It might seem like this is just another modern form of red tape and bureaucracy, but the idea is surprisingly ancient.

The Bible mentions something similar in Nehemiah 2:7-9.
I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests. So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters.

Centuries later, passports would be issued by a regime more known for its pillaging and looting than for its diplomacy: the Mongols. Under Genghis Khan, intricately engraved metal plaques called paizi were handed out for a couple of different reasons. Some paizi were carried by government officials as proof of their position and title, while others were given to people coming and going through the empire. They were usually reserved for people who traveled on state business and foreigners who were in Mongol territory under the protection of the Khan.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the dozen or so Mongolian passports we’ve found, and theirs was issued to a Tibetan monk named ‘Phagspa. The monk, who was an adviser to Kublai Khan, would have carried the 18-centimeter (7 in) by 11-centimeter (4.5 in) iron medallion as proof of his identity and protection from those that might think him easy prey.

Inscribed on the face of the medallion are the words, “By the strength of Eternal Heaven, an edict of the Emperor. He who has no respect shall be guilty.”

The oldest British passport was only signed a few hundred years later by Charles I. That was in 1641, and it was only good for three years until Oliver Cromwell made his lunatic grab for power. Not only were all earlier passports null and void, but no one was getting a new one unless they swore they wouldn’t be lifting a finger against Cromwell’s new government. (In fairness, the “no sail list” remained in effect until Charles II started circumventing the rules for reasons that were more social than diplomatic.)

British passports also went through a weird, 80-year period where they were written in French. The original English documents were changed in 1772 as French was considered a more diplomatic language, and British passports were issued in French until 1858, meaning those who set out to fight against Napoleon had French-language passports.

Those early passports also had no rules on what kind of picture you put on them. Some people posed with their whole families or with their pets, or wore some of the trendiest clothes they could. When it was first suggested that physical details like height and eye color should be added, the British Foreign Secretary called the idea “degrading and offensive.” That was in 1835, and it wouldn’t be until World War I that we’d see the now-familiar format.

I don't own a passport. I have no reason to go anywhere one is needed. Call me strange, but that's just me!

Coffee out on the patio today!