If you use any of them, it's time to change!
When nature calls, we have to go. Bathroom breaks are something we all need, and while it may seem natural and trivial, sometimes, they can have dire consequences and lead to quite extraordinary outcomes. Not convinced? What if we told you that bathroom breaks have been linked to scientific breakthroughs, the death of kings, and that a war has been started because of one?
Now that we have your attention, click on and get to know the bathroom breaks that changed history.
Indeed, England’s King Edmund Ironside ruled for a very short period (April 23 to November 30, 1016), but that’s because he was stabbed to death while he was in the privy (as toilets were known back then).
Before he became president, Lyndon B. Johnson served in the Navy. On June 9, 1942, Johnson was assigned to fly an airplane, but he had to use the bathroom just before takeoff. When he returned, Lieutenant Colonel Francis R. Stevens had taken his seat, so Johnson had to take the next flight instead.
Luckily, Johnson’s aircraft saw little combat, but the plane he was supposed to have taken before the bathroom break was shot down by the Japanese, killing everyone. Indeed, a bathroom break changed the course of American history.
On October 25, 1760, King George II of England had to use the bathroom in Kensington Palace, just after he had finished drinking a cup of hot chocolate.
The king strained so hard that he had an aortic aneurysm and died on the toilet. Years later, it was concluded that George II suffered from a condition known as aortic dissection (where there’s a tear in the inner layer of the body’s main artery), which contributed to the aneurysm and, consequently, his death.
In 1899, Dr. Oskar Minkowski was discussing with his colleague Josef von Mering whether a person would be able to survive without a pancreas. Dr. Minkowski was of the opinion that it was possible, so he removed the pancreas from his dog to test his theory.
The dog seemed fine, but Dr. Minkowski started to spot flies around his dog’s pee during potty breaks. He decided to analyze the urine, and discovered it was full of sugar, which meant the dog had become a diabetic. This led to the discovery that the pancreas secretes insulin.
In 1669, German alchemist Hennig Brand collected 1,500 gallons (5,678 liters) of urine and conducted an experiment. He baked and boiled the urine until it evaporated to see what was left once there was no liquid.
The experiment led to the discovery of a white powder that glowed in the dark, which he called phosphorus mirabilis ("miraculous bearer of light"). This was phosphorus.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army had surrounded the Chinese city of Wanping, when nature called for a soldier named Shimura Kikujiro. The private went to the woods to relieve himself, but when he returned his unit had already left.
It became dark and Kikujiro got lost. The Japanese officials then realized they were missing one man. The unit returned to Wanping and demanded China's National Revolutionary Army let them enter the city to get their missing soldier, but the Chinese refused their request.
The Japanese didn’t take no for an answer and tried to breach the city walls. This became known as the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident," and it started the Second Sino-Japanese War.
While not a “bathroom break” as such, this event still took place in the bathroom, or in the bath, to be more precise. We’re talking about the time when Greek mathematician Archimedes was tasked to find out whether a crown crafted for the king of Syracuse was made of pure gold.
After failing to come up with a reliable method to confirm such a thing, Archimedes filled a bathtub to take a break. But as he got in, he noticed that water was spilling over the edge and realized that there was a correlation between the water displaced and the weight of his body.
This physical law of buoyancy became known as the Archimedes Principle. Or as ‘The Maritime Engineering Reference Book’ puts it: “Archimede's Principle states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.”
Australian-British mathematician and physicist William Lawrence Bragg was stationed in France during World War I. In 1915, he was in a military outhouse, completely isolated from the outside world, except for a pipe connected to the ground, located under the toilet.
While Bragg was in the toilet, a gun was fired 1,000 feet (304.8 m) away, but he felt it, as the energy traveled through the air, into the pipe, and up to Bragg’s bottom.
After much thought, Bragg came to the conclusion that each weapon had a unique frequency, so he went on to build a device that could detect infrasound. The device was able to pinpoint the location of enemy artillery within a distance of around 150 feet (45.72 m), which helped the Allies win the war.
This time, it was the King of Rock. Elvis Presley died on the toilet on August 16, 1977. The cause of death remains a mystery, with theories ranging from a heart attack to complications derived from severe constipation.
The autopsy records will become declassified in 2027, and until then we can’t have a definite answer. Still, it’s safe to say that this bathroom break did change music history.
On February 12, 1946, African-American World War II veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard had just returned to his country when he boarded a bus to go home, in Winnsboro, South Carolina.
At one point during the journey, Woodard asked the bus driver if he could pull over for a bathroom break. For some reason, the driver called the police on Isaac Woodard, who proceeded to beat him up so badly that he ended up spending three days in hospital and losing his vision permanently.
The story of police brutality traveled around the country and fueled those involved in the civil rights movement. Two years later, Executive Order 9981, which ended segregation in the Armed Forces, was issued by President Harry S. Truman.
A 13-year old boy named Charlie Wilson (pictured here as an adult) couldn’t quite stop his dog from peeing on his neighbor's yard. His neighbor, Texas councilman Charles Hazard, killed the dog. Little Wilson swore revenge and spread the word about what the councilman did, so that he would lose votes. Indeed, Hazard lost the election.
Years later, Wilson got involved in politics himself, and was responsible for the allocation of funding and training for the Afghan Mujahideen, who would later split into groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Ancient Rome Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote an account of what happened. “In a training academy for gladiators who work with wild beasts, a German slave, while preparing for the morning exhibition, withdrew in order to relieve himself–the only thing he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood tipped with a sponge, devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it down his throat. Thus he blocked up his windpipe and choked the breath from his body… What a brave fellow. He surely deserved to be allowed to choose his fate.”
In 1968, engineer Douglas Engelbart was working as the head of the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute, when he decided to experiment with LSD.
Engelbart came up with two inventions while he was high, namely the “tinkle toy,” which was a small water wheel that would spin and tinkle when peed on, used to encourage potty training in children. Douglas Engelbart also invented the computer mouse.
Throughout history, workers could not take toilet breaks as needed. Car manufacturing mogul Henry Ford even called the digestive system the “disassembly line.” Women who worked at the Jim Beam distillery even had to report when they had their periods, so that bathroom breaks were accounted for.
Today, although there are laws about workers' right to use the toilet, most are not clear. In the US, for instance, it was not until 1998 that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) passed a law granting the right to use a bathroom, if it was reasonable to do so at a given time. What “reasonable” actually means has been the subject of many disputes and indeed court cases over the years.
Sources: (History Collection) (Listverse) (History) (NPR) ('The Maritime Engineering Reference Book')
Bathroom breaks that have saved lives and started wars
Trips to the toilet that changed history
LIFESTYLE Curiosities
When nature calls, we have to go. Bathroom breaks are something we all need, and while it may seem natural and trivial, sometimes, they can have dire consequences and lead to quite extraordinary outcomes. Not convinced? What if we told you that bathroom breaks have been linked to scientific breakthroughs, the death of kings, and that a war has been started because of one?
Now that we have your attention, click on and get to know the bathroom breaks that changed history.