Q 01/05

Which Elizabethan courtier described England's first flushing toilet, the Ajax, in a 1596 book?

A) Sir Walter Raleigh

B) Sir Francis Drake

C) Sir Philip Sidney

D) Sir John Harington

Answer · why

D) Sir John Harington

Sir John Harington named it with a pun on 'a jakes', slang for a privy, and the book's barbs got Queen Elizabeth's godson banished from court again.

Q 02/05

Alexander Cumming's S-bend of 1775 solved which problem of early flush toilets?

A) Leaking cisterns

B) Sewer gases

C) Wasted water

D) Noisy flushing

Answer · why

B) Sewer gases

Sewer gases are held back by the water that settles in the bend after each flush; the London watchmaker's trick was so simple that toilets still rely ...

Q 03/05

Popular legend wrongly credits which Victorian plumber with inventing the flush toilet?

A) George Jennings

B) Thomas Twyford

C) Joseph Bazalgette

D) Thomas Crapper

Answer · why

D) Thomas Crapper

Thomas Crapper held nine plumbing patents, none of them for the flush toilet; the legend owes most to a tongue-in-cheek 1969 biography called Flushed ...

Q 04/05

Which French revolutionary was stabbed to death in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday in 1793?

A) Maximilien Robespierre

B) Georges Danton

C) Jean-Paul Marat

D) Camille Desmoulins

Answer · why

C) Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat spent much of each day in a medicinal bath to ease a skin disease and received visitors there, which is how Corday reached him with a ...

Q 05/05

George Jennings installed the first public pay toilets at which 1851 event?

A) The first FA Cup final

B) The opening of King's Cross station

C) The Chelsea Flower Show

D) The Great Exhibition

Answer · why

D) The Great Exhibition

The Great Exhibition made his flushing 'Monkey Closets' in the Crystal Palace so popular that the first public lavatories opened the following year, b...