Q 01/05

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

A) Sir John Harington

B) Sir Walter Raleigh

C) Sir Francis Bacon

D) Sir Philip Sidney

Answer · why

A) Sir John Harington

Sir John Harington described his flushing 'Ajax' in the 1596 book The Metamorphosis of Ajax; its name punned on a slang word for a privy, and its sati...

Q 02/05

The 1596 toilet book The Metamorphosis of Ajax got its author banished from court by which monarch?

A) Mary I

B) Elizabeth I

C) Henry VIII

D) James I

Answer · why

B) Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I was the author's godmother, and she had banished him once before, until he translated the whole of Orlando Furioso as penance for passing ...

Q 03/05

What does the S-shaped bend that a Scottish watchmaker patented for toilets in 1775 keep out of the room?

A) Rising damp

B) Limescale

C) Sewer gas

D) Frost

Answer · why

C) Sewer gas

Sewer gas is blocked by the plug of water that sits in the bend, a trick Alexander Cumming patented in 1775 and that still works beneath almost every ...

Q 04/05

Which Victorian plumber is wrongly credited by legend with inventing the flush toilet, though he did hold nine patents?

A) Crapper

B) Jennings

C) Twyford

D) Wedgwood

Answer · why

A) Crapper

Crapper held nine patents but did not invent the flush toilet; Wallace Reyburn's tongue-in-cheek 1969 biography Flushed with Pride inflated his fame, ...

Q 05/05

Which royal residence of the future Edward VII earned a Chelsea plumber his first royal warrant in the 1880s?

A) Sandringham House

B) Osborne House

C) Windsor Castle

D) Balmoral Castle

Answer · why

A) Sandringham House

Sandringham House in Norfolk had been bought for the Prince of Wales in 1862, and the job led on to work at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and West...