Harington’s flush toilet
Elizabeth I’s godson invents a flushing toilet
The courtier-poet John Harington built a flushing toilet with a cistern at his house and described it in his 1596 satire The Metamorphosis of Ajax. The title was a pun on “jakes”, slang for a privy.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 16th century
Did you know
The flush toilet was invented by Elizabeth I’s godson, the poet John Harington. He installed one at home and reportedly another for the queen at Richmond Palace, but the much-mocked idea was forgotten for two centuries. Share →
Some 179 years passed between the first flush toilet (1596) and the patent for the S-bend that traps smells with water (1775). Alexander Cumming’s trap is still in almost every toilet today. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1582 Yermak's conquest of Sibir — 14 years earlier
- 1598–1613 Time of Troubles — 2 years later
- 1612 Minin and Pozharsky liberate Moscow — 16 years later
- 1613 Election of Michael Romanov as Tsar — 17 years later
Africa
- 1591 Battle of Tondibi and fall of Songhai — 5 years earlier
Asia
- 1592–1598 Imjin War — 4 years earlier
- 1600 Battle of Sekigahara — 4 years later
Americas
- 1600 Eruption of Huaynaputina — 4 years later
- c. 1605–1694 Quilombo of Palmares — 9 years later
- 1607 Founding of Jamestown — 11 years later
- 1609 Jesuit reductions among the Guaraní — 13 years later
Alive at the time
- Elizabeth I (aged 63)
- Akbar the Great (aged 54)
- Tokugawa Ieyasu (aged 53)
- Miguel de Cervantes (aged 49)
- William Shakespeare (aged 32)
- Galileo Galilei (aged 32)
- René Descartes (aged 0)
- Philip II of Spain (aged 69)
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi (aged 59)
- Ashikaga Yoshiaki (aged 59)