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It's a universally acknowledged fact, though often overlooked, that a person on the toilet is at their most defenseless. The worst that usually happens, though, is that there’s a knock at the front door, your cat strolls in for a quick look, or you run out of toilet paper. But on occasion, something far worse than you could ever imagine happens while you're sitting on the throne.
Here are ten catastrophic toilet mishaps you might want to avoid thinking about, especially if you’re a nervous pooper.
10. Python in the Pan
Many people dread the idea of being watched while on the toilet. Most often, this is a fear of someone peeking through the surprisingly wide gaps in the doors of public restrooms in America. However, sometimes it’s not a human eye lurking, but something far less expected. There have been reports of rats, squirrels, and even frogs making an appearance from the U-bend of toilets. You might even find a spider clinging to the underside of the seat. But one man in Thailand may have experienced the most unexpected and terrifying toilet guest of all.
While sitting on the toilet in 2016, Atthaporn Boonmakchuay reportedly felt a sharp bite at the end of his penis. Glancing down between his legs, he saw a 3.4-meter-long (11-foot-long) python that had just bitten his rather more modest python. In what must have been a horrifying situation, Atthaporn somehow managed to stay calm and tied the snake’s head to the door with a rope before calling for help. Screaming for his wife, he collapsed due to blood loss.
Atthaporn was quickly rushed to the hospital, where he made a full recovery. The snake, however, remained stuck in the toilet when emergency services arrived. They had to smash the toilet with hammers to extract the snake. Afterward, it was released into the wild to continue its search for fresh toilets to explore.
9. Murdered Monarchs
In the Middle Ages, if you were a king, the chances of an assassin reaching you were slim. Commoners and outsiders were barred from the court, and you’d be surrounded by loyal knights sworn to protect you. For an assassin to succeed, they’d have to strike during the rare moments when you were alone.
Jaromir, Duke of Bohemia, led an eventful life. He rebelled against one of his brothers, who was king, and for his treason, he was castrated and exiled from his lands. After later regaining his dukedom, he was thrown out again and blinded as punishment. However, his life came to a tragic end while sitting on the toilet. An assassin, wielding a spear, stabbed him through the abdomen and left him to bleed out on the bathroom floor.
Other rulers, such as Godfrey the Hunchback and King Edmund Ironsides, are also said to have met their end in toilets. In one account, Edmund was struck in the backside by an arrow fired from below while he was using the toilet. The shot was so powerful that not even the feathers of the arrow were visible.
8. Pop-up Toilet
Sometimes, disaster strikes even when you're not on the toilet. You might be going about your day when a toilet unexpectedly appears to ruin it. For one man in Amsterdam in 2014, this is exactly what happened.
Like many European cities, Amsterdam faces a challenge with late-night revelers who have nowhere to relieve themselves. To curb public urination and save space, pop-up toilets were introduced. These toilets can retract into the ground and only rise up at night.
For one unlucky man on a moped, however, a pop-up toilet emerged at the wrong moment. One witness described the event as an explosion. The toilet catapulted both the man and his moped into the air. Fortunately, the man only sustained minor injuries, though his moped was severely damaged. Whether the surprise of this unplanned trip to the toilet caused him to wet himself remains unrecorded.
7. Erfurt Latrine Disaster
Unexpected trips to the toilet can lead to catastrophic consequences. Take, for example, the event in 1184 when the King of Germany, Henry VI, invited his nobles to a meeting at a fortress in Erfurt. The purpose of the gathering was to settle a territorial dispute, but several of the lords present would experience an unfortunate fall.
The nobles and lords gathered in the church of the fortress, while the king sat in grandeur before them. Just as the distinguished guests were taking their seats, the wooden floor of the church suddenly gave way beneath their weight. They plunged straight down into a latrine situated below.
Suddenly immersed in a cesspool of human waste, the assembled lords and their retainers were either drowned or suffocated by the toxic fumes. Sixty people are said to have perished in the disaster, which is known in German as the Erfurter Latrinensturz — 'Erfurt Latrine Fall.' King Henry survived because he was seated on a stone floor section, allowing him to avoid the deadly plunge.
6. Eglon
Today, using the toilet is typically a solitary activity. Unless something unusual is happening in a stall, we usually sit alone on the throne. However, in ancient times, this was not the case. Roman toilets often featured long benches with holes carved into them. People were often packed in, side by side—quite literally.
In the Book of Judges from the Bible, there's a story that demonstrates how perilous going to the toilet together could be. God, angry with the Israelites, decides to punish them by having an evil king, Eglon, rule over them. To free the Israelites from Eglon’s tyranny, a left-handed man named Ehud straps a sword to his thigh and hides it under his clothing before visiting the king.
Ehud informs Eglon that he has a secret message for the king, and the two are left alone. Ehud then drives his sword deep into Eglon’s massive stomach. Eglon is so corpulent that the “fat closed over” the sword, trapping it inside. Eglon then defecates and dies. Ehud escapes. The king’s servants, thinking Eglon is simply taking a long time in the toilet, don’t check on him for a long period.
5. Collapsing Toilets
The Ig Nobel Prizes are annual awards given to celebrate the more peculiar sides of science and culture, in contrast to the more prestigious Nobel Prizes. Past recipients have been “honored” for their work on levitating frogs with magnets, determining why toast always falls buttered side down, and analyzing the mechanics of dipping a biscuit into tea.
In 2000, a team was awarded the Public Health prize for a paper titled “The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow.” The unusual title and topic of the paper likely played a part in earning the prize. The paper examines the genuine risk posed by collapsing toilets. It studies three incidents where toilets shattered while in use, leading to hospitalizations. The conclusion of the study was that older toilets were the most hazardous.
The winners of the Ig Nobel prize accepted their award with good humor. They were pleased that their research wasn’t just a fleeting sensation, but had real substance.
4. Electric Throne
In 1978, Michael Anderson Godwin was sentenced to death by electric chair for murder and sexual assault. However, before his execution, a review of the case determined he was innocent of the assault charges. While he was spared from the electric chair, another electric seat would soon find him.
While in prison, Godwin was sitting on a metal toilet, watching television with headphones on. It appears there was an issue with the headphones, as Godwin began to chew on the cable connected to the TV. As soon as his teeth touched the wires, he was electrocuted.
Godwin succumbed to his injuries, and his death was deemed a strange accident.
3. U-boat Sinks
Toilet-related mishaps are often merely embarrassing for those involved, but on rare occasions, they can spark worldwide amusement. In 1945, a German U-boat was patrolling off the coast of Scotland. World War II was almost over, and the crew might have sailed through the end of the conflict unscathed. But the captain just had to visit the toilet.
U-1206 was one of the most advanced submarines in the German fleet. Even its toilets were state-of-the-art. No longer did submarines need to carry waste on board—this vessel used high-pressure technology to expel waste after each use. However, this system was only meant to operate when the submarine was on the surface.
Captain Karl-Adolf Schlitt, unfamiliar with the high-tech toilet, asked an engineer to assist with the flush. Unfortunately, the wrong lever was pulled, and high-pressure water and sewage surged into the cabin. When seawater reached the submarine’s batteries, it released dangerous clouds of chlorine gas. The U-boat had to surface, was spotted, attacked by the RAF, and ultimately abandoned. Four crew members drowned, and the rest became prisoners of war. Captain Schlitt had quite literally flushed his hopes of victory down the drain.
2. Trapped in the Loo
While most people understand the dangers of climbing into a toilet, some individuals seem to need a more direct lesson. In 2016, a Norwegian man accidentally dropped his phone into a toilet while urinating. Without hesitation, his friend Cato Berntsen Larsen sprang into action. He dove into the toilet feet first and got himself stuck.
Larsen, an enthusiastic amateur diver, may have wanted to reconsider this dive. The public toilet wasn’t connected to a typical sewer system. Instead, it had a tank that was only emptied once a year. Unfortunately, he found himself waist-deep in sewage. In a panic, he vomited from the claustrophobic situation. Firefighters were summoned, and they managed to free him by cutting open the toilet.
The phone, however, was lost to the depths of the toilet tank forever.
1. Explosions
When someone mentions an explosion in the bathroom, they’re usually speaking figuratively. However, it turns out that toilets can, in fact, be quite explosive. During the Victorian era, the press had a brief fascination with the risk of gases in the sewers catching fire and causing explosions in lavatories.
Exploding toilets may be more common than we'd like to admit. In one instance, a lightning strike ignited methane gas beneath a toilet, triggering a detonation.
When fire isn’t the culprit, water can be. In 2018, Flushmate, a company that manufactures high-pressure systems to reduce water usage during flushing, recalled 1.5 million units, following a prior recall of three million units in 2012. The issue? These systems had a tendency to cause toilets to explode.
