In 1076, a Dutch nobleman named Duke Godfrey “the Hunchback” of Lower Lorraine was murdered in a most unusual way. Some medieval historians tried to describe what happened in polite terms by saying that Godfrey was attacked after he had “withdrawn.” What they meant was that he sat down to use the bathroom and an assassin hiding in the toilet speared him from below. Ouch! 

Of course, your chances of meeting a similar end are pretty slim. But that doesn’t mean that doing your business is always safe. These are some of the strangest and most surprising ways that toilets have killed people.

Bathrooms have many hazards

The kitchen, with its sharp knives and hot stove, is often thought of as the most dangerous room in the home. But according to the CDC, up to 80 percent of home falls occur in the bathroom, due to the slippery, hard surfaces of tile floors and bathtubs. 

In the U.S. alone, about 40,000 injuries per year are specifically related to toilets. People can get pinched by the toilet seat while getting up or sitting down, and under rare circumstances, toilet bowls may collapse under a person’s weight. 

While statistics on toilet-related deaths are not specifically tracked, there are a number of ways that toilets can kill. Babies can drown in toilet bowls, and seniors can suffer serious falls after standing up from using the toilet, especially if they hit their head as they fall. Safeguards like bathroom handrails or locks on toilet lids can help reduce the risk of these incidents in homes.

At least some toilet-related deaths are from people trying to poop while constipated. Straining to poop puts strain on your heart, especially when you hold your breath while pushing (an action called the Valsalva maneuver). This can spike your blood pressure and even cut off oxygen flow to your brain. 

To minimize risk, doctors recommend that you take chronic constipation seriously, especially if you have a heart condition. Some doctors also advise squat toilets as the healthier option overall. When you use a squat toilet, poop can pass more easily out of your body and with less straining than when you use a seated toilet. 

Beware of pit toilets, especially if you’re meeting German nobility

Each toilet design comes with unique hazards. Before modern plumbing and sanitation, toilets were simply pits, dug as deep as possible and sometimes connected to underground water sources. 

Historically, these long shafts and dark waterways could prove deadly to people who accidentally tumbled in. In places where pit latrines are still used today, such as parts of rural Africa, they remain a safety concern and an occasional cause of death, especially for children.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the literal pitfalls of this type of toilet design occurred in 1184 at the cathedral of Erfurt in Germany. A meeting of nobles called by King Henry VI to settle a land dispute dissolved into chaos when the cathedral’s wooden floorboards collapsed. 

Some 60 people plummeted through the floor into the latrine cesspit below, where they drowned in what became known as “the Erfurt Latrine Disaster.” The few survivors included the king and the local archbishop, who had been seated above floor level in a stone alcove.

A deadly WWII submarine toilet disaster

Aboard ships and submarines, faulty plumbing can easily cause water to leak into a vessel, and there have been subsequent cases of fatal drowning. 

In 1945, a German submarine called U-1206 was sent to the North Sea, fitted with state-of-the-art plumbing that expelled waste into the surrounding ocean through a series of valves. 

However, flushing the valve system was complex. After only eight days at sea, the young captain of U-1206 flushed incorrectly, causing the plumbing to backfire. Sewage flooded in and soaked the submarine’s batteries, releasing deadly chlorine gas that forced the crew to surface and evacuate. 

Three men drowned trying to escape the sinking vessel, and the rest were captured by Allied forces: All because of a toilet.

Metal toilets can pose real risks

On at least two occasions, U.S. prisoners have died from electrocution due to metal prison toilets. One of these prisoners was Michael Anderson Godwin of South Carolina, who was convicted of murder in 1983. 

In 1989, Godwin was fixing the TV in his cell while sitting on the toilet and placed a wire in his mouth, resulting in a fatal electric shock. In a bit of grim irony, Godwin had previously had his sentence reduced and avoided execution by electric chair. 

Similarly, in 1997, Laurence Baker of Pittsburgh died of electrocution on his cell toilet, due to the current from homemade earphones he had plugged into the TV. 

If you find yourself using a metal toilet, best to avoid electric devices altogether.

In 2016, a snake attacked from a toilet bowl

There’s probably not a human assassin lurking in your toilet bowl like the one who lay in wait for Godfrey. But what about a dangerous animal? 

Rats and snakes have been known to crawl out of toilet bowls, especially after flooding or heavy rain, as rising water levels can force animals to take shelter in sewer pipes. 

For instance, in 2016, a python bit a man using a toilet in Thailand. While such an attack might be painful and shocking, it’s still very rare, and very, very unlikely to be fatal.

Venomous spiders can lurk in outhouses

It’s best to exercise caution when using outdoor toilets because of a different kind of visitor. Attracted by the presence of flies, venomous widow spiders such as the black widow and its Australian cousin, the redback, are infamous for spinning webs under outdoor toilet seats. 

Before modern indoor plumbing, the phenomenon of these spiders biting people who disturbed them was so common that it formed the focus of the earliest medical study on black widow bites. Published in 1927, the study noted fifteen such cases treated at Los Angeles General Hospital “in recent years.” 

In 1971, Australian country singer Slim Newton even released a comedy song called “The Redback on the Toilet Seat,” with lyrics like “I didn’t see him in the dark, but boy, I felt his bite!” (Technically, only female widow spiders can bite people.) 

While widow spider bites may lead to pain and infection, they are rarely fatal thanks to modern antivenin. The last known death from a black widow bite was in 1983. In Australia, a death from severe infection following a redback bite made headlines in 2016 because it was the first such incident in more than 50 years. 

For the record, the 2016 redback victim was not bitten on the toilet. However, that same year, another man in Australia was bitten by a redback while using the toilet, on two separate occasions. 

So next time you use an outhouse, lift the seat and check before sitting down—just in case.

In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

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You can learn a lot about a society from the way they raise children. That includes not only what children learn, but how, when, and where they play.

Our modern concept of childhood emerged during the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century. Influential figures like philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau promoted the idea that children need special opportunities to explore and express themselves through playtime. 

Before then, children were treated essentially as small adults. Of course, kids in ancient or medieval times liked to run around and play as much as kids today, and they did so wherever they could. But only after childhood became thought of as a distinct stage of life with unique needs did adults start to design spaces like playgrounds.

When we look at the history of playgrounds, we can see how ideas about children’s play have changed over time.

The first playgrounds weren’t for children

The term “playground” predates the modern definition and was first used “to describe a general place of recreation,” Jon Winder, a historian of urban environments at the University of Liverpool in the UK, tells Popular Science. Winder explains that the modern children’s playground originated in 1840s England, when parks in the cities of Manchester and Salford set aside areas for children’s activities. 

The park designers were influenced by earlier German education reformers like Friedrich Fröbel, who outfitted his schools with sandboxes for young students. Best-known for coining the term “Kindergarten,” Fröbel believed that cooperative outdoor play was essential to children’s development.

In the 19th century, “there was quite a lot of sharing of ideas between the UK and Europe” regarding social issues like education and public health, says Winder. The massive changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, including an ever-growing urban population, brought with them concerns about how these changes were affecting adults and children alike. 

Early children’s playgrounds were meant to get kids off city streets

While rural children could still play in fields and forests, working-class urban children often played in the street, exposed to a variety of dangers. Adding children’s playgrounds to cities “was partly about removing [children] from the street” for their safety, says Winder. However, “that idea merged with these ideas about recreation, that there was something inherent about city life that led to physical degeneration of people.” 

The perceived negative effect of city living was considered a potential threat to the British Empire, which needed strong, healthy citizens. Gymnastic exercise regimens like Pilates became the health craze of the time. What people thought was best for adults extended to children, and “the spaces that were set aside for children to play in invariably also had gymnastic equipment,” says Winder.

The first playgrounds were not for fun

Some of the equipment in those first 19th century playgrounds resembles what we might see in an Olympic gymnast’s routine today, such as vaulting horses and climbing rings. Winder points out the absurdity of children being expected to know how to safely and effectively use such things. However, he explains, “It wasn’t about play as we would understand it. It was about physical exercise and strength.” Playgrounds were less about imagination and more about “wholesome strengthening exercises.”

Winder notes that these early athletic playgrounds were also used to enforce Victorian gender norms. Not only were the first playgrounds separated by gender, he explains, “They had different equipment in them, because social reformers thought that girls and boys were capable of different types of physical exercise.” While a girls’ playground might have space for hopscotch and shuttlecock, boys would get more physically challenging equipment like ladders and climbing ropes. 

Furthermore, the design of the first playgrounds seemed intended to keep children themselves conveniently out of sight. Winder noted in 2022 that the first English playgrounds in Manchester “were hidden in the shrubbery on the boundary of the park, to prevent them from spoiling the view of the picturesque landscape.” 

Playgrounds spread around the world

As playgrounds spread to other cities in the UK and continental Europe, British companies began to mass-manufacture playground equipment. The reach of the British Empire meant that such equipment could be exported as far afield as South Africa and New Zealand, bringing with it contemporary ideas about what playgrounds were for.

American social reformers and urban planners soon joined the international conversation. “There were playground campaigners in the UK who were in correspondence with some of the organizations in the U.S.,” says Winder. “They swapped letters and did site visits.” 

American educator Henry Barnard drew up plans for a playground as early as 1848. It featured rotary swings, blocks, toy carts, and a shaded area for teachers to keep watch from. However, the first public playgrounds in the United States weren’t built until the late 1880s, with both Boston and San Francisco claiming the record. 

Following the earlier British model of the playground as a place to work out more than to play, Boston’s children’s playgrounds were part of a larger “open-air gymnasium” for all ages, and were separated by gender. 

However, there were some differences between American and European playgrounds. Early American playgrounds often featured adult facilitators who led athletic activities, something like modern gym teachers, as well as indoor activity spaces for bad weather. And as public playgrounds spread throughout the United States, racial segregation (both legal and de facto) was enforced in many such spaces until the 1950s. 

Putting the “play” back in playground

In 1921, industrialist Charles Wicksteed opened Wicksteed Park in Kettering, England, which Winder calls “a big, significant shift in the development of these children’s spaces.” Unlike earlier public playgrounds, Wicksteed Park emphasized amusement over exercise. Decked out with an ever-evolving range of equipment, as well as a theater, fountains, and refreshment areas, the space was designed to be enjoyed equally by boys, girls, and adults.

Rather than having gymnastics equipment, Wicksteed debuted some new kinds of playground equipment at his park based on fairground rides, such as the first playground slides, which were inspired by early roller coasters. 

Wicksteed is also credited with designing the modern playground swing, after the homemade swings that children had previously hung from trees (or even street lamps). Wicksteed sold his equipment to other parks, and the influence of Wicksteed Park spread far and wide. 

By the 1930s, says Winder, many designers had begun to accept the idea that “playgrounds perhaps needed to be fun to attract children and get them off the street.” While the playground was still seen as a place for children to get physical exercise in the 20th century, it increasingly became a site of entertainment.

The playground’s present and future

Both playground equipment and our perception of playgrounds have become more focused on fun over time. However, this also means that specific manufactured equipment has become increasingly viewed as essential to the playground. Today, park and school administrators may feel pressured to buy the right products to make a playground feel complete. Is it really a playground if there’s no slide or swing set?

Winder identifies a tension between equipment that stimulates creativity, and the constraints of budget and practicality. Kids can do a lot more with sand than with a set of swings, but it’s also a lot more work to keep clean and tidy.

But as ideas about education and the role of play in children’s lives have continued to evolve, the 20th century has also seen an increase in playgrounds that integrate more thoughtfully with the space around them. 

Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck transformed hundreds of abandoned urban spaces into unique playgrounds designed to inspire children’s natural creativity, without dividing them from the rest of the environment, like the first Victorian playgrounds.

Designing playgrounds “was never about making city streets better places to play,” says Winder. “It was about removing kids from the street and segregating them into one place.” 

Winder advocates for urban design that “creates a more balanced relationship between people and vehicles on streets.” With more pedestrian-friendly spaces meshed into urban environments, children can be safe to let their imaginations run wild, whether that’s in a playground, in a park, or in other places set up for foot traffic.

“Kids are inherently playful,” says Winder, and they’ll find ways to play wherever they are. The challenge for adults has always been to try and get them to play the way we want them to.

In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind everyday things.

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