Notable Bathtubs in History by Miss Cellania
11/18/08
Ah,
the pleasure of soaking in a warm bathtub! People have
been bathing in artificial facilities since about 3300
BC, so there are bound to be some great bathtub stories
in our history books. I found a few interesting ones.
Eureka!
The ancient Greek inventor Archimedes discovered the physics of displacement while soaking in a bathtub.
The
water rose when he got into the tub, and he figured you
could measure the volume of all kinds of objects that
way. As the story goes, he jumped up from the bath,
shouted "Eureka!"and ran around naked telling people of
his discovery. The Emperor had asked whether the royal
crown was pure gold. Archimedes measured the volume of
the crown by water displacement and compared that to
the volume of an equal weight of pure gold. The volumes
were different, indicating that the crown had lighter
material underneath the gold.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
H.L. Mencken wrote "A Neglected Anniversary" in the New York Evening Mail in 1917. The article gave a history of the bathtub in America, with facts like bathtubs were outlawed at one time, and that Millard Fillmore installed the first bathtub in the white house. The entire column was a work of fiction.
Mencken
said it was just a bit of fun, but others suspect that
he wanted to prove the point that readers will believe
anything printed. And they did! He admitted the hoax in
print in 1926, but the genie was out of the bottle.
Books, magazines, newspapers, and classroom teachers
have passed on the "fact" about Millard Fillmore
through the 20th century, and even into the internet
age. The actual first bathtub in the white house is
hard to pin down, since early presidents bathed in tubs
that were brought in and filled with water heated on
stoves, at least as far back as James Madison. Water
pipes were installed in the white house in 1833, during
Andrew Jackson's administration.
Ship's Bathtub
A bathtub on a Navy ship?
Battleships
are designed to carry as much equipment and as many men
as needed without wasting an inch of space. But an
exception was made for the USS Iowa When the ship was
to take President Franklin Roosevelt to the Cairo
Conference and the Tehran Conference in 1943, a bathtub
was installed for his convenience. Roosevelt had been
crippled by Guillain-Barr syndrome since 1921, and
would have had a hard time taking a shower. The USS
Iowa is now looking for a home as a museum ship.
The
Oversized President
William Howard Taft was the heaviest US president at 332 pounds. Early in his administration (1909-1913) he became stuck in the white house bathtub, and had a larger one installed. In 1912, he took his own oversized tub onto the battleship Arkansas for a trip from Key West to Colon. It was not permanently installed. In 1915, the New York Times printed a story of how Taft caused a hotel flood by displacing water in a bathtub in New Jersey.
Death in a Tub
There
have been a few famous people who have died in a
bathtub. Thomas Merton, an influential Trappist monk
and theological writer died at the age of 53 when he
stepped out of a bathtub in Bangkok in 1968. He touched
a poorly-grounded electric fan and was electrocuted.
Singer Jim Morrison died in a Paris bathtub of a heart
attack in 1971. He was only 27, and speculation is that
the heart attack was drug-related. This account has
been disputed and the whole story may never be known.
Eureka!
The ancient Greek inventor Archimedes discovered the physics of displacement while soaking in a bathtub.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
H.L. Mencken wrote "A Neglected Anniversary" in the New York Evening Mail in 1917. The article gave a history of the bathtub in America, with facts like bathtubs were outlawed at one time, and that Millard Fillmore installed the first bathtub in the white house. The entire column was a work of fiction.
Ship's Bathtub
A bathtub on a Navy ship?
William Howard Taft was the heaviest US president at 332 pounds. Early in his administration (1909-1913) he became stuck in the white house bathtub, and had a larger one installed. In 1912, he took his own oversized tub onto the battleship Arkansas for a trip from Key West to Colon. It was not permanently installed. In 1915, the New York Times printed a story of how Taft caused a hotel flood by displacing water in a bathtub in New Jersey.
Death in a Tub