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