You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

The use of toilet paper has been traced as far back as 6th-century China. In 1393, while medieval Europe was still wiping with rags, wool, and hay, the Imperial Court in Nanjing was documented to have used 720,000 sheets of toilet paper, and we're not talking small squares — each sheet was roughly 2 by 3 feet. The emperor and his family alone used 15,000 sheets of "a particularly soft and perfumed" type of TP.

[Lee Stewart]

Whether it's been with leaves, corn cobs, or pages of the Sears catalog, people have been wiping long before toilet paper was available or popular. But it was a New York man named Joseph Gayetty that invented sheets of aloe-infused hemp in 1857 that were specifically meant for cleaning up our nether regions. A few decades later, Clarence and E. Irvin Scott popularized toilet paper on a roll, but the embarrassed brothers didn't claim their innovative new product for years.

[Lee Stewart]

Today's toilet paper is noted for its softness and smoothness, with fancy additives like lotion and aloe, but that wasn't always the case. It used to be far more rough and coarse, and nascent production techniques meant that your most delicate bits could be in for an unpleasant surprise. It wasn't until 1935 that the brand Northern Tissue (now Quilted Northern) began to specifically market "Splinter Free" toilet paper.

[Lee Stewart]

Despite Americans' burgeoning love affair with toilet paper, talking about it was considered uncouth. Until close to the turn of the century, magazines wouldn't accept ads for toilet paper, and it wasn't until 1975 that TV commercials could even call it toilet paper instead of the euphemistic "bathroom tissue."

[Lee Stewart]

In the 1950s, toilet paper in shades of pink, blue, and other cotton-candy hues started crowding shelves. It only made sense: New bathrooms were being outfitted with all manner of colorful, coordinated toilets, sinks, tubs, and tile. Colorful toilet paper eventually fell out of favor in the '80s, apparently when health officials started warning that the dyes could have adverse effects on users' skin and the environment.

[Lee Stewart]

Europe-based Renova, a luxury paper products company, sells scented three-ply toilet paper in a variety of colors, including red, fuschia, and black. It doesn't come cheap, with a pack of six 140-sheet rolls selling for more than $8.

[Lee Stewart]

Johnny Carson Helped Touch Off a Toilet Paper Shortage in the '70s

In late 1973, the iconic late-night talk show host joked about toilet paper potentially running out after reading media reports about a pulp-paper shortage. Carson's audience, wary from shortages touched off by the OPEC oil embargo, flooded stores to buy all the toilet paper they could find, keeping store shelves bare and reinforcing the notion of a shortage where there really was none.

[Lee Stewart]

The timid grocer who pleaded with patrons not to squeeze the Charmin appeared in a staggering 504 ads for the toilet paper brand during a 21-year span, from 1964 to 1985. At one point, he polled as the best-known American behind only Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. His ubiquitous (but perhaps not quite as iconic) successors? Cartoon bears who have a disturbing habit of "leaving pieces behind."

[Lee Stewart]

The average American uses 57 squares of toilet paper every single day, or roughly 100 rolls a year.