On the Commode Again Trivia Quiz

Answer: Are all four hooves of a galloping horse ever simultaneously off the ground?

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is best-known for his pioneering work in photography. Using a device called a zoopraxiscope, Muybridge was able to first take dozens of pictures using stop-motion cameras, then project them in order, forming essentially the first motion picture. Legendarily, Muybridge's first project was to settle a question which had puzzled zoologists for years: is a horse ever completely airborne while galloping? Leland Stanford, the namesake of Stanford University, asked Muybridge to prove the answer. The answer was determined to be: yes, there is a time when a horse is galloping with all four legs off the ground.

In his spare time, Muybridge also shot and killed his wife's lover. Muybridge's lawyers claimed that the photographer had been temporarily insane, but Muybridge shrugged them off. Astoundingly, he was let off with a verdict of justifiable homicide. Philip Glass later wrote an opera about the story.

Answer: Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a member of the Dadaist school of art, which is often described as "anti-art" because its members sought...alternate...ways of expressing themselves. Duchamp may be the best-known adherent. In addition to "Fountain", which was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists and denied entry, Duchamp is known for his other "readymades". Such works of art literally consist of ordinary household objects. Examples include "Bicycle Wheel", "Bottle Rack", and "In advance of the broken arm", which is a snow shovel. Duchamp is also known for his painting "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2", which Theodore Roosevelt famously compared to his bathroom rug, and which another critic simply called "an explosion in a shingles factory".

Answer: Hong Kong

The Hang Fung Gold Technology Group is famous for its elegant showroom consisting of dozens of elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted treasures, but the location in Hong Kong is remembered by bathroom enthusiasts for its solid gold bathroom. The toilet is made of 24-carat gold. Owned by Lam Sai-Wing, the Hang Fung group began melting down some of its treasures in 2008, with the worldwide economy tanking and gold hitting record prices of 1000 dollars per ounce.

However, Lam refuses to sell the gold toilet regardless of the price of gold, and the toilet is fully functional for users.

But sorry tourists, no taking pictures of the commode.

Answer: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

It's the comic character of Moaning Myrtle, in fact, who leads Harry and Ron to the solution of a mystery in the second installment of JK Rowling's massively popular series. Lord Voldemort, then the marginally-less-evil persona of Tom Riddle, opened the Chamber of Secrets during his own time at Hogwarts, unleashing a terrible beast called a basilisk. Poor Myrtle was trying to escape bullying in the second-floor bathroom when the basilisk came and killed her immediately. Fast-forward several years, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are at Hogwarts, and the basilisk is back.

Basilisks actually are real lizards that live in South America; ironically enough, they're sometimes called "Jesus lizards" because their webbed feet allow them to walk over water. The "evil lizard monster that kills anything it looks at" is more properly described from actual mythology as a cockatrice.

Answer: Pierre de Fermat

Pierre de Fermat really was a mathematician and a good one, at that. His work in optics gave great insight into the wave nature of light, and he also was responsible for several innovative theorems. None, though, has garnered more attention or controversy than "Fermat's Last Theorem."

You might remember the Pythagorean Theorem from grade school, a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Fermat's Last Theorem states that there are no integers n greater than 2 for which a^n + b^n = c^n, where a, b, and c are also integers. For example, the sum of two perfect cubes is never a perfect cube. In the margins of a book, Fermat's son found a note written by Fermat pointing to the equation, saying that he had a "truly marvelous" proof of the statement...but that it was too small to fit in the margin.

Many mathematicians nowadays doubt that Fermat actually had a general proof for his last theorem. It took until the year 1995, when Andrew Wiles proved the assertion with mathematics that hadn't been developed by Fermat's death in 1665. And to finally prove the "last theorem", Wiles had to lock himself in an attic for seven years.

Answer: Simon & Garfunkel

Paul Simon claimed that he wrote "The Sound of Silence" while sitting alone in a dark bathroom, listening to the faucet dripping. Writing one line a day, the song apparently took six months to compose. The lyrics of the song contemplate the inability for human beings to talk with each other--appropriate, for the alienation felt in the country after JFK's 1963 assassination. Both Simon and Art Garfunkel were 22 when that happened, and their first real hit, "The Sound of Silence", reflected the country's mood when it was released in February 1964.

The classic comedy "The Graduate" features a soundtrack by Simon & Garfunkel, including their now classic hit, "Mrs. Robinson". Interested in more toilet stories? Allegedly, Richard Berry wrote the lyrics to "Louie, Louie" on toilet paper in a public bathroom.

Answer: Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis

The Coriolis effect is the reason that if you throw a ball off a merry-go-round, it appears that the ball is curving in midair. The ball isn't rotating--the observer is. The concept of rotating reference frames wasn't around when Galileo formulated classical relativity. A force is called "fictitious" if the only effect of it can be seen by an observer in a non-inertial reference frame (essentially, someone who isn't accelerating by speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction).

The Coriolis effect is NOT responsible for the direction that toilet water flushes. In fact, toilets don't flush clockwise in one hemisphere and counterclockwise in the other at all! The Earth is a large system which is constantly rotating, and the Coriolis effect does impact which direction cyclones or other air masses rotate. But not small things like your toilet bowl.

Answer: Luge

Luge is a fairly simple sport. Lie face-up on a sled on your back. Go downhill. The faster you are, the better. Sound dangerous? It is. Lugers can achieve speeds surpassing 80 mph (130 kph), often around banked curves which can exert 3-5 G-forces. They also have to steer the sled. There are dozens of injuries, even in Olympic events, since the sport was introduced at Innsbruck in 1964. In 2010 in Vancouver, Georgian athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in a practice run for the luge event. Lugers must have a minimum body weight in order to compete, as air resistance and drag are major factors contributing to success in the event.

The opposite of luge is called skeleton, in which competitors slide face-down, face-first.

Answer: William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was one of the most recognizable American poets of the Imagist movement. Imagists often treasured physical descriptions of objects. Ezra Pound and Anne Sexton were other advocates of the style.

Williams, also a practicing doctor for most of his life, is best-known for his short poem "The Red Wheelbarrow", reproduced in full below.

"so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens"

Rather than attempt to explain the deep meaning of why "so much" depends upon the red wheelbarrow, I will instead quote another Williams poem, this one entitled "This Is Just To Say".

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

There, don't you think you could do that sitting on the toilet some day?

Answer: Elvis Presley

On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley was found dead in a puddle of his own vomit on the bathroom floor at Graceland. The "King" hadn't been well for years, succumbing to his extensive drug use and the emotional turmoil following a divorce in 1973. But the legend lived on. Both doctors who announced cause of death were incriminated for lack of evidence and perhaps over-eager jumping-to-conclusions.

In 1994, the case was re-opened, and the doctor this time found no evidence that a drug overdose was responsible for Elvis' death. Of course, conspiracy theorists complain that the singer is really still alive, perhaps spurred by the incredibly popular and dubious phenomenon of Elvis impersonators.