latrines

(Newser) - A 25-year-old Texan named William Ash and a 21-year old from Quebec named Eddy Asselin climbed into a toilet and dropped into a sewage pit—and that's how the story of "one of history's most disgustingly brilliant escape schemes" begins on Narratively . Stephen Dando-Collins presents this excerpt...

(Newser) - One of the biggest urban archaeological digs Denmark has ever seen has uncovered a lowly part of history. "We are talking about 700-year-old latrines. And yes, they still smell bad," an archaeologist explains. The team stumbled on what appears to be a 14th-century communal toilet area in the...

(Newser) - India's economy may be booming, but 665 million people in the world's second-largest nation have no access to indoor plumbing—not only an inconvenience, but a health hazard that leads to diarrhea, typhoid, and malaria. But these days, newly assertive rural women are insisting that suitors have a toilet before...

(Newser) - Modern squeamishness about discussing human feces can cost lives, Rose George writes in the New York Times. The recent disastrous cyclone in Burma highlights how important waste-containment (read: latrines) is to staving off disease, but if wealthy nations won't deign to discuss No. 2, it's hard for them to organize...