I'm not sure how many years it has been since I used a roll of toilet paper as an object for a communion meditation at church. Just like the blood of Christ, it has a dirty job to do - a mess to clean up.
In the past many things were used in its place including, grass, leaves, fur, mussel shells, corncobs, stones, clay, sponges, catalogs, and even the left hand.
The first official toilet paper appears to have come from the 14th century when Chinese emperors ordered it in 2-foot x 3-foot sheets. In the U.S, Joseph C. Gayetty of New York started producing the first packaged toilet paper in the in 1857, and the stuff we're familiar with today came about in 1880. In 1935, Northern Tissue advertised "splinter-free" toilet paper, apparently early paper production techniques sometimes left splinters embedded in the paper. Ouch!
Today there are over 5,000 different companies producing bathroom tissue around the world. With a little over 6 billion humans living on earth, that calls for the daily production of 83,048,116 rolls per day with no days off and no vacations, 30.6 billion rolls per year and 2.7 rolls per second.
Amazing what you can learn on the web.
Dear Lord, Thank you
- For toilet paper
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