“I’m gonna paint toilet seats and sell 'em.” Murray started airbrushing the lids to the toilet seats in his basement. “I don’t know why. I don’t understand it.

Over his lifetime, Barney Smith designed, decorated and collected roughly 1,400 toilet seat lids. The master plumber-turned-artist died Tuesday at the age of 98.

The home toilet was a standard siphonic toilet with a tank and lid in a private residence; there was no gap on the center of the seat. Toilet bowls were seeded with MS2 and flushed.

The easiest way to avoid this nastiness coating your bathroom is, simply, to close the toilet seat. "Closing the lid reduces the spread of droplets,” Hill explained. If you’re in a public ...

Dear Annie: I read with interest the letters about putting down the toilet seat. I’ve been browbeaten by various women for the past 60 years about proper seat etiquette, starting with my moth… ...