A holiday developed by a Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga, a black militant, Marxist, and convicted felon. Just five years after this, he was convicted of torturing two black women to death. Observed from December 26 to January 1, Kwanzaa is based on a mixture of East African harvest rituals, called first fruits by Karenga and 1960's radicalism. This is in spite of the fact most slaves came from West Africa. Viewed as an alternative to Christmas, it, nonetheless, is based on race, and not in faith.
Josephine Garis Cochran was the first person to build a practical dish-washing machine, succeeding where some had tried and failed. And it was the chore of washing dishes by hand and trying to save her good china from breaking that caused her to proceed with an idea to invent a unique machine.
Although Harington installed a working model for Queen Elizabeth at Richmond Palace, it took several centuriesâand the Industrial Revolutionâs improvements in manufacturing and waste disposal â for the flush toilet to catch on. In 1775 English inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for a flush toilet. His greatest innovation was the S-shaped pipe below the bowl that used water to create a seal preventing sewer gas from entering through the toilet. In the late-19th century, a London plumbing impresario named Thomas Crapper manufactured one of the first widely successful lines of flush toilets. Crapper did not invent the toilet, but he did develop the ballcock, an improved tank-filling mechanism still used in toilets today.