There are many red-letter dates in the history of toilet paper.
- 1391 - Emperor of China reportedly uses toilet paper
- 1857 - Joseph C. Gayetty produces America's first packaged toilet paper
- 1890 - Scott introduces toilet paper on a roll
- 1942 - All hail two-ply!
- 1955 - First TP TV ad
- 1973 - Johnny Carson joke about toilet paper shortage prompts hoarding
But alas, we couldn't find any allusion to an incident that prompted some teenage genius to reflect, "Hey, what if I hung toilet paper all around my gym teacher's house?" The closest we came was thisUsenet post, in which another truth-seeker ponders the same question but also craps out:
Only hit was ...'festoon the trees and shrubbery of a residential yard with toilet paper...[U.S. slang, mid 1900s-pres.]'
Even Wikipedia's toilet papering entry doesn't flush out the origin of this traditional prank. One thing's for sure: Many teenagers consider TP'ing -- especially on Halloween eve, when toilet paper strewn all over suburban yards reaches epidemic proportions -- as their birthright. In one newspaper article headlined "Toilet-papering teen sues high school officials," the TP'ing teen's lawyer cites the practice's "long history in our community" as evidence that a two-day suspension was cruel and unusual punishment. And one more thing about TP'ing: Practitioners in some parts of the country call it "rolling," as this Harvard dialect study shows.
That's about all the poop on TP'ing we could find. We're wiped, so till
