A Roman-era public restroom in Ephesus, Turkey.
Latrines and cooking pots mingle near the front lines during World War I. The soldiers' pit latrines are directly behind the open-air kitchen where three army cooks are preparing food.
A typical American bathroom in 1918, as seen in an advertisement for the G. C. Glass Plumbing company.
The less well-off would have made do with a simple outdoor privy.
Outhouses in back of a butcher's work area in Sydney, Australia in 1900. This photograph was taken in a quarantine area during an outbreak of bubonic plague.
A 'strontschepper,' or feces-collector, collects toilet waste in buckets in this 1953 photograph taken in Amsterdam.
n open drainage channel flowing through a low-income area of Kampala, Uganda. There are no adequate sanitation facilities in this area so the drain is contaminated with raw sewage.
A makeshift latrine in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Children play over an open sewer in the slum of N-gombe in Lusaka, Zambia.
Construction of a latrine slab as part of a WaterAid sanitation program helping a poor community in Tamale, Ghana.
Mithu, next to the latrine his family built following a WaterAid program in Laloich village, Mohanpur district, Rajshahi , Bangladesh.
A family stands outside their award winning toilet built with WaterAid's assistance in Beli, Terai region, Nepal
A "squat-pot" style toilet built into the floor, a common design in many Asian countries.
For those who'd like a little luxury in their restroom, there's always the bidet option.
Airplane toilets use little water and lots of suction to suck waste into a storage tank until it can be emptied.
Possibly the highest-tech toilets are those used by astronauts in space. Here, a mock-up of the toilets on the Space Shuttle at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex.
