Wallace Macdonald Reyburn (3 July 1913 – 20 June 2001) was a New Zealand-born humourist author and rugby writer who was responsible for a number of well-known

urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

s, including the widespread belief that the flush toilet was invented by Thomas Crapper and that the brassière was invented by

Otto Titzling Otto Titzling is a fictional character who is apocryphally described as the inventor of the brassière in the 1971 book ''Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling'', published by Macdonald in London and by Prentice-Hall in the USA. The name, a ...

. Reyburn wrote several books, some humorous and some not, including on rugby and on the Canadian armed forces, as well as humorous yarns of pseudo-historical nonsense. Reyburn was also the editor of the Canadian magazine ''New Liberty'' before returning to the United Kingdom in 1950. Shortly before his death, he appeared in the ''

Modern Marvels ''Modern Marvels'' is an American worldwide television series that formerly aired on the History Channel and is currently shown on Story Television. The program focuses on how technologies affect and are used in modern society. It is History's f ...

'' episode titled "Plumbing: The Arteries of Civilization", which was the 40th episode of the 7th season and aired 17 December 2000.

Books

* "Some of it was Fun" (1949) * ''Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper'' (1969) * ''Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra'' (1971) * "The Inferior Sex" (1972)

References

"Wallace Reyburn"
obituary in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', 13 Jul 2001. Retrieved 27 January 2010. Canadian humorists 1913 births 2001 deaths Officers of the Order of the British Empire New Zealand emigrants to Canada {{Canada-writer-stub