Do you know what a chamber pot is? Well if not now you will after reading this.
A chamber pot is a small pot, usually ceramic, designed to fit under a bed or in a discreet close stool. Although these pots are not as widely used as they once were, having largely been replaced by indoor toilets. However, in the ere when going to the bathroom involved a trek to the outdoors, people who needed to go to the bathroom at night would use the chamber to to urinate and empty the pot in the morning. In homes which had a household staff, a maid would empty the pots as part of her morning chores.
The basic design of a chamber pot involves a pot deep enough to hold urine without splashing, and a secure lid. Usually, it has handles so that it can be carried easily. While more impoverished households probably had very plain chamber pots, extant examples of lavishly decorated ones can be found in some museums.
A common place for a chamber pot is under the bed, as it is a convenient and ready location. Some people had close stools, pieces of furniture designed to conceal them. In many cases, the close stool had a bench with a lifting lid, allowing women to sit comfortably while using.
During the day, members of the household would be expected to use the privy or bathroom, unless they were ill. The chamber pots from the night before would be emptied and scrubbed before being replaced in the bedrooms. Commonly, they would have been emptied into the privy, but some household simply threw the contents out the window, to the peril of anyone below. This practice came to be frowned upon, because it fouled the streets.
In most industrialized nations, the chamber pot has largely disappeared, except in the form of the bedpan used for invalids. Some people in developing nations still make use of the chamber pots and privies. The idea of the chamber pot lives on in the slang for a child's toilet or potty. Some training toilets designed for children do resemble the close stools of days gone by, since they allow the user to sit and evacuate waste into a bowl below, which must be emptied into a toilet connection to the plumbing.
Source from: www.wisegeek.com
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A horse collar is a part of a horse harness device used to distribute a load around a horse's neck and shoulders when pulling a wagon or plough. The collar often supports and pads a pair of curved metal or wood pieces, called hames, to which the traces of the harness are attached. The collar allows a horse to use its full strength when pulling, essentially allowing the horse to push forward with its hindquarters into the collar rather than to pull with its shoulders as it would be required to do if wearing a yoke or a breast collar. The collar also an improvement on the yoke, as it reduces pressure on the windpipe. From the time of invention of the horse collar, horses became extremely valuable for agricultural success and for pulling heavy vehicles. When the horse was harnessed with the horse collar, the horse could apply 50% more power to a task than an ox due to its greater speed. Horses generally also have greater endurance and can work more hours in a day. The horse collar was important in development of Europe, as the replacement of oxen with horses for ploughing boosted the economy, reduced reliance on subsistence farming and allowed the development of early industry and education in the rise of market-based towns. 
