TBA

Dental Trivia

Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603) filled the holes in her mouth with cloth in order to improve her appearance in public.

There are more dental myths about George Washington than any other person. He lost one tooth after another due to extraction. He suffered from toothaches most of his adult life. By the time of his inauguration in 1790 he had only one tooth left (lower left bicuspid). A hole was made in his denture to allow the natural tooth to stick out. The dentures were made of hippopotamus, deer, horse and human teeth screwed into an ivory base.

His dentist, John Greenwood (1760-1819) invented the first ‘dental foot engine’ in 1790 by adapting his mother’s spinning wheel to rotate a drill.

James Dean had no front teeth.

Walt Disney had wooden teeth.

Mao Zedong, like many Chinese of his time, refused to brush his teeth. Instead, he rinsed his mouth with tea and chewed the leaves. Why brush? "Does a tiger brush his teeth?" argued Mao. Chairman Mao also loved to chain-smoke English cigarettes. When his doctor asked him to cut down, he explained, "Smoking is also a form of deep-breathing exercise, don't you think?"

Mick Jagger had an emerald chip put in the middle of his upper right incisor, but people thought it was spinach. He changed it to a ruby until he got tired of people discussing the drop of blood on his tooth. Jagger finally settled on a diamond.

The Egyptians first invented toothpaste some 5,000 years ago. It was a crude mixture of wine and pumice. From the early Roman Empire until eighteenth-century Europe and America, urine was a main ingredient in toothpaste, because the ammonia in it is an excellent cleaner. Ammonia is still a main ingredient in many types of toothpaste.

The Chinese are credited with inventing the first toothbrushes in the late 1400s. The bristles were made of hog bristles, which were highly effective and popular. The invention of nylon replaced them.

Among the first know dentists were the Etruscans. By 700 BC they were carving false teeth from ivory and bone.

In 200 AD the Romans used a mixture of bones, eggshells, oyster shells and honey to clean their teeth.

In ancient Britain a tooth worn around the neck was believed to ward off toothache.

The ancient Egyptians believed the application of a freshly killed mouse to an aching tooth would cure it.

In ancient Egypt you were more likely to suffer from toothache if you were rich. The rich people could afford honey.

In Louisiana, biting someone with your natural teeth is considered a simple assault, but biting someone with your false teeth is considered an aggravated assault.

In Vermont USA It is illegal for women to wear false teeth without the written permission of their husbands.

Originally, the bristles of a toothbrush were made from the hair of a cow or a hog.

Before toothpaste was invented people used all kinds of dry, rough things as an abrasive to clean their teeth – things like crushed eggshell, pumice the burnt hooves of animals.

Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel load to dentists there.

On June 9, 1996, the Belgian Walter Arfeuille pulled eight railways passenger coaches with a combined weight of 493,563 lbs. a distance of 10ft. 6in. along a track, with his teeth.

A Chinese dentist built a tower made of 28,000 human teeth.

$4,560 is the largest sum ever paid for a tooth. The tooth in question came from Isaac Newton's mouth and was set in a ring.

Brother Giovanni Battista Osengio of Italy extracted 2,000,744 teeth between 1868 and 1904. The world's most dedicated religious dentist conserved every tooth he extracted in three enormous casks.

The Mexican version of the Tooth Fairy is known as the Tooth Mouse, which takes the tooth and leaves treasures in its place.

It is an old superstition that to dream of teeth is to bring sorrow; and it is unluckier still to dream of teeth falling out.

To have a gap between your front teeth (a diastema), however, is a sign of prosperity and indicates future happiness.

A time honored custom in England which carried through to colonial Australia, was the belief that mice had magical powers. When a child lost their first baby tooth it was dropped into a mouse hole to ensure the little person's freedom from toothache.

The defenders of the Alamo were the first to try chewing gum in America. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican dictator who fought Davy Crockett and his Texas comrades, introduced modern day chewing gum. His version of chewing gum was chicle, the latex sap of the sapodilla tree. Thomas Adams, an American inventor, used chicle as the base for commercially based chewing gums.

The average human produces 25,000 quarts of saliva (spit) in a lifetime. That is enough saliva to fill 2 swimming pools.

A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 mph!

Most tooth loss in people under 35 years of age is caused by athletic trauma, fights or accidents.

Children begin to develop their primary teeth 6 weeks after conception while in their mother’s womb.

In the middle ages, people believed that dogs teeth boiled in wine made an excellent mouth rinse for tooth decay prevention.

Ancient cultures chewed on twigs or roots to clean their teeth.

Boar, badger and horse hair were used for toothbrush bristles but were later found to be abrasive and harsh.

The first nylon bristled toothbrush with a plastic handle was invented in 1938.

The first American to get a patent for a toothbrush was H.N. Wadsworth.

The electric toothbrush first appeared in 1939.

Colgate introduced aromatic toothpaste in a jar in 1873.

Colgate dental cream was packaged in collapsable tubes in 1896.

Dogs have 42 teeth while cats have 30 teeth.

Pigs have 44 teeth.

Armadillos have as many as 104 teeth.

Sharks have an unlimited supply of teeth.

Rabbits, squirrels and rodents teeth never stop growing. They keep them worn down by gnawing on hard foods like bark.

Even though whales are very big, some of them don’t have any teeth. They have rows of stiff hair-like combs that take food from the ocean.

Snails are very small but they have thousands of tiny teeth all lined up in rows.

Minnows have teeth in their throat.

A crocodile replaces its teeth over 40 times in a lifetime.

Turtles and Tortoises are toothless.

A mosquito has 47 teeth.

An elephant’s tooth can weigh over 6 pounds. That’s heavier than a big jug of milk!

Fangs are not found in all snakes, but all snakes do have teeth, usually 6 rows worth. The teeth are curved backwards, just like the barbs on a fishing hook which keeps their prey from escaping.

“Long in the Tooth”, meaning “old”, was originally used to describe horses. As a horse ages, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing in length. The longer the teeth look, the older the horse.

Aardvark teeth have no enamel coating and are worn away and regrown continuously.

The mammal that has the most teeth is the long snouted spinner dolphin with 252 teeth.

Famous Dentists

Paul Revere - warned American colonists in 1775 about approaching British.

was first known Forensic Dentist. Identified a friend who had died in

battle by his bridge appliance he wore.

Doc Holiday - helped Wyatt Earp win the OK Corral Shootout.

Thomas Welch - his company was the first to bottle grape juice.

George Grant - invented the wooden golf tee.

Zane Gray - wrote best selling Western Novels.

William Morrison - invented in 1897 the machine that makes cotton candy.

unveiled at the World’s Fair in 1904 in St. Louis and was