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.