A judge in California was eating fried oysters, when his teeth met on something hard, which he found to be a pearl. He showed it to a jeweller, who said that it had been ruined by frying. Otherwise, it would have been worth £600!
Source: The Sun (Sydney, NSW: 1910-1954), Sun 24 Aug 1913
During the course of a test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground, two Braidwood spectators, sitting on the grass, with coats off and folded up beside them, noticed a strong smell of something burning. One of the men was smoking a cigarette. They made a hurried examination of their coats, thinking a spark had dropped and was smouldering. The search revealed nothing, but the burning smell persisted. Eventually one of the two accidentally examined his cigarette. Embedded in the tobacco was a half-burnt human tooth !
Source: The Braidwood Dispatch & Mining Journal (NSW: 1888-1954) Fri 25 Dec 1936
A farmer was working a pump over the well at his farm, when the handle sprang from his grasp and knocked him into the well. He fell 20 feet, and his arm was fractured. There was a ladder running up the side of the well, and by hanging on to the rungs with his teeth, dragged himself by a superhuman effort to the top!
A masked bandit, using ordinary pliers, pulled four upper teeth from the mouth of a Greenville, Ohio, businessman, in a vain effort to force him to disclose where his money was hidden!
Source: The Argus (Melbourne, Vic: 1848-1954), Thu 18 Nov 1948
An Elvis Presley fan left the dentist’s office with The King on her crown. She went in to have a permanent crown placed on a tooth, and the dentist handed her a mirror when he was done. She could see the bold letters printed on the cap, which spelled out ELVIS!
Source: The Canberra Times (ACT:1926-1995), Tues 11 Aug 1992
A dentist lost two teeth, when he kissed a woman patient, before extracting an aching tooth in the town of Tran Bang, west of Saigon. The woman’s husband, sitting in the waiting room, heard his wife cry out. He dashed into the surgery and knocked out two of the dentist’s front teeth with a cane!
Source: The Canberra Times (ACT: 1926-1995), Tues, 28 Jul 1964
Young ex-servicemen, who had never worried about their teeth before, became dental conscious, following the care and routine treatment received, while members of the services during World War II. These men continued their routine checks after discharge. In pre-war days, people only thought about the dentist when their teeth started to ache.
Source: The Daily News, (Perth, WA: 1882-1950), Sat 29 Oct 1949
A Marseilles doctor invented a dental paint, which was sold in a bottle and applied like nail polish. It guaranteed “a smile as ravishing as a film star’s.” The doctor commented that “when cosmetics are so much used, people need gleaming white teeth to go with them. There is no longer need for people to show poor or discolored teeth.”
Source: Dampier Herald and Nungarin Standard (Kununoppin, WA: 1943-1954) Thu 29 Dec 1949
According to an American exchange, matrimony is like the signs that read, “Teeth extracted here without pain.” We encourage our friends to enter and try it, and sympathize with them after they have done it!
Source: Great Southern Advocate, (Korumburra, Vic:1889-1906), Wed, 1 Jan 1919
Music came to the aid of a dentist in Buffalo, U.S.A. He would tap the teeth to trace infection, and the tone that responded guided him. Each tooth had a sound, which formed part of a musical scale with the other teeth, and only infected or diseased teeth sounded off pitch. Once he heard a false note, the dentist placed the ball of his fingers on the gums, above the ‘discordant’ tooth, and tapped again. Thus he traced the precise spot affected.
