Jokes

Q: What did the vampire say after the dentist finished checking his teeth?
A: Fang you very much!

Q: What do explorers call it when they go searching for fossil teeth?
A: A molar expedition!

Q: Why didn’t the astronaut bring her toothbrush?
A: She thought that the moon had no cavities!

Q: Why did the male deer visit the orthodontist?
A: He wanted to get his buckteeth fixed!

Q: When the dentist went to the fair, what did he like even better than the roller coaster?
A: The fluorride”!

Trivia

An elephant’s tooth can weigh three kilograms, which is heavier than a big jug of milk!

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

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

Minnows have teeth in their throats.

Rabbit teeth never stop growing. They keep them worn down by gnawing on bark and other hard foods.

Lemon sharks grow a new set of teeth every two weeks. They grow more than 24,000 new teeth every year!

Every year in China, people celebrate a special holiday called “Love Your Teeth Day.”

Three million miles of dental floss are bought each year in North America.

James Dean, the 50s heartthrob, had no front teeth and, therefore, wore a bridge.

George Washington wore false teeth made of ivory.

The Chinese first invented toothpaste 3,000 years ago.

Mick Jagger had an emerald chip put in the middle of his upper-right incisor but later changed it to a diamond.

The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498.

Pierre Fauchard created the first braces in 1728.

According to a Time magazine survey, 59% of North Americans would prefer to go to the dentist than sit next to someone using a cell phone.

Did You Know?

“Painless” Parker

Famous dentist Edgar Rudolph “Painless” Parker, born in New Brunswick in 1872, was booted out of a New Brunswick divinity school for “bad misdemeanours and barefaced falsehoods.” He then took up dentistry, holding street-corner lectures on oral hygiene and pulling teeth on the spot.

Working with a local druggist, Parker, in 1915, developed hydrocaine, an analgesic that contained cocaine. After testing the drug on himself, he billed himself as “Painless Parker, the famous dentist,” and took his show on the road. Parker began as a “street dentist,” setting up a dental chair on the back of a wagon. He offered to extract teeth for 50 cents, and he guaranteed patients that if they felt pain, he would reimburse them $5.

Painless Parker also used showgirls, circuses and whatever other distractions he could think of to bring dentistry to the masses. He once extracted 357 teeth in one day on a vaudeville stage.

He also fathered the modern concept of a group dental practice, in which all services are available under one roof. When he died at 80 years of age, he was running 27 offices on the west coast of the United States, employing 75 dentists.

Doc Holliday

John Henry Holliday was originally a dentist before he became an outlaw. On March 1, 1872, he received the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. Later that year, he opened a dental office with Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta.

Shortly after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis (generally called “consumption” in that era). He was given only a few months to live, but thought moving to the drier and warmer southwestern United States might reduce the deterioration of his health.

In September 1873, he went to Dallas, Texas, where he opened a dental office. He soon began gambling and realized this was a more profitable source of income. In Dallas, he was indicted for illegal gambling, and arrested after trading gunfire with a saloon-keeper, but no one was injured and he was found not guilty.

Holliday first met Wyatt Earp in 1877. Their friendship was cemented in 1878 in Dodge City, Kansas, where both Earp and Holliday had traveled to make money gambling with the cowboys who drove cattle from Texas. Holliday was still practicing dentistry from his rooms in Dodge City, (he promised money back for less-than-complete customer satisfaction). In an interview printed in a newspaper later in his life, he said that he only practiced dentistry “for about 5 years.”

Through his friendship with Wyatt and the other Earp brothers, Holliday made his way to the silver-mining boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. There, Holliday quickly became embroiled in the local politics and violence that led up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.