As pubished in Allure Magazine, Tooth history has had it’s moments of true brilliance…
1000 B.C.: Approximate year of Africa’s Bantu migration. The people believed death entered the body through the teeth; to allow death to exit, they filed their teeth into triangular points.
19:20 Passage in the Book of Job in which the phrase “by the skin of one’s teeth” may have originated.
794: The approximate year Japanese women began blackening their teeth in a custom known as ohaguro. Blackened teeth symbolized girls’ entrance into womanhood, high social status, and increased sex appeal.
1st Century Romans used human urine imported from Portugal to whiten their teeth.
59% of American adolescents had tooth decay in 2004 study
2008: The year fashion designer David Delfin had an orthodontist make a gap between his front teeth to serve as a metaphor for the separation he felt after his father’s death.
20th Century Singmund Freud wrote that dreams about losing teeth reflected a fear of castration
65% of Chicago-area dentists saw an increase in teeth-grinding and jaw-clenching problems when unemployment rates were high in 2009