To be sure, George Washington was an honest fellow by all accounts, smart and upstanding, and yes, his father did buy him a hatchet when he was six years old—hoping perhaps his son might become a lumberjack, or at the very least, an arborist. Instead, Washington employed it to chop down a cherry tree. Never did Augustine Washington, an iron ore industrialist by trade, imagine that his son would one day cavort across the world’s stage sporting a mouthful of dead men’s teeth! Really the only aspiration dear Augustine had for his eleven year old was to throw a nickel across the Potomac, and well, yes, he did that too—in addition to regularly carrying hefty burdens on his back for an undisclosed number of miles and then chopping wood for 12 days straight! But really, these feats pale in comparison to having to silently suffer the unseen pain of dental disease for the duration of his life.

Embarrassed by the faded and stained dentures made from hippopotamus ivory and horse teeth as well as the teeth of cadavers, Washington spent his life searching for the perfect set of choppers that wouldn’t tear his mouth to shreds—teeth so luminous and white, he could finally open his mouth to speak without suffering complete humiliation. But sadly, the best he could do were a set made by his dentist Dr. Greenwood, who claimed to have personally pulled the “set” himself from the mouths of 12 enslaved men while they were still alive. But Washington, who was no abolitionist, didn’t care. He needed those teeth!

By the time of his inauguration, dear George had but one tooth left, showing great strength when giving the inauguration speech despite his bloody malformed dentures. You can go visit his “Pearly Whites,” stained not only with port wine and tobacco but the blood of enslaved men, proudly displayed at the Lady Society in Mount Vernon.