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  • The biggest misconception about George Washington is that he had wooden teeth, and this is one of the myths that Children still repeat today.

  • George Washington suffered from horrible dental disease for many, many years.

  • It played him his entire life.

  • He's pouring money into dentistry.

  • He's getting teeth pulled by the revolution.

  • He was becoming too smooth.

  • Dentures were not made of wood.

  • They were made of human teeth, some of his own.

  • He kept them.

  • They also had ivory, another animal.

  • Teeth, animals.

  • Cows were used, their teeth were filed down.

  • We also know that those dentures were made from the teeth of enslaved people.

  • Washington owned hundreds of slaves.

  • He actually paid money to have healthy teeth removed from enslave people.

  • To then be placed in his mouth.

  • To extract teeth from someone without anesthetic was traumatic.

  • It was horribly painful.

  • It was inhumane.

  • This is somebody that the wealthy elite could.

  • D'oh!

  • That says a lot about power, A lot of control on a lot about the elite nature of owning and slave people and doing what you want to their bodies.

  • Slavery for him, wa central in terms of one status.

  • But it was also crucial to financial success.

  • He had lots of land.

  • It was no good unless you had enslaved people toe work the land.

  • So it is very important to acquire both.

  • If you wanted to be what they would have called a Virginia gentleman, Our founding fathers who were fighting for liberty and independence and justice denied that, too, a whole race of people.

  • In the end, he does the right thing.

  • In his will, he frees his slaves upon the death of his wife.

  • Now you can say he doesn't free him his own life, But he's the only member of the Virginia dynasty to do this.

  • Jefferson doesn't do it.

  • Madison doesn't do it.

  • Monroe doesn't do it.

  • Patrick Country doesn't do it.

  • We just have to understand him as a complicated person who was flawed and who made decisions sometimes on behalf of the nation and sometimes on behalf of himself.

  • And that, to me, does not diminish him as a president or a leader.

  • It just helps us have a more complicated and accurate interpretation of our first president.

The biggest misconception about George Washington is that he had wooden teeth, and this is one of the myths that Children still repeat today.

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