7. Paul Revere went down in history for changing the course of the American Revolution, and he also invented forensic dentistry along the way.
Paul Revere gained fame in the American Revolution. A prominent patriot, his most famous hour came when he rode through the night to warn the colonial militia of the approach of British soldiers ahead of the historic battles of Concord and Lexington. That act alone has inspired a number of art works and poems over the years. But Revere wasn’t just an American revolutionary. He was also a dental pioneer. Indeed, the Boston native is often called the father of forensic dentistry, and some of the techniques he pioneered are still used by dental professionals to this day.
As a young man in 1780s Massachusetts, Revere inherited a silversmiths shop from his father. On the side, he also dabbled in dental surgery. Men from across Boston would come to him for false teeth and fillings. Then, when the Revolutionary War broke out, Revere realized he could used his medical skills to help families who had lost their loved ones in the fighting. He came up with the idea of identifying bodies through looking at their dental work. According to histories of the dental profession, Boston’s most famous messenger was the first person ever to positively ID a corpse through dental prosthetics.