teeth cleaning

What Really Happens When You Remove Years of Tartar Buildup
Tartar — also known as dental calculus — is one of the most misunderstood problems in oral health. Unlike plaque, which is soft and can be brushed away, tartar is hardened mineral deposit that clings stubbornly to the surface of your teeth and along the gumline. Once it forms, only a dental professional can remove it safely.
How Tartar Actually Forms
Plaque is a sticky, colorless film of bacteria that builds up on teeth every day. If it isn't removed within 24 to 72 hours, minerals from saliva start to harden it into tartar. Once that happens, no amount of brushing or flossing at home will get rid of it. It has to be scraped off with a dental tool called a scaler, usually during a professional cleaning.
Tartar tends to build up fastest:
Along the gumline, especially on the inner side of the lower front teeth
Between teeth where flossing is inconsistent
In people who smoke or use to***co
In people with dry mouth or reduced saliva flow
Why It Matters More Than People Think
Tartar isn't just a cosmetic issue. Left untreated, it can lead to:
Gingivitis — early gum inflammation, often the first warning sign
Periodontitis — a more advanced gum disease that can damage the bone supporting your teeth
Bad breath (halitosis) caused by bacteria trapped in the hardened deposits
Tooth staining, since tartar is porous and absorbs pigment from coffee, tea, and to***co
In more severe cases, years of untreated tartar can contribute to tooth loss, which is why dentists in the US, UK, and Canada consistently recommend professional cleanings every six months.
What Professional Removal Looks Like
During a cleaning, a hygienist uses a hand scaler or an ultrasonic device to break tartar into fragments and lift it away from the tooth surface, working section by section until the enamel underneath is fully exposed again. This is often followed by polishing to smooth the enamel and make it harder for plaque to stick in the future.
Patients who haven't had a cleaning in years are sometimes surprised by how much lighter and smoother their teeth feel afterward — a visible, immediate transformation that's become popular content in dental ASMR and satisfying "before and after" videos online.
Preventing Tartar Buildup at Home
While you can't remove tartar yourself, you can slow down how quickly it forms:
Brush twice daily with a fluoride toothpaste, focusing on the gumline
Floss daily to reach areas a toothbrush can't
Use an antibacterial or tartar-control mouthwash
Limit sugary drinks and snacks between meals
Schedule a dental cleaning every six months, even if nothing seems wrong
The Bottom Line
Tartar buildup is common, but it's also entirely manageable with regular dental visits. The satisfying transformation from a tartar-covered tooth to a clean, polished one isn't just visually striking — it's a genuine marker of restored oral health. If it's been longer than six months since your last cleaning, that's the clearest sign it's time to book an appointment.

Picture ❌ reality ✅

Brushing Through Time: The Wild and Weird World of 1600s Teeth Cleaning
Imagine waking up in the 1600s and reaching for... a stick. No toothpaste tube, no electric toothbrush, no mouthwash bottle. Just you, a twig, and whatever was lying around the kitchen. Dental care back then was equal parts resourceful, gross, and surprisingly clever.
The Original "Toothbrush" Was a Twig
Before bristled toothbrushes became common, people chewed on twigs from trees like sassafras and licorice root until the end frayed into soft fibers. Fun fact: some of these woods had natural antibacterial properties, meaning people were unknowingly getting a mild antiseptic clean centuries before mouthwash existed.
Tooth Powder Made From... Burnt Toast?
Forget mint-flavored toothpaste. A popular 1600s tooth powder recipe included burnt bread crumbs, crushed chalk, salt, and powdered cuttlefish bone. The charcoal from the burnt bread actually worked as a mild whitening agent — a trick that modern "activated charcoal toothpaste" brands are still selling today, 400 years later.
Sugar Was a Status Symbol (and a Dental Disaster)
Here's a wild fact: in the 1600s, sugar was so expensive that only the wealthy could afford to eat it regularly. That meant rotten, blackened teeth were actually seen as a sign of wealth and status in some European circles. Queen Elizabeth I herself was famously said to have blackened teeth from her love of sweets.
No Dentists — Just Barbers with Pliers
There was no such thing as a dentist's office. If you had a painful tooth, you'd visit a barber-surgeon or a traveling "tooth-drawer" who set up shop in the town square. They'd pull the tooth out with metal pliers, no anesthesia, often while a crowd watched. Dental pain relief basically meant gritting your teeth (the ones you had left) and enduring it.
Wine Was Considered Mouthwash
Rinsing your mouth with diluted wine or brandy was a common practice, believed to kill germs and freshen breath. Turns out there was some truth to it — alcohol does have mild antiseptic properties, even if 17th-century people didn't understand why it worked.
Boar Bristle Brushes Arrive
The first true toothbrushes with actual bristles started appearing in the 1600s, often crafted with bone or wooden handles and stiff boar hair bristles. They were far from comfortable, but they marked the beginning of the toothbrush as we recognize it today.

The American Legion's Fight to Bring America's Missing Home
For more than a century, one promise has anchored the culture of The American Legion: no one gets left behind. That promise takes concrete form in the organization's long-running advocacy for prisoners of war (POW) and those missing in action (MIA) — a mission that spans five conflicts and, for thousands of families, has never truly ended.
A Mission That Spans Generations of War
The American Legion is committed to a full accounting of every American POW/MIA from the Gulf War, Vietnam War, Cold War, Korean War, and World War II. In practice, that means one of three outcomes for each case: the return of a living POW, the repatriation of remains, or credible evidence explaining why neither is possible.
The scale of the task is sobering. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, 2,646 U.S. service members were listed as missing. Decades of forensic work by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) have identified and returned the remains of 1,067 of them to their families — real progress, but still leaving well over half unaccounted for from that conflict alone. Add in the unresolved cases from Korea, the Cold War, and the two World Wars, and the number of American families still waiting for answers runs into the tens of thousands.
What Advocacy Looks Like in Practice
The Legion's push isn't symbolic — it's policy work, sustained over decades:
Declassification. The organization has consistently called for the declassification of all POW/MIA-related government records, arguing that transparency is essential to resolving cases.
International cooperation. It backs stronger joint commissions with Russia, North Korea, and China — the nations most likely to hold records, remains, or witnesses tied to unresolved cases.
Government accountability. The Legion works directly with Congress and the Department of Defense to strengthen the policies and funding behind accounting efforts.
Presence at DPAA briefings. Legion representatives regularly attend the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's family update meetings, where relatives of the missing hear directly from officials and scientists working active cases. In February 2026, National Security Division Director Sean Counihan represented the Legion at one such briefing in North Charleston, South Carolina, telling attendees, "For more than a century, The American Legion has been guided by a simple truth: We do not leave anyone behind."
The Empty Chair
One of the Legion's most visible gestures is procedural rather than political. Resolution 288, passed at the organization's 67th National Convention, established the POW/MIA Empty Chair as a fixture at official Legion meetings nationwide — a physical, recurring reminder that a seat remains open for every service member still unaccounted for.
A Day Set Aside to Remember
The Legion also helped build the case for what is now National POW/MIA Recognition Day, observed annually on the third Friday of September. Before 1979, no formal day existed to honor POWs and the missing; the first observance was held that year at Washington's National Cathedral after Congress passed supporting resolutions. Today, Legion posts across the country mark the day with remembrance services, and Americans are asked to fly the POW/MIA flag in solidarity.
Much of the movement's early momentum traces back to family members who refused to let the issue fade — figures like Evelyn Grubb, wife of a missing Navy pilot, who co-founded the National League of POW/MIA Families in 1970 and helped force the issue onto the national stage.
Why It Still Matters
Wars end. Files close. But for the families of the missing, resolution only comes with an answer. The American Legion's role — pressuring Washington, keeping cases in the public eye, and standing beside families at every DPAA update — is part of what keeps those cases from being quietly forgotten. It's advocacy built for the long haul, because for some families, the wait has already lasted longer than the war itself.

---

From the road, it looked like nothing more than a tea garden.

In the early 1920s, Beulah and Thomas Marshall built a sandstone tea room on a hill on West Division in Arlington, ringed by gardens, with a view stretching toward Fort Worth. Ladies came for lunch.

Then in 1930, Fred Browning bought the property — right as the crowds from Arlington Downs racetrack were pouring in down the road — and had the entire house jacked up off its foundation so a casino could be built underneath it. Roulette wheels. A rosewood billiard table. Crystal chandeliers over an oak bar. The gaming tables were built to flip over in seconds and pass for dining tables, and behind a two-way mirror sat a hidden room where someone could watch the whole floor unseen.

Getting inside took work: a long driveway, an iron gate, sandstone walls, manned towers, and doors with peepholes. No guns allowed past the entrance — legend has it even Bonnie and Clyde checked theirs at the car.

And if the law showed up, there was an escape route. A fifty-foot tunnel let a man surface in the tea garden or slip out into the woods and vanish. It worked for years — until Texas Ranger captain M.T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas hit the place from behind in August 1947, cutting through barbed wire and coming in the back door.

Here's the twist: in 1956, the hill was sold to a Baptist seminary founded by a preacher who'd spent his career railing against gambling. Today it's Arlington Baptist University. The casino floor is gone, but the tea garden survives, along with the sandstone walls, the old gate — and that same fifty-foot tunnel, still running beneath campus. The university even gives tours.