There's something stuck between my teeth and I can't get it out

Beef from Sunday's roast. It's Wednesday. — Dinner guest, 1815

Fossil teeth almost 2 million years old already have grooves worn by toothpicks, which is a long time to have something stuck. In 1819 a dentist, Levi Spear Parmly, told readers to pass waxed silk thread between their teeth. Johnson & Johnson later made floss from the leftover silk it bought for surgical stitches, and switched to nylon when World War II took the silk.

Noted: in 2016 flossing quietly dropped out of the federal dietary guidelines. Dentists did not drop it.

The full file

The first patent anybody got for floss went to Asahel Shurtleff of Boston in 1874: a pocket gadget that carried the silk thread and cut it, about like the little pack in your drawer. His firm, Codman & Shurtleff, started selling unwaxed silk floss in 1882. That's 63 years after the dentist told everybody to use it. People don't hurry. Johnson & Johnson took the company in, in 1964.

Floss has had other uses. In 1994 a 34-year-old named Robert Shepard climbed out of a jail in South Charleston, West Virginia, on a rope he'd braided from mint waxed floss. Seven packs, braided as thick as a phone cord, up an 18-foot wall. He was loose about five weeks. Say what you want about the man. He flossed.

Relates to No. 00100.