Dental floss by American dentist Levi .

 Dental floss by American dentist Levi.  In 1885: Dental floss was first developed in  Louisiana by American dentist Levi Spear Parmly who designed the product from a silken thread. 

 Prior to that, the forefathers would use materials like horsehair to get out anything stuck in their teeth. When silk became too costly during WWII, nylon replaced it.

 Proper and regular flossing can help prevent many conditions, including deadly heart disease. 

It is also quite helpful in escaping from prison - that’s right, those nylon strings once did much more that clean out bacteria cells, it cleaned out a jail cell! Here’s the dental floss details.  

In 1994, Robert Dale Shepherd was a 34-year-old inmate in the South Central Regional Jail in South Charleston, West Virginia. 

He was incarcerated awaiting trial on charges of robbing a post office. His record included convictions for manslaughter and armed robbery. 

The 5’9” 155-lb criminal was already in hot water with the guards for scraping mortar in his cell, so he was only allowed out at night when fellow inmates were in lockup. 

On June 29, he made his escape, scaling a 18-ft cinder block wall using 48 strands of mint-flavored dental floss he had braided into a rope about the size of a telephone cord.

 He hid in the woods for 41 days, and was only recaptured after robbing a pharmacy. 

When questioned, this “Spider-Man”, as the press dubbed him, said he planned the escape for days, and bought two 100-yard packs of floss from the prison commissary and traded cigarettes for more floss from other inmates. His rope took seven packs. 

He tied a AA battery to one end and hurled it through a chain-link fence atop the year-old, $12.5 million jail. 

“Getting up the rope was incredibly hard and once I got up, I was so tired,” he said, adding that the strands cut his hands as he climbed. At the top he used a broken hacksaw blade to cut through the fence. 

After he was back behind bars, authorities voted to install razor wire above recreational areas. 

They also stopped selling dental floss to inmates. They didn’t want anyone else to make a clean break.