Things I learnt in class today:

• It's always a good idea to make a cast out of your mouth. Having one handy in case of an injury will enable the dentist to reconstruct your teeth pretty much as they were before. This may not seem like a big deal right now, but if the front teeth aren't placed in exactly the same spot that your brain is expecting them to be, lisping will most probably be the result -- if the teeth are reconstructed from a cast, you can avoid having to re-learn how to articulate s-es.
• People who have had the larynx surgically removed because of cancer are in grave danger whenever they are near water. Usually, people instinctively prevent the water from entering the lungs by using their lips, tongue or epiglottis, but that doesn't help when they have a hole in the neck. If they don't think quickly and cover up the hole immediately, they will drown really, really quickly.
• The vocal organ of fowls is located where the bronchi meet the trachea. This is the reason why roosters can go "cock-a-doodle-doo" after having been decapitated.
• Babies breathe while being breast-fed.
• It is humanly possible to curl the tongue behind the uvula and up into the nasal cavity.
• Talking on an ingressive pulmonic airstream is commonly used to conceal one's voice identity.

Ah, the joys of phonetics!