Beard

A beard is a heavy growth of hair on the chin, cheeks, and adjacent parts of the face of the human adult male.

Image © Acabashi; Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0; Source: Wikimedia 

BEARDS IN HISTORY

In ancient times among many peoples the beard was considered a sign of strength and manhood; it was highly prized, and removal was regarded as a degrading punishment. In the 5th century BC Athenian men began to wear shorter hair, cutting it in ritual offering to Hercules.

Beards, real and fake, remained popular until the reign in the 4th century BC of Alexander the Great, whose soldiers had to shave their beards to avoid having them seized in hand-to-hand combat.

The renowned Scipio Africanus  Major (236-183 BC), conqueror of Hannibal in 202 BC, affirmed the mode in his era for being clean-shaven. He was admired and copied by men throughout the Roman empire and by neighbors.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian shocked his empire by introducing beards into Roman society at a time when the Romans had been mainly clean shaven. Hadrian grew a beard because he wanted to hide his poor complexion.

Wilgefortis was a teen-aged noblewoman whose distinguishing feature was a large beard, which grew after she prayed to God to make her repulsive in order to avoid an unwanted marriage to a Muslim king. Her beard ended the engagement and in anger, Wilgefortis's father had her crucified. Wilgefortis is the patron saint of women seeking refuge of abusive husbands, and the patron saint of facial hair.

Saint Wilgefortis in the diocesan museum of Graz, Austria By Gugganij

Archaeological discoveries suggest that Viking beards were combed, curled, trimmed, and occasionally even bleached blonde.

A decree issued in 1092 by which the ecclesiastical authorities forbade monks to grow beards.

In the Middle Ages the Swedish town of Hurdenburg elected its mayor by seeing which candidate’s beard was selected by a louse.

In the mid 14th century a new fashion sprang up amongst the Spanish aristocracy-every man sported an identical long, black false beard. Soon nobody knew who was who. Debtors escaped recognition by their creditors and villains hid behind cascades of hair while the innocent were led helplessly away to prison. Wives failed to recognize their hair- until it was too late and the market price of hair rose to astronomical heights. Finally King Peter of Aragon stepped in to halt the chaos and passed a law expressly forbidding the wearing of false beards in Spain. 

Henry VIII of England put a tax on beards in 1535, but made his own an exemption. After the beard tax was dropped, his daughter, Elizabeth I reintroduced the beard tax, taxing every beard of over two weeks' growth.

In the 16th century, after Francis I of France accidentally burned his hair with a torch, his male subjects started wearing short hair and trimmed their beards and moustaches.

Hans Steininger, was a 16th century German mayor of a small town, who was said to have the longest beard in the world. He died in 1567 by tripping on his beard. It was over 4 and a ½ feet (137 cms) long and he usually kept it tucked away in a pocket, but during a town fire he forgot to put it in and tripped on in it in the chaos, breaking his neck.

Oliver Cromwell condemned the decadence of the cavalier's flowing hair, moustaches and beards. He believed beards were an icon of the bourgeois cavalier classes and as a result they were going out of fashion.

Tsar Peter I of Russia’s visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. The Tsar imposed on September 5, 1698, a tax on beards. All men except priests and peasants had to pay up to 100 roubles (a small fortune back then) annually and carry around a copper or bronze token to show they had paid the tax. Peasants were allowed to wear beards in their villages, but were required to shave it off when entering the city or pay a one kopek coin for it.

Beards cane roaring back into fashion in the United Kingdom in the mid 19th Century. They had been banned in the army, but the freezing conditions endured  by troops during the Crimean War made shaving and impossible, so facial hair flourished  in the military. This helped to bring mutton chops and other forms of facial hair back into fashion.

In the Victorian era, doctors prescribed beards to help keep men healthy and filter out the coal-heavy London air (it may have made them worse off by trapping pollutants).

On October 15, 1860, an 11-year-old girl, Grace Bedell, wrote Abraham Lincoln with a suggestion. He was running for the Presidency and she urged him to grow a beard. Lincoln was convinced and for the rest of his life he maintained facial hair.

The last US president to have had a beard was Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893.

Benjamin Harrison

Valentine Tapley, a wealthy farmer from Pike County, Missouri was a loyal Democrat. He vowed in 1860 that if the Republican Abraham Lincoln were elected president, he would never shave again. Tapley kept his promise and by the time of his death in 1910, his chin whiskers had attained a length of twelve feet six inches (381cms).

Of the 658 Members of Parliament in 1874, only two were beardless.

In the 1937 Disney animated movie Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, only one of the dwarfs doesn’t have a beard — Dopey. 

In 1955, the New York State Labor Department ruled that “there is nothing inherently repulsive about a Van Dyke beard.”

Roald Dahl wrote his 1980 children's novel The Twits because of his profound disgust for beards. He once said that he found beards to be "hairy smoke-screens behind which to hide" and that the whole business of beards was "disgusting." He also said that he wanted to write a book that would "do something against beards."

Under the Taliban's previous rule, men in Afghanistan were required to grow beards at least four inches (10 cms) long. Under their current rule the Taliban has instructed all government employees to wear a beard or risk being fired,

FUN BEARD FACTS

World Beard Day is celebrated annually on an international level with people from every nation and continent gathering together with their beards. It is held on the first Saturday of September.  While World Beard Day customs specific to their own region, shaving on World Beard Day is universally considered to be highly disrespectful.

Old Order Amish men don't wear wedding rings. Instead they grow their beards out. 

Facial hair doesn't "stop growing", but rather each follicle has a limited lifespan. People who can grow longer beards have follicles that survive for longer before falling out.

The average human beard, if left untended, will grow 14 cm (5.5 inches) a year.

It takes two to six months to grow a full beard but it depends on genetics, testosterone levels and lifestyle choices.

If a man never cut his beard, by the time he dies it would be 30 feet (914 cm) long.

The longest ever beard was that of the Norwegian Hans Langseth. It measured 17ft 6in (5.3 meters) when he died in Kensett, Iowa, in 1927.

The record for the longest beard worn by a living person is held by Sarwan Singh. In 2008, the Indian-Canadian’s beard measured 2.33 m (7 ft 8 in), and when it was re-measured on the set of Lo Show dei Record in Rome in 2010, it was 2.36 (7 ft 9 in ). When re-measured on October 15, 2022, it had grown to 2.54 m (8 ft 3 in). The record, according to the Guinness Book of Records site, requires the holder to keep his natural hair which is “measured wet so the curls do not affect the length of the measurement.”

Beards can slow the aging process by stopping water from leaving the skin, keeping it moisturized.

Bjorn Borg had a no-shave rule at Wimbledon - he and his famous beard won the tournament for five consecutive years.

The music video for Wham's "Last Christmas" was the last time that George Michael was filmed without a beard.

The only member of ZZ Top to not have a beard was the drummer . . . Frank Beard.

Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.

The correct term for fear of beards is ‘pogonophobia’.

Sources That's Life (Octopus Books), Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Daily Express