108 Fun Facts About Beards

Beard growth in men is driven by the stimulation of hair follicles by which hormone?

Dihydrotestosterone is made from testosterone, and the same hormone that thickens the beard also shrinks scalp follicles, which drives male-pattern baldness.

Which naturalist argued that men's beards arose as an ornament to attract women?

Charles Darwin called it sexual selection: in The Descent of Man he argued that men's ape-like ancestors acquired beards to charm the opposite sex, and that women lost their body hair as an ornament too.

Long before Cleopatra, which female pharaoh had her statues show her wearing a king's false beard?

Hatshepsut took on the full regalia of kingship in her portraits, false beard included, and after her death her statues were torn down and her name was struck from the king list.

How did the Spartans punish cowards, according to ancient sources?

By shaving off part of their beards: Plutarch says Sparta's 'runaways' went about with half the beard shaved and half grown, in patched cloaks, and anyone who met them could strike them.

Roman writers Varro and Pliny say the first barbers reached Italy around 300 BCE from which island?

Sicily supplied them, brought over by one Titinius Mena; before that, Varro notes, Romans went unshorn, as the long hair and big beards on their oldest statues showed.

According to Cassius Dio, which Roman emperor first set the fashion of wearing a beard?

Hadrian broke with generations of clean-shaven emperors, and the Historia Augusta claims he wore a full beard to cover natural blemishes on his face.

Nero sealed the hair from his first shave in a pearl-set gold box and dedicated it to which god?

Jupiter received the box on the Capitol, and in Cassius Dio's telling Nero founded a new festival, the Juvenalia, in honour of the shave and made nobles perform on stage.

Which Greek Stoic said he would sooner lose his head than shave off his beard?

Epictetus tells it in the Discourses: a philosopher does not shave, he says, and to the threat of beheading he answers that if it will do any good, go ahead.

Which Roman emperor had the hair and beard of the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana forcibly shaved off?

Domitian had the sage shorn and chained before his trial, and in Philostratus's telling Apollonius only remarked that he had not realised it was his hair that was at risk.

Which Germanic people are said to be named for their long beards?

Lombards comes from Langobardi, usually read as 'long beards'; in their own legend the women tied their hair across their faces like beards, and the god Godan asked who the long-beards were.

Tacitus wrote that a young man of the Germanic Chatti could not shave or cut his hair until he had done what?

Killed an enemy: only then did he bare his face, standing over the body, and Tacitus adds that the bravest Chatti also wore an iron ring, a badge of shame, until their first kill.

Which Spanish hero boasts that no man has ever plucked his beard?

El Cid makes the boast in the Poem of the Cid, at the king's court, where he arrives with his long beard bound in a cord and reminds a rival count that he once tore a tuft from the count's own beard.

Which emperor do medieval epics give a great white 'blossoming' beard?

Charlemagne is 'Charles the old, with his great blossoming beard' in The Song of Roland, written centuries after his death; in life he wore his hair short and kept a moustache.

Which Russian tsar shaved his nobles himself, then taxed beards?

Peter the Great came home from a tour of Western Europe in 1698 convinced that Russia had to modernise, and at his welcome reception the beards were the first thing to go.

Which Russian empress finally lifted the beard tax, decades after it was introduced?

Catherine the Great ended a levy that in its early years charged even a peasant a kopek for his beard each time he passed through a town gate.

What did Russians who paid the beard tax have to carry as proof?

A copper or silver token proved payment, silver for nobles and copper for commoners, and guards at town gates could turn back any bearded man without one.

Which rock band's longtime drummer, Frank Beard, was famously its only member without a long beard?

ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill came back from a late-1970s break wearing the chest-length beards that became the band's trademark, while Frank Beard went without one.

Which bearded French king obtained a papal brief letting him tax priests who kept their beards?

Francis I used the brief to raise money: wealthy court clerics paid and kept their beards, poor village priests had to shave, and the two camps came to resent each other.

A persistent legend says which bearded English king introduced a tax on beards?

Henry VIII is the usual culprit in the story, yet the National Archives at Kew holds no record that any such tax was ever passed.

Pope Clement VII grew a beard in mourning for which disaster?

The sack of Rome by an emperor's mutinous, unpaid troops left Clement VII holed up in the Castel Sant'Angelo, and his mourning beard broke the church's own rule that clergy shave.

Which pope grew a beard in 1511–12 as a sign of mourning for the loss of the city of Bologna?

He is regarded as the first pope of relatively modern times to wear a beard, though he only kept it for a while.

Which English sea captain claimed in 1587 to have 'singed the King of Spain's beard'?

Francis Drake was boasting of his raid on Cádiz, where he burned ships and stores gathered for the invasion of England; it set the Armada back by a year but did not stop it.

Which pirate is said to have fought with lit fuses smoking under his hat?

Blackbeard owed his name to a luxuriant black beard that, by a 1724 account, he grew up to his eyes and twisted into small tails tied with ribbons.

As of 2025, who was the last U.S. president to keep a moustache or beard in office?

William Howard Taft's moustache left the White House in 1913; the only presidential whiskers since were the five-day 'Jeff Davis' stubble Harry Truman grew on holiday in Key West in 1948.

Which vice president was the first since 1933 to wear facial hair in office?

JD Vance ended a long drought: the last major-party presidential nominee with facial hair was the moustached Thomas Dewey, and some pundits blamed his 1948 defeat partly on the moustache.

Which 11-year-old girl wrote to a presidential candidate in October 1860 urging him to grow a beard?

Grace Bedell told the future president his face was so thin that whiskers would improve it, and that ladies who liked them would tease their husbands into voting for him.

Which Union general's flamboyant whiskers gave English its everyday word for hair grown down the cheeks?

Ambrose Burnside joined his cheek whiskers to his moustache and shaved his chin; the look was first called 'burnsides', and the word was later flipped into sideburns.

Which entertainment company banned beards on its theme-park staff for more than 50 years, until 2012?

Disney had barred facial hair since Disneyland opened in the 1950s and relented on moustaches only in 2000; even the 2012 rule kept beards to a quarter of an inch.

The Van Dyke beard is sometimes called a 'Charlie' after which monarch, who was painted wearing one?

Charles I of England even had van Dyck paint his head from three angles on one canvas, so that Bernini in Rome could carve his bust without ever meeting him.

A chin curtain beard, covering the chin with no moustache, is also known by which president's name?

Lincoln had never worn whiskers before the 1860 campaign, so the beard that gave the chin curtain its other name was only months old when he took office.

Which composer's name is given to a short rounded beard with a prominent moustache?

Verdi lent his name to a cause as well as a beard: from 1859 Italians painted 'Viva VERDI' on walls as a coded cheer for Vittorio Emanuele, Re d'Italia.

Bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst won which international contest for Austria in 2014?

Eurovision crowned her despite petitions in Russia and Belarus to cut her from the broadcast; the beard, she said, was a statement that you can achieve anything however you look.

A wide, full beard with a rounded bottom and moustache is named after which Italian revolutionary?

Garibaldi gave his name to more than a beard: his volunteers' red shirts became a fashionable women's blouse in the 1860s, and Britain's currant-filled Garibaldi biscuit dates from 1861.

Which everyday phrase was coined by an ad agency to sell Gem razor blades?

Five o'clock shadow began as copy for Gem blades, printed beside a clock dial set to five with a man's face across it, and the phrase soon outgrew the brand.

Which NHL team is credited with starting the playoff beard tradition in the early 1980s?

New York Islanders players let their beards grow through the 1980 playoffs and won the Stanley Cup, the first of four in a row; by their own account they were simply too tired to shave.

Which baseball team barred its players from wearing beards for nearly half a century, until 2025?

New York Yankees players could keep a moustache but no beard under a rule George Steinbrenner brought in during the 1970s; his son Hal relaxed it in 2025 to allow well-groomed beards.

Which MLB team ended its 32-year ban on facial hair in 1999 so slugger Greg Vaughn could keep his goatee?

Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott waived the rule at Vaughn's request just before spring training, and players who had put off shaving walked into camp with their beards intact.

Which MLB team's bearded 2013 squad inspired a $1 'Dollar Beard Night' for fans?

Boston Red Sox players tugged each other's beards to celebrate big plays, fans turned up in real, painted or fake ones, and the team won that year's World Series.

Reliever Brian Wilson began growing his famous black beard during the 2010 pennant race with which team?

San Francisco Giants fans waved 'Fear the Beard' signs through the 2010 title run, and when asked whether its jet-black colour was dyed, Wilson coyly dodged the question.

In which country was the first World Beard and Moustache Championships held, in 1990?

Germany hosted it in the Black Forest village of Höfen an der Enz, and German beard clubs so dominated the early contests that American rivals spoke of trying to dethrone them.

In which Texas city were the 2017 World Beard and Moustache Championships held, with a then-record 738 competitors?

Austin's own Facial Hair Club played host to entrants from 33 countries, and new craft categories let women compete in beards and moustaches they had made themselves.

Which artist gives his name to a World Beard and Moustache Championships class for slender moustaches with upturned tips?

Salvador Dalí modelled his upturned waxed moustache on the painter Velázquez's, and in 1954 he published a whole book of photographs devoted to it.

In which city did 30 friends grow moustaches in 2003, the stunt that became the Movember Foundation?

Melbourne's 30 raised nothing that first year; a year later the growers' cheque was the largest single donation the country's Prostate Cancer Foundation had ever received.

To which museum was Hans Langseth's 5.33-metre beard, the longest ever recorded, donated in 1967?

Smithsonian Institution anthropologists took it in from his son; Langseth had started the beard at 19, never shaved again, and in old age toured America with a sideshow to show it off.

The lammergeier, a bird of prey that lives almost entirely on bones, is better known as what?

Bearded vulture is its plainer name; it carries bones too big to swallow into the air and drops them on rocks until they shatter, then lets a highly acidic stomach dissolve the pieces.

Bearded dragons are native to which country?

Australia is home to every species; the 'beard' is a spiny throat pouch that the lizard puffs out and turns black to bluff a rival or a predator, while a slow arm wave signals surrender.

On a turkey, what exactly is the 'beard'?

Stiff, hair-like feathers on the breast form the beard, which keeps growing all a tom's life; about one hen in ten grows a wispier one too.

Amish and Hutterite men traditionally shave until which life event, then grow a beard?

Marriage is the cue, so the beard marks a man as a husband much as a ring might; the moustache stays shaved, a rule usually traced to its old association with soldiers.

In Sikhism, keeping the hair and beard uncut is which of the Five Ks?

Kesh, uncut hair, signals a willingness to accept the body as God made it; a small comb is worn alongside it to keep the hair tidy.

A hadith in al-Bukhari's collection tells Muslim men to leave the beard and do what to the moustache?

Cut it short: the saying runs 'Cut the moustaches short and leave the beard', which is why some devout men, many Salafis among them, pair a long beard with a shaved moustache.

In Greek art Zeus and Poseidon are bearded, but which Olympian appears only as a beardless youth?

Apollo was the Greek ideal of the kouros, the smooth-cheeked young athlete, whereas Dionysus and Hermes began as bearded gods and turned into beardless youths only in later art.

Why have professional airline pilots traditionally been required to be clean-shaven?

To seal oxygen masks properly was the fear, but a Simon Fraser University study in a pressure chamber found bearded faces sealed just as well, and in 2018 Air Canada let its pilots grow beards.

In 2010 a city in which country banned beards on its male municipal staff, saying some citizens found them unpleasant?

Japan's city of Isesaki issued the rule after complaints about staff coming to work unshaven; an official explained that public servants should look like public servants.

Which apostle does Western art, Leonardo's Last Supper included, usually paint as a beardless youth?

John was by tradition the youngest of the twelve, so painters left him smooth-cheeked; that soft look in Leonardo's mural is what let The Da Vinci Code claim the figure was Mary Magdalene.

In the Homeric epics, touching another man's beard was a common way of doing what?

Pleading with him: in the Iliad the sea-nymph Thetis clasps Zeus's knees with one hand and touches his chin with the other to beg honour for her son Achilles.

Whose example made shaving fashionable in Greece near the end of the fourth century BCE?

Alexander the Great is said to have ordered his Macedonians to shave so that no enemy could seize them by the beard, and the clean chin spread through the Greek world in his wake.

Julius Caesar wrote that the Britons shaved their bodies but left hair on the head and where else?

On the upper lip, Caesar reported, which left the Britons with long hair and moustaches; he added that they dyed their skin blue with woad to look more terrifying in a fight.

In mid-Tudor England, a clergyman's beard was read as a gesture of what?

Rejection of the Catholic church was the message: late medieval priests shaved, and Archbishop Cranmer's beard, grown from 1547, was said to mark both his grief for the late king and his break with the old church.

Which Cold War leader's famous beard did the CIA plot to destroy with thallium salts to dent his image?

Fidel Castro was meant to be humiliated, not assassinated, by this scheme. Another plan would have laced his radio studio with an LSD-like drug so that he rambled on air.

Which video game hero was given a moustache because early arcade graphics made a mouth too hard to draw?

Mario owes his moustache and big nose to designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who needed a face that read as human in a few pixels. The red cap likewise saved him from animating hair.

Filming of which Tom Hanks movie stopped for a year so he could lose weight and grow a shaggy beard?

Cast Away kept its crew busy during the break: director Robert Zemeckis used the same team to shoot the thriller What Lies Beneath while Hanks slimmed down.

In a standard deck of playing cards, the king of which suit is the only one without a moustache?

Hearts lost its king's moustache when worn wooden printing blocks were copied. The same card is nicknamed the Suicide King because he seems to stab himself with his sword.

Museum workers hastily glued the beard back onto which pharaoh's golden mask after it came off in 2014?

Tutankhamun's plaited gold beard weighs 2.5 kg, and the quick-drying epoxy left it sitting off-centre until conservators restored the mask the following year.

Henry Cavill's moustache, grown for a Mission: Impossible film, was digitally erased from which 2017 superhero movie?

Justice League reshot scenes while Cavill was filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Paramount refused to let him shave, so effects artists rebuilt Superman's top lip.

Which food-brand founder grew a chin beard to look the part of a Southern gentleman, then bleached it white?

Colonel Sanders adopted the look in 1950 after being recommissioned a Kentucky colonel, at first wearing a black frock coat before switching to his famous white suit.

Which bearded novelist is honoured each July by a look-alike contest at Sloppy Joe's bar in Key West?

Ernest Hemingway was a regular at the bar in the 1930s. Its manager launched the Hemingway Days festival, look-alike contest included, in 1981 to promote the bar.

Which Dada artist drew a moustache and beard onto a cheap postcard of the Mona Lisa in 1919?

Marcel Duchamp classed the defaced postcard as one of his readymades. When a friend redrew it for a magazine and forgot the beard, Duchamp later inked it in himself.

Which American swimmer won seven golds at the 1972 Olympics wearing a moustache, while rivals removed their body hair?

Mark Spitz grew it because a college coach said he couldn't, then teased a Russian coach that it deflected water from his mouth and made him faster.

Which white-bearded national symbol points at the viewer from a famous 1917 American recruiting poster?

Uncle Sam on that poster is partly a self-portrait: illustrator J. M. Flagg used a modified version of his own face, while a veteran named Walter Botts struck the pose.

Which showman first exhibited bearded lady Annie Jones when she was only nine months old?

P. T. Barnum billed the baby as the 'Infant Esau' and reportedly paid her parents $150 a week. As an adult she campaigned to drop the word 'freaks' from the business.

Which NBA guard, voted the Most Valuable Player of the 2017–18 season, is nicknamed 'the Beard'?

James Harden started growing it in 2009 because, he said, he was too lazy to shave. It has since appeared on T-shirts, in songs and on a gummy candy moulded with his face.

Which Caribbean island's name comes from a Portuguese or Spanish phrase meaning 'the bearded ones'?

Barbados may owe the name to its bearded fig trees, whose long roots hang like whiskers, though it might instead describe the island's people or even sea foam on the reefs.

Which word, built on the Greek for 'beard', names an irrational fear of bearded faces?

Pogonophobia made headlines in 2013, when broadcaster Jeremy Paxman accused the BBC of it after viewers and newspapers criticised him for presenting Newsnight unshaven.

Hitler's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union was code-named after which red-bearded medieval emperor?

Frederick Barbarossa drowned crossing a river on the Third Crusade in 1190, and legend says he sleeps in a mountain cave until his country needs him again.

Which comedian's famous thick moustache was for years a stripe of greasepaint instead of real whiskers?

Groucho Marx first painted it on before a vaudeville show in place of the glued-on false one he had been wearing, then darkened his eyebrows to match.

Which actor's thick moustache became a trademark of 1980s private eye Magnum, along with an aloha shirt and a Ferrari?

Tom Selleck rounded off Magnum's look with a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, the team of the city where the actor was born.

Which fictional detective, first seen in a 1920 novel, is known for his waxed moustache and egg-shaped head?

Hercule Poirot's moustache is called rigid and military when he first appears, and Agatha Christie wrote that its tips would show even if the rest of his face were covered.

The smiling, moustached mask worn in V for Vendetta depicts which conspirator in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot?

Guy Fawkes got that stylised face from illustrator David Lloyd, who drew it for the 1980s graphic novel. It later became a symbol of protest movements around the world.

Which Harper's Weekly cartoonist drew the 1863 picture seen as the first modern, bearded Santa Claus?

Thomas Nast first drew him as a Union supporter in the Civil War, dangling a puppet of Confederate president Jefferson Davis with a noose around its neck.

Which French author published the folktale of Bluebeard, the wealthy man who murders his wives, in 1697?

Charles Perrault is often said to have modelled the villain on the child-murderer Gilles de Rais, though nothing shows he even knew that nobleman's story.

Which Viking ruler, nicknamed for his facial hair, seized the English throne in 1013 and fathered Cnut?

Sweyn Forkbeard ruled the English for only a few weeks before dying in February 1014, and the nickname itself is not recorded until about 1140.

Which razor brand was founded in 1901 on one salesman's idea of a thin, disposable blade of stamped steel?

Gillette takes its name from founder King C. Gillette, who had earlier worked for, and befriended, the inventor of the disposable crown bottle cap.

Which legendary female saint is said to have sprouted a beard in answer to her prayers, ending an unwanted engagement?

Wilgefortis was known to the English as Uncumber, and her legend may have grown out of images of a bearded Christ on the cross wearing a long, dress-like tunic.

Which biblical figure did Michelangelo carve holding his long beard, with a pair of horns on his head?

Moses has horns because the Latin Bible of the day described him that way after he met God, a detail many scholars put down to a translation error.

Fragments of the stone beard that fell from which Egyptian monument are kept in the British Museum?

The Sphinx lost its ceremonial beard long ago, and pieces were dug out of the sand between the statue's front paws. Scholars still argue over whether it was original or added centuries later.

Which Swedish tennis star's habit of growing a beard for Wimbledon may have inspired hockey's playoff custom?

Björn Borg won Wimbledon five times with his lucky growth, and Sports Illustrated previewed the 1981 tournament with a story announcing that the beard had begun.

Which British service lifted its clean-shaven rule in 1869, but only for a 'full set' of beard and moustache?

Royal Navy sailors long had to ask their commanding officer's permission to stop shaving, and could be ordered to shave again if a fortnight's growth looked too thin.

Which Roald Dahl book about a spiteful, unkempt couple grew out of the author's disgust at beards?

The Twits was Roald Dahl's deliberate blow against beards, and he once told a bearded fellow author's son that his father's probably held that morning's breakfast.

The tongue-in-cheek 'beard-second', inspired by the light-year, is a tiny unit of which physical quantity?

Length is right: a beard-second is how far an average beard grows in one second, about 10 nanometres by one physicist's definition, a scale suited to microchips.

Which brushless shaving cream, launched in 1925, was advertised on rows of small rhyming signs beside American highways?

Burma-Shave put up its first signs beside a Minnesota highway in 1926 and took them down after 1963, when new owner Philip Morris dropped them on its lawyers' advice.

Which book of the Hebrew Bible, in its nineteenth chapter, forbids men to mar the corners of their beards?

Leviticus was read by the rabbis as banning only the razor, so trimming a beard with scissors stayed within Jewish law.

The red on a traditional barber's pole is said to recall which medical service that barbers once offered?

Bloodletting was part of the barber-surgeon's trade, along with pulling teeth. The pole itself stands for the staff that patients gripped to help the flow.

At puberty, hormones turn the fine vellus fuzz on a boy's face into which thicker, darker type?

Terminal hair replaces vellus hair on the face and body during and after puberty, usually far more on men than on women, while fine vellus fuzz is easiest to see on children.

Which A&E reality series followed the long-bearded Robertson family and their Louisiana hunting-call business?

Duck Dynasty took its title from the family firm, Duck Commander, which makes calls for waterfowl hunters. One brother, Alan, stood out as the beardless Robertson.

Which Washington Irving character wakes in the Catskill Mountains to find his beard a foot long and grey?

Rip Van Winkle has slept for 20 years, right through the War of Independence, after sharing strong liquor with a band of bearded strangers playing ninepins.

Which white-bearded village leader in Peyo's comics about tiny blue creatures wears red instead of the usual white?

Papa Smurf wears red trousers and a red cap where the ordinary villagers wear white, and he leaves the village now and then to gather ingredients for his potions.

A mayor's very long beard is said to have caused his death in 1567 in which Austrian town, later Hitler's birthplace?

Braunau am Inn was governed by burgomaster Hans Staininger, born in 1508, and the town still tells the story of the beard said to have been the end of him.

Joseph Palmer, once jailed for defending his beard, joined which Massachusetts commune founded by Bronson Alcott?

Fruitlands failed within seven months, but Palmer stayed to the end, later bought the farm and for 20 years ran it as a refuge for former reformers.

Which moustache style, clipped into a thin line just above the lip, was worn by Clark Gable and Errol Flynn?

Pencil moustaches get the name because the neatly clipped line looks as if it had been drawn on. David Niven and Don Ameche wore the same style.

Which small tuft of hair just below the lower lip became fashionable among 1950s jazz musicians and beatniks?

Soul patch is also called a mouche, and the look spread from African-American jazz players to the beatniks and artists who followed the jazz scene.

Which style of side whiskers, growing wider toward the chin, is called 'friendly' when a moustache links the two sides?

Mutton chops are named for their likeness to a cut of meat on the bone, and the style had crossed from Britain to the United States by the early 1800s.

Which long, drooping moustache is named after a fictional master criminal created by novelist Sax Rohmer?

Fu Manchu wears it in film adaptations of Rohmer's stories. Unlike the similar horseshoe, its two long tendrils hang free of clean-shaven cheeks and chin.

Which narrow moustache style did Charlie Chaplin pick for his Tramp character because he thought it looked comical?

Toothbrush moustaches suited Chaplin because the style was small enough not to hide his expressions, and he added one to look older for producer Mack Sennett.

Which chin beard with a flared moustache is named after an Italian aviator and air marshal of the Fascist era?

Balbo is short for Italo Balbo, who led mass flights across the Atlantic in the early 1930s and came home to the newly created rank of Marshal of the Air Force.

Which 1980s TV cop show made designer stubble a trend through Don Johnson's permanently unshaven detective?

Miami Vice sparked such a craze that in 1986 an electric razor called the Stubble Device went on sale, built to keep a beard at Sonny Crockett's exact scruffiness.

Which wrestling superstar is among the best-known wearers of the horseshoe moustache, which runs down to the jawline?

Hulk Hogan's style is also known as the biker moustache, and the vertical bars of whisker either side of the mouth are sometimes called pipes.

Which relief pitcher's handlebar moustache made him the most recognisable of Oakland's 1970s 'Mustache Gang'?

Rollie Fingers grew it in 1972 for a $300 bonus that owner Charlie Finley offered his players, and modelled it on the look of 19th-century ballplayers.

Sweeney Todd, the fictional barber who murders customers with a straight razor, has his shop on which London road?

Fleet Street's demon barber first appeared in a penny dreadful serial of 1846, and his victims end up baked into meat pies by his partner, Mrs. Lovett.