99 Fun Facts About Hair

Hair is made mostly of which protein?

Keratin is the same tough protein that builds fingernails, feathers, hooves and horns, which is why a rhino's horn is closer to tightly packed hair than to bone.

Hair is a distinguishing feature of which class of animals?

Mammals all grow hair at some stage of life, even the ones that look hairless: whales and dolphins sprout a few whiskers on the snout, though most lose them around birth or as they mature.

Which part of a hair is actually alive?

The follicle under the skin holds the only living cells; the shaft you can see is dead, which is why a haircut does not hurt.

What determines whether a person's hair is straight or curly?

The shape of the follicle and shaft sets the curl: round shafts grow straight, and the flatter and more oval the shaft, the curlier the hair.

Which pigment dominates in red hair?

Pheomelanin gives red hair its colour, while eumelanin dominates brown and black hair; blond is not a third pigment, just hair with very little eumelanin.

Why does hair turn grey?

Melanin production slows or stops as follicles age, so new hairs grow in without colour; a single hair never fades, because its colour is set when it forms.

The three phases of the hair growth cycle are anagen, catagen and what?

Telogen is the resting phase before a hair sheds; a shock such as illness or childbirth can tip many hairs into it at once, so they fall out together two to three months later.

Roughly how fast is scalp hair commonly said to grow?

About 1 cm a month is the usual rule of thumb; each scalp hair keeps growing for several years, then rests for a few months and falls out to make way for a new one.

A polar bear's coat looks white, but each of its long guard hairs is actually what?

Transparent: the coat only looks white in the light, and the skin beneath it is black, which helps the bear soak up the sun's warmth.

Does hair keep growing after death?

No, the skin dries and shrinks back around the hair and nails, so stubble only looks longer; real growth needs a supply of glucose that stops with the heartbeat.

Which structure at the base of each hair pulls it upright to cause goose bumps?

Arrector pili muscles tug each hair upright; in furry animals the same reflex traps warm air or makes the animal look bigger, but on human skin it only raises bumps.

Smita Srivastava, who set the 2023 record for longest hair at 7 ft 9 in, is from which country?

She had been growing it for 32 years; the earlier record-holder Xie Qiuping of China had hair over 5.6 metres long.

The three layers of a hair strand, from the outside in, are the cuticle, the cortex and the what?

Medulla: this open, unstructured innermost layer is not always present, while the cortex around it is the thickest layer and holds the pigment and most of the strength.

Ireland and which other country are home to the world's highest shares of natural redheads?

Scotland: a DNA survey found about 40% of people in its south-east carry a red-hair gene variant, most of them without red hair themselves, the highest rate in Britain or Ireland.

The eggs of which parasite are known as nits?

Head lice glue their nits to hairs close to the scalp; they cannot jump or fly, so they spread by crawling from one person's hair to another's during head-to-head contact.

In medieval and Renaissance European art, which biblical figure was traditionally painted with red hair?

Judas Iscariot was often shown with red hair, notably in Spain; the colour was then regarded as a bad trait, and artists may have used it to mark him out.

Natural blond hair in young children often does what as they grow up?

Darkens: many blond children have brown hair by their teens, which researchers think happens because some pigment proteins only switch on around puberty.

Outside Europe, natural blond hair is common among the native people of which region?

The Solomon Islands: up to one islander in ten is blond thanks to a gene variant found nowhere outside Oceania, so the trait arose there on its own, not from European visitors.

In ancient Greece and Rome, blonde hair was strongly associated with which profession?

Prostitutes in ancient Greece dyed their hair blond with saffron to stand out; Roman women later prized the same colour, wearing wigs of blond hair taken from Germanic captives.

What is the medical term for hair loss?

Alopecia goes back to the Greek word for fox, because the Latin term first meant fox mange; the common pattern type affects more than half of men over 50.

Why did the ancient Egyptians invent the wig?

To shield shaved heads from sun: Egyptian men and women cropped or shaved their hair and wore wigs over it; after Rome fell, wigs went out of use in the West for about a thousand years.

Which French king pioneered wig-wearing in 1624 after going bald early?

Louis XIII took to a wig in 1624 to hide early balding; his son Louis XIV promoted the fashion, and for more than a century the wig was a badge of rank across Europe.

The word 'wig' is a shortening of what?

Periwig came from the French 'perruque'; in the plague year of 1665 Samuel Pepys dared not wear his new one, fearing the hair had been cut from the heads of plague victims.

The red-and-white stripes of a barber's pole recall which medieval sideline of the barber's trade?

Bloodletting and surgery were barbers' work for centuries: red stood for the blood, white for the bandages, and the pole for the stick a patient squeezed to make the veins stand out.

Which biblical strongman lost his power when his hair was cut?

Samson's uncut hair marked a Nazirite vow to God; Delilah had it shaved off as he slept, and after it began to grow back he pulled down the Philistine temple.

In the Grimms' 'Rapunzel', who cuts off the heroine's long braids?

The sorceress snips off the braids on learning of the prince's visits, then uses them to lure him up the tower; in Disney's Tangled it is the thief Eugene who cuts the hair.

Which religion's Five Ks include kesh, hair that is never cut?

Sikhism: Guru Gobind Singh set out the Five Ks in 1699; kesh, the uncut hair, is combed twice a day with the kanga, another of the five, and kept under a turban.

Which hairstyle, worn by Rastafari as part of their faith, did Bob Marley make famous worldwide?

Dreadlocks belong to Rastafari 'livity', the faith's natural way of living, in which hair is left to lock uncombed; reggae carried the look around the world in the 1970s.

Which new wave band took its name from slang for a tall beehive hairdo?

The B-52's: the slang compared a towering beehive to the nose cone of the B-52 bomber, and singers Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson wore the look on stage.

Which hip-hop group is credited with popularising 'mullet' as the name of a haircut?

Beastie Boys: dictionaries trace the name to their 1994 song 'Mullet Head', which probably coined it, although the cut itself had already been worn for decades.

The bob haircut became a symbol of which 1920s young-woman archetype?

The flapper bobbed her hair as part of the same break with convention as knee-length skirts and jazz; dancer Irene Castle is said to have brought her 'Castle bob' to America in 1915.

Which British hairdresser revived the bob in the mid-1960s with sharp geometric cuts?

Vidal Sassoon cut the shape into the hair itself, with no back-combing or lacquer, so a woman could wash it, shake her head and watch the style fall back into place.

What is the wide-toothed comb used to shape a rounded 1970s hairstyle colloquially called?

A pick, or Afro pick, has long, thick teeth made for tightly coiled hair, and wearers often left it standing in the hair as part of the look.

How did the Mohawks who adopted colonist James Smith in 1755 remove most of his hair?

Plucked it out by hand: Smith wrote that a man dipped his fingers in ashes for a firmer hold and went on 'as if he had been plucking a turkey', leaving only a small patch on his crown.

What is the strip of hair 16th-century Ukrainian Cossacks left after shaving their heads?

Also called a chupryna, it was often braided or tied in a topknot.

The 1968 rock musical 'Hair' is set among a 'tribe' of long-haired hippies protesting against what?

The Vietnam War draft hangs over Claude, who agonises about being called up and ends the show in army uniform, his hair cut short, unseen by the friends still chanting in protest.

Why do shaved hairs seem to grow back thicker?

The cut ends are blunt rather than tapered, so stubble feels coarse and looks darker; a 1928 trial and later studies found shaving changes neither the thickness nor the growth rate.

Western monks' shaved crown, a ring of hair around a bald patch, is called what?

A tonsure marked a man's entry into the clergy; the Catholic Church kept the rite for centuries until Pope Paul VI abolished it in 1972.

China's 'queue' hairstyle shaved the front of the head and did what with the rest?

Braiding it into a long pigtail was the law under the Qing dynasty: its Manchu rulers required Han Chinese men to wear the queue, and refusal was punished as treason.

Where is a hair transplant's balding-resistant 'donor site' usually located?

The back of the head is used because hair there tends to stay thick while the top balds; its roots resist balding and keep growing after they are moved to a bare patch.

What is a 'merkin'?

A pubic wig: by one account merkins go back to the 1450s, when women who shaved against lice wore one to cover up, though the word itself is first recorded in 1617.

The most widely used hair-typing system was created by the hairstylist of which celebrity?

Oprah Winfrey's stylist Andre Walker drew up the chart in the 1990s to market his own hair-care line; its types run from 1, straight, to 4, tightly coiled.

Vellus hair, the fine down covering most of the body, is better known by which nickname?

Peach fuzz is the everyday name for vellus hair; at puberty hormones turn some of it into thicker terminal hair, usually more of it on men than on women.

Roughly how many hairs does the average person with black hair have on their head?

Blondes average about 150,000, brunettes 110,000 and redheads 90,000.

Why does chemotherapy often cause hair loss?

It attacks fast-dividing cells: the drugs cannot tell a tumour from the busy cells that make hair grow, so hair often falls out during treatment and returns once it ends.

Malassezia, a skin resident long linked to dandruff, is which kind of microbe?

A yeast: Malassezia lives naturally on the scalp and feeds on its oils, which is why many dandruff shampoos contain antifungal ingredients such as ketoconazole.

By one theory, how did tightly coiled hair help early humans in equatorial Africa?

By keeping the scalp cool: Nina Jablonski and others argue the sparse, springy coils shade the head while letting air circulate, unlike the dense insulating wool of a sheep.

Trichotillomania is a compulsion to do what?

Pull out one's own hair: the name joins Greek words for hair, plucking and madness, and the urge, which usually starts between the ages of 10 and 13, builds as tension until the hair is pulled.

Which desert animal has long eyelashes and closable nostrils to keep out blowing sand?

The camel's long lashes and ear hairs work with nostrils it can close to form a barrier against sand, and a see-through third eyelid sweeps away any grains that get past.

Which Arctic animal has black skin and hollow, transparent hairs, even though its coat looks white?

Polar bear guard hairs are hollow, a design that traps heat and helps the animal float in water.

Which US president grew his famous beard after 11-year-old Grace Bedell wrote suggesting it?

Abraham Lincoln got her letter weeks before the 1860 election and had a full beard within a month. He met Grace on his inaugural journey, sporting the new whiskers.

Which pop star's hair caught fire from pyrotechnics while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984?

Michael Jackson suffered second-degree burns to his scalp in the accident. He donated his $1.5 million settlement to a California hospital, which named its burn centre after him.

George Lucas said Mexico's women revolutionaries inspired which 'Star Wars' character's hairstyle?

Princess Leia's 'cinnamon buns' came from what Lucas called a 'Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look' from turn-of-the-century Mexico.

The phrase 'hair of the dog that bit you' names a folk cure for which complaint?

A hangover drink borrows the name of an old remedy for a rabid dog bite: placing hair from the dog in the wound.

Which noblewoman of legend rode naked through Coventry, covered only by her long hair?

Lady Godiva's ride also gave English 'Peeping Tom', after a townsman who, in later versions of the tale, watched and was struck blind or dead.

Which French queen gives her name to a syndrome in which hair is said to turn white overnight?

Marie Antoinette's hair was reported to have gone stark white after her capture during the failed royal flight to Varennes. Doctors call the alleged condition canities subita.

Which way of disguising a bald head earned a father and son from Florida a US patent?

The comb-over patent of 1977 went to Donald and Frank Smith, whose version swept long hair across the bald scalp from three separate directions.

Which layered 1990s haircut was named after Jennifer Aniston's character in the sitcom 'Friends'?

The Rachel was designed by stylist Chris McMillan to repair Aniston's damaged hair and grow out her fringe. It became one of the decade's most requested salon styles.

Which Russian tsar taxed beards in 1698 to push his subjects toward clean-shaven Western fashion?

Peter the Great made payers carry a 'beard token', a coin stamped with a nose, mouth, whiskers and beard, as proof they had paid.

Which Gorgon of Greek myth had living snakes for hair and was beheaded by the hero Perseus?

Medusa's severed head kept its power to turn onlookers to stone, so Perseus used it as a weapon before giving it to Athena for her shield.

Which Mexican painter made her joined eyebrows a signature feature of her many self-portraits?

Frida Kahlo is famous for the unibrow she painted again and again. The medical name for eyebrows that meet in the middle is synophrys.

Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber of Victorian penny dreadfuls, keeps his shop where in London?

Fleet Street's demon barber first appeared in the 1846 serial 'The String of Pearls', cutting throats while Mrs Lovett baked the victims into meat pies.

In 'Little Women', which March sister sells her long hair to raise money for her sick father?

Jo comes home with twenty-five dollars and a cropped head, telling her startled family she only sold what was her own.

Which nickname did the British press give the Beatles' shaggy, fringed early-1960s haircut?

Mop-top hair was widely mocked by adults, yet it was so tied to the band that Disney's 'The Jungle Book' gave the cut to four vultures in a scene its producers hoped the Beatles would join.

Which Addams Family relative is covered in floor-length hair and speaks in high-pitched gibberish?

Cousin Itt's television costume was first built from real hair, then switched to a fire-retardant synthetic because so many people smoked on set.

In Norse myth, which god sheared off the golden hair of Sif, the wife of Thor?

Loki was forced by Thor to have a golden headpiece made for Sif, and the errand produced five more treasures for the other gods.

Which very short women's haircut did Audrey Hepburn popularise in the 1953 film 'Roman Holiday'?

Pixie cut fans of the 1960s included Mia Farrow, who wore one in 'Rosemary's Baby', and the British model Twiggy.

What is the name for a V-shaped point of hair at the centre of the forehead, once seen as an omen?

Widow's peak comes from the pointed hood of a mourning wife: a hairline of that shape was believed to foretell early widowhood.

The bows used to play violins and cellos are traditionally strung with hair from which animal?

Horse tails supply the hair, which is coated in rosin for grip. A bow maker uses between 150 and 200 hairs for a single violin bow.

Which annual men's-health fundraiser takes its name from Australian slang for a moustache?

Movember joins 'mo', an Australian diminutive for a moustache, to November. Men grow one for the month to raise funds for prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide prevention.

Sideburns are named after which Union general of the US Civil War?

Ambrose Burnside joined thick side whiskers to a moustache but kept his chin clean-shaven. The style was first called 'burnsides' before the word flipped.

Which swept-up hairstyle worn by Elvis Presley is named after a French king's mistress?

Pompadour hair has nothing in common with Madame de Pompadour's own style: she wore her hair back and low, with no extra volume on top.

The musical 'Hairspray', about dance-mad teenager Tracy Turnblad, is set in which American city?

Baltimore's real 'Buddy Deane Show' was the model for the musical's 'Corny Collins Show', the local TV dance programme Tracy dreams of joining.

The chonmage, a topknot once worn by samurai, is now most associated with which Japanese sport?

Sumo wrestlers keep a style that began as a way to hold a samurai's helmet steady in battle and then became a mark of status.

Which autoimmune condition makes hair fall out in round or oval patches that often regrow?

Alopecia areata usually begins as small bald patches, and in more than half of sudden patchy cases the hair grows back within a year.

Which name for the eggs head lice glue to hair shafts gave English a term for petty fault-finding?

Nits are glued to the hair near the scalp, and the fiddly chore of picking them out by hand gave English 'nitpicking'.

Farrah Fawcett's feathered hairstyle became a worldwide craze thanks to which 1970s TV series?

Charlie's Angels made the 'Farrah-flip' an international trend, even though Fawcett left at the end of the first season.

Mötley Crüe and Poison led which 1980s rock genre, later mocked for its big backcombed hair?

Glam metal picked up the put-down 'hair metal' in the early 1990s, as grunge gained popularity at its expense.

The word 'shampoo', first used in English to mean a massage, comes from which language?

Hindi 'champo' meant to press or knead. Dean Mahomed, a traveller and surgeon, is credited with introducing the practice of 'shampooing' to Britain.

Which cosmetics giant grew from a hair dye French chemist Eugène Schueller sold to Paris salons?

L'Oréal was registered in 1909 as the Safe Hair Dye Company of France. Schueller formulated and made the dyes himself, calling his formula 'l'Auréale'.

Which hair-regrowth drug, sold as Rogaine, was first introduced to treat high blood pressure?

Minoxidil was brought to market as a blood pressure medicine, and excessive hair growth turned out to be one of its side effects.

Which marine animal keeps warm with the densest fur in the animal kingdom?

Sea otter fur was so prized that hunting between 1741 and 1911 cut the world population to as few as 1,000–2,000 animals.

The crew cut most likely takes its name from Ivy League university teams in which sport?

Rowing crews at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cornell kept their hair short so it would not blow into their faces as the boat raced down the course.

The 'playoff beard', left unshaven until a team's season ends, began in which sport?

Ice hockey's New York Islanders were the first team documented wearing them, in 1980, and the superstition has since spread to many other sports leagues.

Saga hero Harald Fairhair vowed not to cut or comb his hair until he ruled which country?

Norway took him ten years, the sagas say. Only then did he have his hair trimmed, trading the nickname 'Shockhead' for the one he is known by.

Which celestial objects take their name from the Greek for 'wearing long hair'?

Comets were 'long-haired stars' to the ancient Greeks, and the Roman writer Pliny likewise described their tails as long hair.

Which Roman ruler, wrote Suetonius, loved wearing a laurel wreath because it hid his baldness?

Julius Caesar was so troubled by gibes about his baldness that, of all the honours the Senate voted him, the wreath was the one he used most gladly.

Which rainforest animal has grooved hair hosting green algae that helps camouflage it in the trees?

Sloth fur is a small ecosystem: the algae also nourish sloth moths, some species of which live only on these animals.

Which American figure skater's wedge haircut became a craze after she won Olympic gold in 1976?

Dorothy Hamill's cut, created by the stylist Yusuke Suga, started a fad known as the 'short and sassy' look.

Which constellation is named for the hair an Egyptian queen sacrificed as an offering to the gods?

Coma Berenices is Latin for 'Berenice's Hair'. Queen Berenice II vowed her hair for the safe return of her husband, Ptolemy III, from war, and the court astronomer Conon named the stars for it.

What is the scientific name for the whiskers that cats, rats and seals use as touch sensors?

Vibrissae take their name from the Latin 'vibrare', to vibrate. The word first meant the stiff hairs inside the nostrils and was applied to animal whiskers only later.

Which hormone, made from testosterone in the scalp, is the major contributor to pattern hair loss?

DHT, short for dihydrotestosterone, is produced by the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase, whose levels are highest in the scalp and the prostate gland.

Which 1940s film star changed her peek-a-boo hairstyle to promote safer hair for women war workers?

Veronica Lake changed her look at the government's urging, to help cut accidents in which women's long hair was caught in factory machinery.

Physicist John Wheeler quipped that which cosmic objects 'have no hair', only mass, charge and spin?

Black holes look identical from outside apart from those three properties, with no other distinguishing detail. Wheeler later said Jacob Bekenstein coined the phrase.

What is the name for the fine, soft hair that covers a human fetus and is usually shed before birth?

Lanugo is normally shed at around seven or eight months of gestation, and the fetus swallows the loose hairs as it drinks the amniotic fluid.

Which weather instrument, in a version first built in 1783, uses a stretched human hair as its sensor?

Hygrometer readings rely on hair changing length with the humidity of the air. The Swiss physicist Horace Bénédict de Saussure was the first to build a hair-based one.

Antimacassars, the washable cloths Victorians draped over chair backs, protected fabric from what?

Hair oil was so fashionable for men that housewives covered their chairs against it. The cloths are named after macassar oil, reputedly made with ingredients from the port of Makassar.

Which poet's mock-heroic 'The Rape of the Lock' treats the theft of a lock of hair in epic style?

Alexander Pope based the poem on a real quarrel: Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor's hair without permission, and the row split their two families.

Which Italian Renaissance painter gives his name to a brownish-orange shade of hair?

Titian so often painted women with hair of this colour that his name was in use as a hair-colour term in the United States by the 1800s.