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60 free Beards trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This beards trivia quiz covers facial hair from the pharaohs to the playoff beard. The easy questions ask about the hormone behind beard growth, the naturalist who first tied beards to sexual selection, the general whose name gave us sideburns, the last U.S. president to wear facial hair and the country the bearded dragon calls home. From there it moves into the ancient world: the false beards of Egyptian royalty, the Roman who apparently shaved first, the emperor who grew a beard to hide his scars and the Stoic who said he would rather be beheaded than shave. The hard end is for people who collect odd facts: Peter the Great's beard token, the 1936 no-beard tax, the pope who wore a beard in mourning for Bologna, the razor brand that coined five o'clock shadow, the Japanese city that banned beards for civil servants, and the 5.33-metre beard now kept at the Smithsonian. Beard styles, sports superstitions, religious rules and the World Beard and Moustache Championships all get their turn. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on beards, the beard tax, the playoff beard and the championships before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Blackbeard and Movember-adjacent history quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Beard growth in men is driven by the stimulation of hair follicles by which hormone?
Dihydrotestosterone
The same hormone also promotes balding, which is why a thick beard and a thinning scalp so often arrive together.
Q 02Which naturalist first proposed, in The Descent of Man, that sexual selection explains men's beards?
Charles Darwin
Modern biologists broadly agree, and studies find that a majority of women rate bearded men as more attractive.
Q 03What was the metal false beard worn by Egyptian kings and queens regnant called?
Postiche
It was tied on with a ribbon over the head and a gold chin strap, and the fashion lasted from about 3000 to 1580 BCE.
Q 04How did the Spartans punish cowards, according to ancient sources?
By shaving off part of their beards
To the Greeks a smooth face signalled effeminacy, so a half-shaved beard was a walking humiliation.
Q 05Which Roman general is said to have been the first Roman to shave his beard?
Scipio Africanus
Shaving caught on so fast afterwards that a smooth chin became a way of looking Roman rather than Greek.
Q 06According to Dio Cassius, who was the first Roman emperor to grow a full beard?
Hadrian
Plutarch claimed he grew it to hide facial scars; either way, emperors stayed bearded on their coins until Constantine.
Q 07When Nero was first shaved, he put the hair in a pearl-set golden box dedicated to which god?
Jupiter Capitolinus
A young Roman's first shave was celebrated as a festival marking the start of manhood, and the clippings were consecrated to a god.
Q 08Which Stoic philosopher wrote that he would rather be beheaded than shave off his beard?
Epictetus
He put the exchange in his Discourses: told to shave or lose his head, the philosopher answers, 'If it will do you any good, behead me.'
Q 09Which Roman emperor had the hair and beard of the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana forcibly shaved off?
Domitian
The same emperor banished all philosophers from Italy under threat of execution, forcing Epictetus to flee Rome.
Q 10The Lombards, a Germanic people who settled in Italy, took their name from what?
Their long beards
Longobards means Long Beards, and Otto the Great was said to swear by his own beard, which reached his chest.
Q 11Tacitus wrote that a young Catti man could not shave or cut his hair until he had done what?
Killed an enemy
The Gaelic Celts of Scotland and Ireland took a similar view: a man without facial hair was thought dishonourable.
Q 12In medieval Europe, pulling off another man's beard carried the same punishment as which crime?
Castration
Simply holding another man's beard was a serious offence that had to be righted in a duel.
Q 13In The Lay of the Cid, El Cid is 'the one with the ___ beard'. Which word fills the gap?
Flowery
To a medieval knight the beard displayed virility and honour, while the Catholic clergy were required to shave as a symbol of celibacy.
Q 21Which pope grew a beard in 1511–12 as a sign of mourning for the loss of the city of Bologna?
Julius II
He is regarded as the first pope of relatively modern times to wear a beard, though he only kept it for a while.
Q 22Which English sea captain claimed in 1587 to have 'singed the King of Spain's beard'?
Francis Drake
The 16th century was peak beard: Henry VIII, Charles V and Francis I all succeeded clean-shaven predecessors.
Q 23Every U.S. president since which man, who took office in 1913, has been clean-shaven?
Woodrow Wilson
Between 1861 and 1913 almost every president wore a beard or moustache; only Andrew Johnson and William McKinley broke the run.
Q 14In what year did Peter the Great levy his tax on beards?
1705
He had already ordered men to shave in 1698; the tax was the follow-up for holdouts, part of a push to make Russia look Western European.
Q 15Which ruler formally repealed the Russian beard tax in 1772?
Catherine the Great
The tax raised an average of just 3,588 rubles a year from 1705 to 1708, so its repeal cost the treasury almost nothing.
Q 16What did Russians who paid the beard tax have to carry as proof?
A copper or silver token
The token showed a Russian eagle on one side and the lower half of a face with nose, whiskers and beard on the other.
Q 17Which kingdom introduced a 'no-beard tax' in 1936, charging men who were clean-shaven?
Yemen
It inverted the usual idea of a beard tax: here the fee was for not growing one.
Q 18Which bearded French king got papal approval in the early 1500s to tax priests' beards?
Francis I
The tax split the church: wealthy court clerics could afford to keep their beards while poor village priests could not.
Q 19A persistent legend says which bearded English king introduced a tax on beards?
Henry VIII
The National Archives has no record of any such tax ever being instituted, so the story remains a legend.
Q 20Who was the last pope to wear a beard, dying in 1700?
Innocent XII
Every pope from Clement VII, who let his beard grow during the 1527 sack of Rome, to this one wore facial hair; none has since.
Q 24Who was the last U.S. president to wear any kind of facial hair?
William Howard Taft
His moustache left the White House in 1913, and no successor has worn so much as a moustache since.
Q 25Who in 2025 became the first US vice president with facial hair since Charles Curtis in 1933?
JD Vance
He was also the first member of a winning presidential ticket to wear facial hair since Thomas Dewey ran, and lost, in 1948.
Q 26Which 11-year-old girl wrote to Lincoln in October 1860 urging him to grow a beard?
Grace Bedell
She wrote from Westfield, New York, and the newly bearded president-elect stopped to meet her there on his inaugural journey in 1861.
Q 27Which Civil War general's surname, with its syllables swapped, gave us the word 'sideburns'?
Ambrose Burnside
His strips of cheek hair joined his moustache while his chin stayed shaven; the style was first called 'burnsides'.
Q 28The Van Dyke beard is named after a 17th-century painter of which nationality?
Flemish
Anthony van Dyck wore the style himself and painted many sitters with it, including Charles I of England.
Q 29The Van Dyke beard is sometimes called a 'Charlie' after which monarch, who was painted wearing one?
Charles I of England
After the Restoration some men, called 'vow-beards', swore to keep the style until the king wore it again.
Q 30A chin curtain beard, covering the chin with no moustache, is also known by which president's name?
Lincoln
The style is also called a Shenandoah or a spade, and its cousin the chinstrap runs from the sideburns to under the chin.