Beards have been the new fad for the past years. Starting off in the hipster community, facial hair caught on rapidly in the more “mainstream”. Here are some strange and interesting facts about beards that you might not know.
1. In the British Army, the only rank allowed to grow a beard is Pioneer Sergeant.
2. In 1957, Hans Steininger, the man having the longest recorded beard in early history, died after he tripped over his beard and broke his neck.
3. There is an Australian band called “The Beards” and every single one of their 38 songs is about beards.
4. A sailor in the British Royal Navy who wants to grow a beard must submit a form requesting “permission to stop shaving”. He then has up to two weeks to “grow a full set”. After two weeks, he must present himself to the Master at Arms who will decide if his beard looks stupid or is respectably full enough to be permitted.
5. The more likely a man can grow a beard, the greater the risk he will go bald.
6. Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top were once offered $1,000,000 to shave their beards for a Gillette ad, to which they both declined.
7. In 2015, a man was arrested for kidnapping his own son after neighbors didn’t recognize him with his new beard.
8. Ancient Roman philosophers sported different styles of beards to distinguish which school of philosophy they belonged to.
9. In 2010 in Kentucky, a man was forced to eat his own beard at knife-point during an argument over a lawnmower sale.
10. King Tutankhamen’s beard on the burial mask was accidentally knocked off by Egyptian museum workers, who glued it back on. The mistake was discovered months later.
