In 16th-century France, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Huguenots, used his beard to hold his toothpicks.

Dangerous beards

Alexander the Great is often credited with starting the fashion for soldiers shaving. He introduced it as a safety measure because many of his men died in hand-to-hand combat after their beards were grabbed by their enemies.

A century earlier, King Tarquin II (535-509 BC) thought beards were unsanitary and brought the first razor to Rome. Hadrian (76-138 AD) was the first Roman emperor to sport a beard, allegedly to hide his scarred face. Until then, a beard meant you were either in mourning - or Greek.

The most treacherous beard in history was that of Austrian Hans Steininger. It was more than two metres long and he kept it rolled and stowed in a leather pouch, but in 1567 he tripped over it while running from a fire, and perished.

One of the CIA's more insane attempts to destabilise Cuba was to put toxic thallium salts in the shoes of Fidel Castro to make his beard fall out.

Beard tax

Peter the Great (1672-1728) introduced a tax on beards in as part of his modernisation programme for Russia. On his return in 1698 from a Grand Tour of the West, where beards had become deeply unfashionable, he shaved off his advisers' beards himself and made those who defied the law pay a hefty fine and carry a special gold beard token.

"I cultivate this beard, not for the usual given reasons of skin trouble or pain of shaving,
nor for the secret purpose of covering a weak chin,
but as pure, unblushing decoration, much as a peacock finds pleasure in his tail.
And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man,
or if she can, her success is assured only in a circus."

John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley (1961)

Female beards

The most impressive female beard in history belonged to Queen Hapshetsut (c. 1480 BC) who proclaimed herself Pharaoh after the death of her husband, Thutmose II, and wore a long, plaited false beard as part of her royal dress. St Wilgefortis and St Paula both sprouted miraculous beards to preserve their chastity by discouraging potential rapists.

The current world record holder is Vivian Wheeler from Illinois, who started growing her fine beard in 1993 after her mother's death. "It showed me I could be proud of being me," she said. "It made me feel like I had a chance in society."

In the 16th century, hirsute ladies were not regarded as freaks. Members of the Gonzales or Gontsalvus family (from Tenerife) had a condition known as Hypertrichosis (excess of hair), and one of them, Antonietta, was painted in Parma 1585 (aged 11 or 12) by a female painter, Lavinia Fontana. This portrait can be seen in the Musée de Blois, in France. She is holding a handwritten account of her life up to that time. Her father, also wonderfully hairy, had been received as a boy into the French court, and became Royal Breadserver to king Henri II, but later moved to Italy.