Best Historical Facial Hair

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte with a wicked flying wing and chin curtain style.

Percy Wyndham’s crossguard and blade.

The fetching reins of John G. Walker.

Kaiser Wilhelm II with the diving imperial eagle.

Possibly there will be some sort of prize for an undisputed winner, but any post consisting solely of multiple images of facial shrubbery from the American Civil War will be disqualified as cheating.

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So what’s my prize?

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As a guy who likes to grow his beard from time to time, I certainly appreciate good facial hair. Though while the artistic and unusual is eye-catching, I like when people can wear something well-groomed and wear it well, or wear something that becomes iconic. Mustaches like those of Twain, Roosevelt, or Stalin aren’t necessarily special or unique, but they certainly wore them well. Simple bushy beards work on some people like Charles Darwin. I really can’t stand the scraggly stuff like Rasputin.

An iconic mustache, worn well.

This is how you rock a bushy beard.

Cut your hair, you creepy hippy!

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Apparently the men of the renaissance knew how to wear the facial hair:

Da Vinci

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It’s hard to beat writers for historical facial hair.

Longfellow gets points for bushiness. It’s hard to see where the beard ends and the ermine begins.

Dostoyevsky was no idiot when it came to beards. See what I did there? Hah! I slay me.

Melville is quite high on the list. He even signed his Beards of the World trading cards.

Not a writer, but obvious winner.

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Salvador Dali

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Karl Marx had the sort of beard that seemed to entirely envelope his head.

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I’m cuddling with my 3-year-old and she seems to think Marx is a Panda…

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Ghengis Khan never went into battle without a proper barber visit…

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Mine. Coming off tomorrow. In mourning tonight.

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Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s I Have No Mouth But I Must Beard.
mhy

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General Nagaoka Gaisi and his Slicing Moustaches of Death.

The best part about this thread is that whenever my wife tells me my beard is getting too long I can pull it up and say, “well at least I’m not this guy.”

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Archduke Frank Ferdinand in Egypt 1896.