Famous Moustaches in History

The Amish (Absence (of) Moustache Increases Spiritual Harmony) people arrived in North America in the 18th Century. For most scholars the defining feature of the Amish community is their open eschewal of technology of any type (although, somewhat confusingly, they have embraced the use of the wheel - especially if attached to a cart or some such labour-saving device).

Recent research casts doubt on the traditional history of the Amish people. The research shows that the main reason for their hasty departure from Switzerland was the sudden disappearance of most of the razors from their local canton. The research has reconstructed the story as follows:

In 1693 the leader of t the Amish people, Jakob Amman, alienated himself from his fellow Swiss by refusing to conform to the 'Swiss facial hair precision' standard. Since this time the Amish people have eschewed the growing of a moustache. Jakob Amman's less than succinct and rather unpoetic 'thou shalt not cut off the hair that groweth below the line of the jaw, but will cut of anything above the place whereof I have spoken, but only up to the point, and inclusive of, the nasal hair - on no account shalt thou cut off thy eyebrows, both of which pleaseth the lord". Apart from several later schisms which have advocated the cutting off of noses, shaving off of eyelashes and even a group who thought they could grow their hair long and tie it across their face, just under the nose, to simulate a moustache, the order has stood. Having accepted persecution for 100 years as their reward for righteousness, they finally tired of the name-calling, and, out of revenge, stole all of the razors before they fled town. The beauty of this explanation is that it explains a) why the Amish have no moustaches, b) why they fled to America, but more importantly c) why the Swiss are over-represented in large moustache statistics.

Jakob Amman's difficulties with the Swiss authorities are well documented in church records and revolve around the claim that Jesus did not in fact have a moustache. The details of Amman's views include his theory that Jesus was interrupted while shaving and had only managed to scrape the hair off of his top lip before he was arrested. This theory is supported by the fact that Jesus must have had significant facial hair on his face after 40 days in the wilderness.

Having arrived in North America the Amish people shunned other people, and petty theft, and have lived peacefully ever since. Further research is required to determine the non-technological method of hair removal employed by the Amish people. There is money to be made if such a technique could be exploited commercially.

PHOTO: Amish people believe that the wheel is spiritual as it appears under the sign of the Trinity in their sacred hand gesture.

Salvador Dali exemplifies the moustache style that I have dubbed the 'Vanilla Bean'. This photo is a screen-test shot taken from the movie 'The Last Death of the Vampyre' where Dali auditioned, under the name of "Sal Diabolo", for the role of the Vampyre. Sal was beaten to the role by Vincent Price after he attempted to juggle a real Diabolo with his moustache ends. His performance prompted a call to security which resulted in his banishment from California. He was regarded as a threat to the the state's reputation as a hot-bed of talent. This was the first of such banishments which would later claim the careers of Mel Gibson and PeeWee Herman. Incidentally, 'The Last Death of the Vampyre' was never made - contractual obligations to the film company prevented the manufacture of bad films (those were the days).

The screen test was so humiliating that Sal sought solace in the alternative reality he created through his paintings. Dali had painted fairly conventional stuff up to this point (see 'Woman at the window', 1925). After reverting to his old name, Salvador unleashed retribution on the reality that had recognised his lack of creative authenticity by painting pictures of bent stuff. Watches, faces, and fruit were all subject to Salvador's anger and searing criticism. The once noble shapes were distorted to create a reality in which the vanilla bean moustache he sported did not seem so rediculous.

Having shown the dangers of mescalin consumption in paint (see 'The persistence of memory' 1931) Salvador retired to Spain with a huge supply of moustache pomade to consider his mortality. He is buried under a heartfelt eulogy, dedicated to the reality he left behind: "No smoking within 20 metres". Such was the impact of his well oiled moustache.

A young Friedrich Nietzsche set the academic world alight with his revolutionary whiskers. As an eminent academic he was expected to maintain more rigorous control of his facial hair, but young Friedrich refused to do so. In keeping with his philosophical writings, Nietzsche demonstrated a will to grow his moustache as he saw fit. Old has-beens such as Plato and Aristotle would not dictate his personal style. This attitude was reinforced by his follow up to his literary hit "Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer" entitled "Personal Grooming, or, How to Shave with a Curling Iron".
His famous split with Wagner over his mature moustache presaged a madness that was to allow his facial hair to grow unkempt. Whereas Nietzsche fell into obscurity behind an unfeasibly large moustache, Wagner became renowned for his most excellent muttonchop side whiskers, a couple of operas and an irrational hatred of Jews.

Unlike Nietszche, Hitlers notariety derives mostly from his being a fanatical anti-Semite, mass murderer, and catalyst of the single greatest episode of human slaughter in history. But his moustache has contributed to his reputation. Like his name, Adolf, the style of Hitlers moustach has been eradicated from the pages of history. Not even the most ardent neo-Nazi would try to wear a similarly antisocial, introverted extravagance on his face. Researchers have theorized that Hitler's manias may have derived from the ridicule he suffered during WWI as a corporal in the Austrian army. His love of cream cakes is well known, and it is thought he suffered great torment when cream got stuck in his younger, bushier, moustache. This may have occasioned a breakdown that saw him shave off most of his moustache in order to reduce the comical effect. The result was a ludicrous moustache that survived ridicule only because those who ridiculed Hitler ended up at the Russian Front to meet with another of our famous moustache bearers, Josef Stalin. Hitler's moustache remains one of the most important in history, not beacuse of its trend-setting greatness but because no-one would be seen dead wearing one. This is astounding proof that humankind did learn something from the second world war.

Josef Stalin is the second of our trio of mass murderers. His moustache was inspired by the Soviet dream of peasant labouring stock, from which he hailed (but never tell him that or he'll send you to the Gulag), and the well known psychoanalytical truth that moustaches make it easier to lie to other people by obscuring one's words. The greatest lie Stalin ever told was to his good friend Trotski when he promised to meet him in Mexico for a camping trip in the Siberian Alps. His second big lie was to his old buddy Lenin as he gave him his afternoon cup of tea with hemlock. The third and most devastating lie was to the people of the Soviet Union when he promised them a Soviet Paradise of Freedom and Equality. Stalin's moustache has been preserved in perpetuity, along with the rest of his body in some mausoleum in Russia. It is thought to be the last testament to the dream of Soviet Communism, and along with Kruschev's shoe banging, the least dignified expression of a noble art.

Lord Kitchener was a career warmonger, and is the third in our line up of mass murderers. Not content to interfere with the running of many wars in which the British Empire participated, he often offered to fight in others as well. It is not known is he ever indavertently fought on both sides of a war, but its often thought he may as well have. He is most famous as the poster boy of World War One, inviting young men to die in many and various ways, none of them nice, in the French countryside. Kitchener's moustache is a classic example of aloof, arrogant and patriarchal egoism. His sense of superiority oozes from the end of every hair (hence the pointy bits at the ends). Throughout his career he wore the same style - a sign of his stubbornness in the face of a world changing around him. It is this intransigence and refusal to change his mind that cost the lives of many soldiers in World War One.

Widely know as uncle Albert (mostly by his sister's children), Albert Einstein was a lovely and smart bloke. Everything in his demeanour showed he was a deeply thoughtful and caring character. He usually forgot to put his socks on, and gave away much of his money (he promised and eventually gave his Nobel prize winnings to his ex-wife and children). His moustache echoes his unkempt hair and general disregard for his personal appearance. Sometimes mistaken for a bum, he was in fact one of the greatest theoreticians of all time. Whilst he did not pay much attention to his moustache, he spent an awful lot of time doing physics. By explaining Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and redefining the classical view of relative motion, Einstein stood on the cusp of modern indeterminate and classical determinate physics. In his writings he tied the notions of space to time , matter to energy and eccentricity to genius. He also overthrew Newton's ludicrous notion of action at a distance as expressed in the inverse square law. Newton was very smart, but he did not have a moustache. None of Einstein's achievements were due to his moustache, but it is such a famous moustache that it cannot be ignored.