Comb Through These 6 Facts About Mustaches

The World’s Longest Mustache Is Over 14 Feet Long

If every person were like Ram Singh Chauhan, most razor companies would go out of business. Since March 2010, Chauhan has proudly held the Guinness World Record for the longest mustache. He has been growing his since 1970, when he was just a 12-year-old boy, and recent measurements from Chauhan’s personal Instagram account put the mustache’s ever-increasing length at 19.3 feet. This isn’t to say that Chauhan’s mustache is unkempt — on the contrary, Chahuan spends up to two and a half hours each day meticulously grooming his facial hair and massaging it with herbal oils. He only trims around the lip area and washes the mustache once every two weeks. While his whiskers initially caused strife between him and his wife, Asha, she now shares Chauhan’s sense of pride and considers the hairy accessory part of the family.

Some Indian Police Officers Are Paid Bonuses for Growing Mustaches

In India, mustaches are considered symbols of masculine pride and respect — so much so that police departments in parts of the country (from the large central state of Madhya Pradesh to Uttar Pradesh in the north) pay out bonuses to officers who grow out their upper lip hair. Indian police chiefs believe that mustachioed constables are treated with more respect, hence the unusual bonuses. The tradition of sporting robust mustaches faded somewhat among Indian men after the 1990s, but the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary found their incentive program so successful that they hiked their mustache bonus by 400% in 2019. While it remains up to each individual officer whether they grow a mustache or not, officers who do so will earn a few hundred extra rupees in their pockets each month.

French Waiters Once Went on Strike for the Right to Grow Mustaches

While growing a mustache may be incentivized by Indian police departments, facial hair was strictly regulated in France around the turn of the 20th century. With French elites attempting to co-opt the mustache as a class symbol, waiters, domestic workers, and even priests were forbidden from growing one. Tensions came to a head in April 1907, when a group of French waiters participated in a strike to demand benefits such as better pay and more freedom to grow facial hair. The waiters were among several groups fed up with forced shaving, and their decision to strike left high-end Parisian restaurants losing roughly 25,000 francs per day in revenue. A bill was introduced to outlaw mustache bans across France, and even though it ultimately failed, many waiters at individual restaurants across the country successfully earned the right to wear mustaches. Unfortunately, such a win came at the expense of meaningful financial gains like pay raises, so it mainly proved to be a symbolic victory for workers’ rights.

Mustachioed Victorian Men Used Special Utensils for Tea and Soup

Growing a mustache or beard was a fashionable choice during the Victorian era in Great Britain, but it didn’t come without challenges — especially when it came to consuming hot liquids. Men with facial hair often found their mustache wax melting straight off their upper lip and into their drinks. Luckily, an intrepid inventor named Harvey Adams came up with a solution in the 1860s: the “mustache cup.” The cup featured a built-in ledge for men to rest their mustaches against for protection, as well as a hole for liquid to travel through. These adult sippy cups were popular not only in the U.K. but also throughout the U.S., where they were sold at stores like Sears and Marshall Field’s.

The Victorian era also saw a few other mustache-based inventions for the kitchen: In 1868, New York engineer Solon Farrer came up with a mustache spoon, which inventor Ellen B. A. Mitcheson tweaked and submitted for patent in 1873. Her idea involved adding a piece of metal to a traditional spoon to keep the mustache from coming into direct contact while slurping down soup, allowing hot liquids to travel through while maintaining perfectly waxed whiskers.

Copies of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” Included Cardboard Mustaches

The Beatles famously ditched their mop-top haircuts and clean-shaven faces in favor of a new, mustachioed look in advance of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The decision actually had a practical purpose: Paul McCartney suffered a moped accident in 1965, which split his upper lip. As with any fashion choice the Beatles made, fans wanted to replicate their look, so the band included cardboard cutout mustaches that could clip onto the nose with the release of the chart-topping album. The set of accessories also included cardboard badges and military stripes to dress like Sgt. Pepper.

Salvador Dali’s Mustache Is Reportedly Still Intact

Though surrealist artist Salvador Dalí passed away in 1989 at the age of 84, his most striking physical feature is reportedly still intact: his mustache. According to Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who tended to Dalí’s body after his death and participated in his 2017 exhumation to collect DNA for a paternity claim, Dalí’s mustache still perfectly sits “[like clock hands at] 10 past 10, just as he liked it.” While still alive, Dalí was known to be proud of his distinctive facial hair; he once claimed that he and French novelist Marcel Proust used the “same kind of pomade” for their mustaches. Dalí’s mustache was even the subject of a book, 1954’s Dali’s Mustache: A Photographic Interview, which the artist co-authored with photographer Philippe Halmsan. The book features their interview alongside 28 images of the artist’s unique and seemingly immortal facial hair.