Today Is...World Beard Day

I'm not a big fan of beards, they just look kinda messy but back in the days of bad air quality in the mid-19th century, Victorian doctors recommended beards to prevent illness as they thought beards acted as a filter for bad air and prevented sore throats. 
Before anyone gets the idea of a doctor-prescribed beard, it obviously didn't work and actually the Bacteria just stuck to the facial hair and thrived which was the exact opposite effect of what they thought but there are a few cases of death by beard.
Hans Staininger, a 16th-century Austrian politician, had a 7ft beard which he would roll up and put in his pocket although one night he woke to find a fire had broken out across the street and rushing to warn his fellow townspeople, tripped over his beard and fell down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck in the process.
He did get a statute in his town and his actual beard was removed and preserved in a glass case which isn't a bad legacy but probably my favourite beard story comes from those Jihadi terrorists of the Islamic State who came up with the wheeze of escaping the Nigerian Defence Forces who had cordoned off a town by attempting to sneak passed the Defence Force by disguising themselves as women.
To avoid annoying Allah, they kept their thick beards and mingled with the female folk and were caught immediately.