Beards. There is a reason that Jesus, Zeus and Thor are always depicted with beards: beards are epic. Distinguished, educated, stylish gentlemen wear beards. Growing a beard will make you feel manly so why on Earth would we want a National No Beard Day on 18th October?
Back in 1902, they identified a possible problem with beards. The New York Sun states that, “the beard is a vehicle for the spread of disease germs, which may not only menace the health of the wearer, but also be transmitted to others.” This idea was so powerful in those days that milk producing companies made their employees shave their beards off due to a fear of the beard germs infesting their milk. A representative from a milk company “noticed that men with long beards had a habit of stroking them downward. That has the effect of brushing off any germs they may contain,” into the milk, we assume.
The medical profession in 1902 had an even greater problem with beards as the article claims that, “doctors who wear beards report greater mortality among their patients than those who do not.” Killer beards! How frightful. Even in modern times research has found that small children are often frightened and distrustful of men with beards, unless they happen to be rotund elderly gentlemen with snowy white beards, of course.
Clearly, the New York Sun of 1902 were not the most scientific in their research but in 1967 there was some serious research done by the US Army health and safety laboratory that proved that beards and moustaches were ideal places for germs to grow and flourish. Bits of food getting caught in them adding to the fact that they provide a nice warm, moist place for them to live made this so. Fortunately, they also found that giving your facial hair a good scrub with soap and water was sufficient to keep them from causing too much trouble.
Even more recently though, the Independent newspaper in Ireland (a nation famous for facial hair fans like Michael Fassbender and Colin Farrell) pointed out that there definitely are some potential health related downsides to sporting a beard. These were mostly down to the fact that a beard can hide a multitude of skin relates sins that would really benefit from being treated rather than covered up.
So, giving your skin a chance to breathe on 18th October could provide the perfect opportunity to get your skin problems sorted out before they get so bad that not even your epic beard can hide them.