Beard Tax Takes Effect (historical)

We have ways of making you shave! In 1698, Peter the Great attempted to civilize the Russian Empire by forcing his subjects to cut off their beards under penalty of kopeck and ruble. Those caught sporting whiskers at the gates of the capital suffered the indignity of an imperial shave. Sadly for the hirsute, Peter’s is not the only example of such political barbarousness. After shearing the British House of Commons of most of its bearded lefties in 1979, Margaret Thatcher declared she would not tolerate any form of facial hair in her Tory Cabinet. And in 2004, President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan decreed that all young men must shave off their erstwhile fashionable goatees.