It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of trivia books. In fact, I think I have recommended this one before: Five People Who Died During Sex by Karl Shaw. It’s very interesting, and you know I love things in list format (go figure). If you enjoy today’s Q10 (which comes from the book), no doubt you’ll enjoy the book!

1. Mary, Queen of Scots was as bald as Mr. Clean. No one, even her closest friends and family, knew this fact about her. She wore a thick, auburn wig until the day she died – which, incidentally, is how her secret was revealed. She was executed by decapitation, and when the executioner picked up her head to show the crowd that she was dead, the wig came off in his hand.
2. In 1993, a man practically destroyed a barbershop because he was upset with his haircut. He requested a trim and felt that the barber took too much off, so he punished the man by doing $60,000 worth of damage to his shop.
3. Can you imagine – you buy a shampoo to treat your dandruff and end up going completely bald? That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of people in Uruguay in 1994. I guess that’s one way to stop the snow.

4. In 1983, a Danish man was imprisoned for life because he murdered a female hitchhiker. The kicker? He was a long-hair fetishist and admitted to washing her hair four times before he strangled her to death.

5. I guess hair-replacement treatments have come a long way since 1966. That’s when Michael Potkul sued his surgeon and won $400,000. The surgeon promised that he could give Potkul hair on the top of his head again, but his solution was to take the part of the scalp that still had hair on the back of his head and stretch it, horribly and painfully, to the top. Potkul had six surgeries to try to undo what the first doctor had done and became so depressed in the interim that he tried to kill himself.

6. Composer Gioacchino Rossini went totally bald as he got older, so, naturally, he wore a wig. But in cold weather, it wasn’t uncommon to see him strolling around town with as many as three wigs sitting on top of his head.

7. As the owner of three dogs, this one makes me sad and sick at the same time: A New York couple sued a dog-grooming salon in 1994. The reason? The salon left their cocker spaniel under the automatic blow dryer too long and it baked to death.

8. Who knew there were so many hair fetishists out there? In 1996, a hairdresser had to serve 60 days of community service because he masturbated with one hand while doing a customer’s hair with the other.

9. Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha was kind of the opposite of the hair fetishists: he despised mass amounts of hair. He employed barbers to sit at the border and remove any hair deemed “excessive.” The amount removed was noted in log books – for what purpose is anyone’s guess.

10. Henry Ford liked to wash his razor blades in rusty water because he believed that rust was fantastic as a hair restorative.

And, of course, your Clark Gable fact of the day:
He had to shave his trademark mustache to play Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty because mustaches weren’t allowed in the Royal Navy during the time that the story took place.