Blackbeard: The Biggest, Baddest, Blackest Beard Of All.

All pirates worth a damn sported huge, raggedy-ass beards. This is a matter of historical fact. The epidemic became so pronounced that the most notorious pirate of them all, Edward Teach, had to go so far as putting the word "beard" in his name in order to distinguish himself. Hence, the fearsome Blackbeard was born.

Blackbeard's enormous mane was not merely used to keep him warm (roaming the Caribbean Sea in his ship the Queen Anne's Revenge kept him warm enough. Also, rum helped). He often employed it as an intimidation tactic. During battle, he would set hemp strands, matches, and cannon fuses placed in his beard on fire, totally freaking out his opponents. Blackbeard's reputation was that of an utter miscreant. This, from Cpt. Charles Johnson's A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, provides a small taste:

Before he sailed upon his adventures, he married a young creature of about sixteen years of age . . . and this I have been informed, made Teach's fourteenth wife . . . with whom after he had lain all night, it was his custom to invite five or six of his brutal companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute herself to them all, one after another, before his face.

What a dick. You wouldn't want to invite this guy to your grandma's church for an ice cream social, to say the least. Not surprisingly, Blackbeard's life of robbing, raping, plundering, and being an all-around scoundrel eventually caught up with him. After famously blockading Charleston, South Carolina in 1718, Blackbeard was hunted down at sea on the orders of Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, although he was pardoned and had apparently retired from piracy (it's unknown whether he had stopped passing his wife around like a tray of baklava).

Lt. James Maynard pursued and attacked the pirate near Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. During the ensuing melee, Blackbeard was shot five times, stabbed more than twenty, and decapitated. His head was fastened to the bowsprit of Maynard's ship for the return journey and later fixed on a pike in Bath, North Carolina for public display.

Blackbeard the pirate died as he lived: with an enormous, terrifying beard. But the smelly, smoldering mane did not make the man. To paraphrase Rachel Dawes in the film Batman Begins, it is not what we have growing on our faces, but what we do, that defines us. Let that lesson guide us in our journeys, bristled or otherwise. Go beards!