In 1795 Britain taxed hair powder at a guinea a year.
Those who paid were nicknamed “guinea pigs”, and the fashion for powdered wigs soon faded.
More amazing facts
- 1793 · 1795 France once had clocks on which noon came at five.
- 1794 The father of modern chemistry was executed as a tax collector.
- 1795 In 1795 cavalry captured a navy.
- 1796 · 1980 It took 184 years to get from the first vaccination to a world without smallpox.
- 1796 The word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin vacca, cow. Jenner took material from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, who caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom.
- 1796 · 1867 Catherine the Great did not sell Alaska: she died 71 years before the deal.