Monday, November 11, 2013

Great Moustaches of History: Military Moustaches

Gentlemen, in recognition of today, Remembrance Day, we shall acknowledge three of the most formidable military moustaches to have ever conquered  commanded, and killed. These mighty moustaches were carefully selected not only for their incredible achievements in warfare, but also because these were the only three I could find in a five-minute Google search.

Genghis Khan

According to everyone, Genghis Khan was a serious badass. Wikipedia lists Khan’s favourite hobbies as killing people, and killing lots of people. After a hard day of killing people, Khan liked to unwind by killing people. Historians estimate that Khan wiped out 11 percent of the world’s population. For real. So many people died under Khan that huge amounts of cultivated land were left untended and then reclaimed by carbon-eating forests that scrubbed an estimated 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. 

Gentlemen, Genghis Khan...



Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu's book, The Art of War, was the #1 business title on the The New York Times Best Seller list for 130,676 consecutive weeks until finally being knocked off by The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. 

Tzu’s book is considered a corporate strategy bible by cocaine-huffing business execs who want to rock the boardroom with impressive charts, crush the competition with impressive charts, and win all the customers with impressive charts. 

Before moving into business literature, Tzu spent some time in China. 

Gentlemen, Sun Tzu...




Peter the Great

My first encounter with Peter the Great came in 1993. I’d just unwrapped the very first edition of Microsoft Enctara and loaded the disc into my 486 DX2-66. There I sat, armed with what was (at the time) the single greatest concentration of knowledge ever to have existed, so I did what any sensible 12-year-old would do, I searched for my own name. 

Through my first Encarta encounter, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the existence of Peter the Great, and now I’m no-so-pleasantly struggling to remember anything about him. Whatever he did, I’m sure it was, well, great. 

Gentlemen, Peter the Great...



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