Lincoln's beard

Abraham Lincoln was always clean-shaven until a 12-year-old girl wrote to him Oct. 15, 1860 urging him to grow a beard. "You would look a great deal better as your face is so thin," young Grace Bedell wrote. "All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president." Lincoln replied to the letter on Oct. 19, just weeks before the election, and did indeed start growing a beard. When he left Springfield, IL on Feb. 11, 1861, bound for the White House, he was fully bearded. He was the first president to wear a beard while in office.
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