"Sideburns" as we now call them, go back a long way.

A mosaic from Pompeii depicts Alexander the Great with a pair.

They were a sign of authority with the Hindu military class

known as Kshatriya.

And the Meiji warriors of 19th Century Japan.

In Victorian England, they were called side whiskers and were worn

by important gentleman like Prince Albert and Charles Darwin.

Men with lavish facial hair were known as whiskerandos.

The style had several nicknames, including Piccadilly weepers

named after Piccadilly in London, where men sporting this kind of

facial hair would hang out.

And Dundrearies after Lord Dundreary,

an exaggeratedly bewhiskered character in Our American Cousin,

a popular play of 1858.

It was this play that another man with distinctive whiskers

was watching when he was assassinated... Abraham Lincoln.

But the term we now use - sideburn - dates back to a rather unfortunate

soldier of the American Civil War, General Ambrose Burnside.

Whilst still a young man, he was left standing at the altar by his fiancée

who ran out of the church crying...

Later, as a commander in the Union Army,

Burnside's military career was less than brilliant.

He was considered ineffective at The Battle of Antietam

and held responsible for the Union's crushing defeat at Fredericksburg.

And when he discovered that his former fiancée

had become a Confederate spy,

Burnside had her seized and kept under house arrest for months.

Despite these setbacks, before his death in 1881,

Burnside had become a household name.

Not for his military service or misfortunes in love,

but for his luxuriant facial hair.

It was so striking that the name Burnside whiskers was used to refer

to the combination of a moustache and side whiskers.

In the British Army,

side whiskers were always joined together by a moustache

because until 1916, soldiers were banned from shaving their top lips.

Eventually the syllables were reversed to give us sideburn.

Very bushy sideburns that cover the cheeks are known as

mutton chops because they look like a cut of meat.

Sideburns were worn by rebellious Teddy Boys in the 1950s and favoured

by movie stars and heavy rockers in the '60s and '70s.

They were less popular during the clean shaven '80s,

but have roared back into fashion with today's hipsters.

The Sides of March campaign recently encouraged men to grow sideburns

to raise funds and awareness about male suicide.

In 2015, a new catwalk trend emerged for women's sideburns -

the next phase in the never-ending pursuit of the hirsute.

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