Curls.(Brief article)

Byline: --SARAH VAN BOVEN

Statistics about curls all seem to boil down to just one simple fact: For every curly-headed woman out there who wishes she could go straight, there's a straight-haired woman pining away for a head of natural waves. A brief look at how the history of curls has unfurled.

1660: Year the monarchy was restored in England after civil war, and judges began wearing long, curly wigs in court that made it impossible to tell whether they had ever cut their hair short in the style of the revolutionaries who had overthrown King Charles II.

20: Age at which Marcel Grateau created the first curling iron in 1872, to make what is known as the "marcel wave."

$2,500: Average cost for a horsehair barrister's wig, still required for court appearances in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries.

1850: Year the lines "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid" were spoken by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to his newborn daughter.

6: Number of hours it took, in 1906, to set one of the first perms, created by Charles Nessler--allegedly with a mixture of urine, sodium hydroxide, and water.