It was the Gay 90s, long before gay meant gay, and 90 was only worth about 70. The chart-topper was “(She's Only a) Bird in a Gilded Cage,” gold was transforming California from a sleepy Roman outpost into a big place with lots of gold, and Mark Twain, the popular author, was about to challenge legal code that had been in place since Hamurabi, by patenting his haircut.

Twain, one of the 19th Century's most creative individuals, gave full credit for his genius to his haircut. “I modeled my haircut,” said Twain, and reporters who didn't let him finish assumed he meant he'd modeled it in some kind of hair show, and that's why it's called the gay 90s.

But the under-reported full sentence was, “I have modeled my haircut on that of Beethoven.” And sure enough, recent scientific lock by lock analysis of the two haircuts show striking similarities.

So pleased was Twain with the impact of the Haircut of Creativity on his prose, that he later grew the Moustache of Nearly Incomprehensible Dialect.

Twain's contemporary, Charles Dickens, once tried to pull himself out of a creative slump by visiting Twain's own barber, Ed, at Ed's Sheer Genius. The savvy barber, though, recognized his best customer's literary rival, and, though Dickens walked out with the Shoe Shine of Social Consciousness and the Manicure of Funny Character Names, the Haircut of Creativity remained Twain's alone.

Years later, Albert Einstein adopted the Haircut, little realizing the patent infringement that would lead the estate of Twain to file suit. The suit looked nice with the haircut, Einstein claimed, though he was heard to remark, “Imagination is more important than --whoa! That rise is a bit snug."

In 1997, Twain's patent expired and now the Haircut is available to all.