Scientific Facts About Redheads
• Redheads Have Higher Pain Threshold
• Men and women with naturally red hair can withstand 25 percent more electric shock than non-redheads. And painkillers used in childbirth work three times better on red-haired women than on others
• Redheads have the smallest number of hair strands - On average there are over 100,000 strands of hair on a young adult. Blondes average about 140,000 strands, brunettes average 108,000 and redheads average 90,000
• Red hair is usually thicker and coarser than blond hair so it appears fuller.
• Red pigment is an inadequate filter of sunlight and redheads skin is more susceptible to sunburn, skin cancer and wrinkling with age
• Percentages of redheads in different countries range from single digits to a fraction of 1 per cent—a recent estimate for France is 0.03 per cent of people. (A 1977 estimate for North America is 4 per cent.)
Social facts about redheads
• It was recorded that Witches needed the fat of a person with red hair when making poisons
• Naopleon Bonaporte was a redhead
• Superstitions: red hair is unlucky; it's lucky to rub your hand on a redhead's head; bees sting redheads more readily. The Egyptians regarded the color as so unlucky that they had a ceremony in which they burned red-headed maidens alive to wipe out the tint, says author Claudie De Lys 
;• After journalist/rebel William Lyon Mackenzie went bald from a fever, he acquired a red wig and would wave it in the air and thwack friends with it when amused
• Queen Elizabeth I only washed her hair about three times a year. She did so in lye, which was a mixture of wood ash and water. Her hair fell out and she wore a red wig.
• Red hair was thought to be unlucky until Elizabeth I made it popular. Prior to this Red hair was considered unlucky
• Redheads were turned out of Cornish dairies, because it was believed they would turn the butter sour
Sources:http://www.redheads.net/redheadsinhistor y.htm
http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-05/rd /secrets-of-redheads/
http://www.fazeteen.com/fall2002/hair.ht m
http://www.scienceiq.com/ShowFact.cfm?ID =198
http://www.redheads.net/redheadmythsandf acts.htm
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mef/redhea d/
