Speaker 1: Guess what, mango. So in reading up for today's episode,
Speaker 1: I stumbled into this story about the old trick of
Speaker 1: pulling a rabbit out of the hat. Huh. And you know,
Speaker 1: while there's some dispute over who first created that trick,
Speaker 1: it apparently debuted in the eighteen thirties, and it goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to Mary Toft. Do you do
Speaker 1: you know Mary Toft? I'm not sure I remember. I
Speaker 1: wish you a magician. No, she was this legendary con
Speaker 1: artist from the eighteenth century, and she managed to trick
Speaker 1: doctors into believing she'd given birth to sixteen live rabbits.
Speaker 1: Now why she wanted to trick them into thinking she'd
Speaker 1: given birth to sixteen rabbits, I'm not sure, but she
Speaker 1: managed to hold the doctors and even the royal family
Speaker 1: at the time. But part of the reason she was
Speaker 1: eventually discovered was that someone spotted her husband buying all
Speaker 1: these baby rabbits just on the slide. Anyway, once it
Speaker 1: was established that she was a fraud, magicians started parroting
Speaker 1: her trick. In fact, in early renditions, they wouldn't just
Speaker 1: pull one rabbit out of a hat, but a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, which is so weird that magicians still do
Speaker 1: that rabbit and a hat trick right like it's a staple.
Speaker 1: I know. But that's actually just the first of nine
Speaker 1: hat facts that we've got for you today. So let's
Speaker 1: dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 1: good friend man guest Ticketer and on the other side
Speaker 1: of the soundproof glass wearing a wide brimmed hat from
Speaker 1: the what is that the Hamburglar collection is impressive? That's
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. And of course we've
Speaker 1: got our pal and had researcher Gabe Bluesier on the
Speaker 1: line with us as well. How's it going Gabe? Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on. It's going well well because
Speaker 1: I kicked off today's episode. How about I throw it
Speaker 1: to you, Gabe for your first fact? Sure? All right?
Speaker 1: Uh So, a year before he was killed, President Lincoln
Speaker 1: had actually had another assassination attempt on his life, and
Speaker 1: this was in August of eighteen sixty four. He was
Speaker 1: out riding a horse who happened to be named Old Abe.
Speaker 1: Also by the way, and uh he was three miles
Speaker 1: away from the White House when someone took a pot
Speaker 1: shot at him and the bullet just missed him, clipping
Speaker 1: his stovepipe hat off his head, and the two abes
Speaker 1: took off, and when soldiers found the hat later on,
Speaker 1: they discovered that the bullet had gone right through the crown, which,
Speaker 1: you know, it led everyone to believe that the lucky
Speaker 1: top hat had actually saved his life. Oh wow, all right,
Speaker 1: well that's a pretty crazy story. Okay, mango, what's your
Speaker 1: first fact? Well, you know, since since Gabe had one
Speaker 1: about Lincoln, I actually have one of Lincoln's hat as well,
Speaker 1: and it's unfortunate that he wasn't wearing his lucky hat
Speaker 1: at the FOURD Theater and instead it was sitting by
Speaker 1: his feet during that performance. But that had actually has
Speaker 1: its own story. So after the assassination Mary Todd, Lincoln
Speaker 1: sent the President's hat to the Smithsonian, where there were
Speaker 1: strict orders not to exhibit the hat under any circule stance,
Speaker 1: and apparently they thought viewing the hat might induce too
Speaker 1: much hysterian the public. So only a few people knew
Speaker 1: about it, and for thirty years it was just hidden
Speaker 1: away in the basement of the Smithsonian before it was rediscovered,
Speaker 1: and of course today it's considered one of the Smithsonian's
Speaker 1: most prized possessions. Yeah, I'd love to do a tour
Speaker 1: one day of like the underground of the Smithsonian, not
Speaker 1: just because like what do you see in the movies,
Speaker 1: but there actually are just a ton of artistles. It's
Speaker 1: just amazing. I don't know where you came up with
Speaker 1: drawers full of birds. You haven't see that photo. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's like this massive hall and they're like a few
Speaker 1: curators who have just opened all the drawers and it's like,
Speaker 1: like I want to say, hundreds of thousands of birds,
Speaker 1: like just stuffed in for this hopefully dead. Well, I
Speaker 1: did not know about that. We're going to have to
Speaker 1: do an episode. I just didn't expect that to be
Speaker 1: the response, Like all these things underground, you're like drawers
Speaker 1: full of birds. Yeah, alright, Well back to the hats.
Speaker 1: I've actually got a weird one here. So have you
Speaker 1: guys ever heard of the straw hat riots? Well, apparently
Speaker 1: on September fifteen, that used to be a big day
Speaker 1: for the hating community, known as felt Hat Day, and
Speaker 1: it's when men switched over from wearing summer straw hats
Speaker 1: for winter ones, and actually if you wore a hat
Speaker 1: after that date, you were basically asking to get made
Speaker 1: fun of. In fact, for a while, young hooligans in
Speaker 1: New York City would use sticks and nails at the
Speaker 1: end to fish these straw hats off, you know, passers
Speaker 1: by that had them on, and then they would stomp
Speaker 1: them flat, like really really nice kids. But in n
Speaker 1: this felt hat day, hooliganism got out of hand, and
Speaker 1: so many boys were out there stomping these hats that
Speaker 1: the police were called in. There was a subhead in
Speaker 1: the New York Tribune that read, quote, many youthful marauders
Speaker 1: are arrested and seven are spanked by irate parents at
Speaker 1: station like that. They counted the number of them who
Speaker 1: were spanked. Anyway, I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: they learned their lesson from this event. Alright, mano, what
Speaker 1: do you got next? So? Uh, this is just something
Speaker 1: I found that I thought was funny. It's in honor
Speaker 1: of George Orwell's a hundred tenth birthday. These two Dutch
Speaker 1: artists in the city of Utrecht decided to celebrate his
Speaker 1: legacy by putting little party hats on all the city's
Speaker 1: surveillance cameras, and uh, it's really funny. You should look
Speaker 1: these pictures up because all these sort of like Big
Speaker 1: Brother lenses around the town are all dressed up in
Speaker 1: these super festive party hats. And the whole thing made
Speaker 1: the cameras look ridiculous, but it actually drew attention and
Speaker 1: it made people realize how much they're actually being constantly watched. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh that's pretty cool, all right. Actually, you know what,
Speaker 1: there was another fact. I know we need to get
Speaker 1: back to gay for another fact, but I meant to
Speaker 1: mention this one after you talked about Lincoln's had I
Speaker 1: know we talked about Lincoln's lost hat, but apparently Jackie
Speaker 1: Kennedy's iconic pillbox hat has also gone missing. So while
Speaker 1: her pink suit is an a vault in Maryland, it
Speaker 1: supposedly won't be shown for a hundred years, but her
Speaker 1: matching hat is nowhere to be found. Some hat conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists think that Jackieo's personal secretary, Mary Gallagher, that she
Speaker 1: used to blame. She was the last one scene holding it,
Speaker 1: and they think she might have sold it in an
Speaker 1: online auction to you know, some fancy had collector or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just never know. But Mary has been spotted putting
Speaker 1: Kennedy memorabilia up for auction before. Actually, so this could
Speaker 1: actually be the case, but she's refused to discuss the matter.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, alright, gay, but I feel like Mango and
Speaker 1: I were hogging it for a minute. We want to
Speaker 1: come back to you got another hat fact for us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's a quick one, actually, um, and that's that Daniel
Speaker 1: Boone didn't actually wear a coon skin cap, so most
Speaker 1: of the time he wore a beaver hat. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's where the whole thing started. So when an artist
Speaker 1: named Chester Harding painted Boone, he painted him in an
Speaker 1: accurate beaver hat. But then when the princes of that
Speaker 1: painting were sold, they hired a Daniel Boone impersonator to
Speaker 1: hawk those prints. And unfortunately the impersonator you know, couldn't
Speaker 1: afford a beaver hat, or maybe he just couldn't find one,
Speaker 1: but either way, he showed up to sell in a
Speaker 1: lesser coon skin hat and for some reason. But three,
Speaker 1: you just do you feel like you could spot the
Speaker 1: difference between a beaver hat and a coon skin head? Yeah? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right. Well, actually, I've got a cool fact about
Speaker 1: Carmen Miranda. You know, the Brazilian singer and dancer who
Speaker 1: was popular in the thirties and forties. Well, she was
Speaker 1: iconic partly because she wore that giant fruit hat on
Speaker 1: her head, which inspired the chiquita banana woman. But here's
Speaker 1: what's interesting, So she actually used to make these elaborate
Speaker 1: hats herself. She had worked as a millner in her
Speaker 1: youth and a hat shop, and so she knew the
Speaker 1: art and she modeled those crazy fruit hats on the
Speaker 1: girls in Brazilian villages who used to carry the baskets
Speaker 1: of fruit on their heads to market. That's pretty cool,
Speaker 1: all right, Mago, what's your last fact? So you know,
Speaker 1: what's the opposite of making an iconic hat yourself is
Speaker 1: a shoplifting one. But that's what Slash, the bad boy
Speaker 1: guitarist of Guns and Roses, did. So this is well
Speaker 1: before they had a record deal. Slash was looking for
Speaker 1: something fancy to wear at a thrift store and because
Speaker 1: he claims he didn't have the money at the time,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is how he justifies it. He found
Speaker 1: a top hat and then just walked out of the
Speaker 1: store with it, and he was lucky that no one
Speaker 1: chased him out. But of course that's not the only
Speaker 1: part of his outfit that he filched. Since the top
Speaker 1: hat looked too plain on its own, he actually stole
Speaker 1: a belt that he used as a hat band. And
Speaker 1: so I mean, of course, the fact that he's so
Speaker 1: happy to talk about all this stealing without feeling any
Speaker 1: guilt kind of gives a little more credence to this
Speaker 1: amazing theory. I saw online that Guns and Roses ripped
Speaker 1: off their songs sweet Child of Mine from an Australian
Speaker 1: band called Australian Crawl. Yeah, the song was out like
Speaker 1: five years before, and apparently, I mean they say that
Speaker 1: Guns and Roses was listening to like Australian rock at
Speaker 1: the time. It's kind of crazy if you listen to
Speaker 1: the suff to go back and listen to that right
Speaker 1: after I look at the birds in the drawers. Okay,
Speaker 1: gave you got one more fact for us. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is a slightly sweeter one than that. But uh,
Speaker 1: have you heard before that the hundred fleets on a
Speaker 1: French chef's hat that they represent all the different ways
Speaker 1: they know of how to prepare an egg? Familiar that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's an often repeated story, but it's actually hard to
Speaker 1: find any evidence of this. I mean, French cooks like
Speaker 1: Jacques Pepin will tell you how much they love eggs
Speaker 1: and even used making perfect silky scrambled eggs as kind
Speaker 1: of this test of whether you can work in their kitchens.
Speaker 1: But Bon Appetite did some digging and they did find
Speaker 1: a little bit of corroborating evidence for this. So apparently
Speaker 1: the French cook who elevated French cuisine and kind of
Speaker 1: put chefs in uniform, august Escoffe, he had one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty three recipes for mastering eggs and he documented
Speaker 1: them all in his legendary h three cookbook. I feel
Speaker 1: like I could come up with maybe four ways to
Speaker 1: love eggs, so that is impressive, and I want to
Speaker 1: give you today's fact Off trophy. But I really feel
Speaker 1: like the whole birds and drawers came out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and so I gave I don't know how you feel,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we have choice but to give
Speaker 1: mango the trophy today. What do you think you can
Speaker 1: get behind that? Okay with that mango? Yeah, definitely, I'm
Speaker 1: going to stuff d but listeners. We've loved hearing from
Speaker 1: you guys so many ideas for future nine Things episodes,
Speaker 1: so if you want to keep those coming, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. It's part time genius at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. You can also call seven
Speaker 1: Fact hot Line one eight four pt genius, or hit
Speaker 1: us up on Facebook or Twitter. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: a full length episode tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening.