Hats Off

injured and required medical treatment. One man had been beaten so badly that he needed hospitalization. It started three days earlier, when thousands of teenaged boys stalk through the city, chasing citizens through the street eats. Smaller gangs of boys would wait in doorways for unsuspecting victims. Police were dispatched, although

they were greatly outnumbered. They would just manage to break up a gang in one district, only to discover another had formed somewhere else, and the cause of all of it straw hats. You see. In the early twentieth century, men wore straw hats during warmer months, and then switched to felt hats when the weather turned chili after a time. The unofficial date was settled on September fift whereby all men young and old alike were expected to switch or

be ridiculed. It was a fashion rule, sort of like not wearing white after Labor Day, only a lot less forgiving. The act of stomping on hats didn't start out as something violent, though. It actually stemmed from a tradition among stockbrokers, a way of having fun with their fellow co workers. There were rules, though, stealing and smashing the straw hat of a stranger was strictly forbidden. A straw hat was popular among New York stockbrokes during the summer to war

during social events. Soon though, they hat became equally popular among other professions, and the tradition of hat snatching and stopping spread with it. It became so common, in fact, that newspapers published a warning each year alerting readers to the impending fashion faux paw deadline. But in nineteen youths in New York City decided to get a jump on the tradition, and one could argue that cool heads didn't prevail. It wasn't the first time straw hats had caused trouble though.

Back in September of nineteen ten, police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were called to safeguard pedestrians still sporting their summer headwear. The Pittsburgh press complained about the hat smashing ritual, even predicting that the practice would eventually get out of hand, which it did in ninety two. The trouble started when teens began stealing and smashing straw hats from factory workers in Manhattan. Sometimes they simply knocked the hats off men's head.

Other teens carried sticks with hooks to better grab the hats. After that, the overly confident teenagers marched to the docks and tried stealing and stomping the hats off the heads of dock workers there. But those men retaliated, and an all out brawl ensued, bad enough to block traffic on the Manhattan Bridge. The police were forced to pull brawlers apart and make arrests, all except for boys under the

age of fifteen. That is, their punishment was left to their parents, many of whom chose a public spanking at the police station on East one oh four Street. If any good came from the straw hat riot, it was that local stores stayed open way past closing hours to accommodate customers looking to buy the more seasonal and safer

felt hats. Thankfully, no one died that year, but in nineteen four one man was murdered for wearing a straw hat past September, which is probably why in nineteen President Calvin Coolidge blatantly ignored tradition and wore a straw hat well past the acceptable date. The New York Times ran a front page headline in the following day featuring a picture of the president's doing so. Hat stomping died down

after that. During the Great Depression, the half that had once been popular with stockbrokers became a symbol of the irresponsible twenties and quickly fell out of style. But that's to be expected, after all, fashion has always been very good at changing at the drop of a hat. The

newspaper advertisement read absolutely Free on April six. All anyone wanting a personalized horoscope had to do was send in a submission with their name and address, their place and date of birth, and the answers to a few personal questions. And the ad was so successful that over five requests fled. It in after receiving their horoscopes over partis, scipients were so amazed at the results that they felt compelled to

write in and say so. In fact, nearly everyone said their horoscope had been uncanny and how it described them to the tune of accuracy. What the participants didn't know is that they've been tricked. No, not by taking their money or by stealing their identity. The advertisement hadn't been placed with nefarious intent. Instead, the whole thing was part

of an experiment. Dr Michelle go Clean, a psychologist and statistician, was researching astrology, mostly a study where he set out to prove that stars in the vast universe had little to do with someone's fate or personality characteristics. But even though he set out to discredit horoscopes, he hired a professional astrologer to assist him with it. Go Clean's test was based on an American experiment from twenty years earlier.

In that experiment discovered what's become known as subjective validation. Essentially, it's the idea that people form a cognitive bias when presented with information that's close to their own values and beliefs. The theory had first been tested on students. They've each been given the exact same personality test, but instead of giving them results based on their answers, he ignored it and supplied the students with identical data, in this case

a recent newspaper horoscope. Each student then graded the results on a scale of one to five for how close they seem to match them personally, one being totally wrong and five being right, and the results the collective average came in at four point two. The experiment has been repeated hundreds of times since, and the average results are

almost always the same. Psychologists and researchers believe that people are likely to accept broad descriptions or statements when it comes to their own personalities, even though the same description or statement is probably true of almost anyone. So why does this work well? Human nature. We all want to el that we belong. Our species is hardwired for it. After all, we want to fit in, and we have a pretty good idea that certain traits and personalities fit

in better with our peers than others. So when we read that we tend to seek approval from those we admire, or that we seek comfort and safety or have unused potential, or that we are our own worst critic. Well, the statements almost always sound spot on for most of us, and because the generalizations are more or less positive, we're more apt to believe them. On the flip side, we also tend to rate any negative assessments as less accurate,

no matter how common the traits are among others. According to psychologists, people sometimes feel so strongly about the results that they tend to alter their behavior to appear consistent with these generalizations in hopes that others will then back them up, Which leads us back to the findings on that nineteen sixty eight horoscope experiment. While the astrologer created a generalized horoscope for the ninety eight experiment, it was

at random. He'd been hired to specifically create an astronomical reading of a real, actual person. And what exactly did that personalized reading? Say? That the individual was intelligent, warm, ingenious, and had good judgment. It also stated that they had complete dedication to others. In this case, the real life person was a doctor who had served during World War One,

so that makes sense. Here's the thing, though, this doctor wasn't even alive at the time the horoscope was written, having been dead since nine and his cause of death execution after being convicted of killing twenty three victims. And while his name was technically Marcel Petieu, most today simply referred to him as doctor Satan. So the next time you read a horoscope and feel as if it was written specifically for you, take it with a grain of salt.

After all, you might just be in bad company. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World

of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,