Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in. Let's uh, this is a special one for us, Noel. Let's start by as always commending our super producer, mister Max tally Ho Williams. That's mister Noel brown Day.
I don't have a tricorn hat on THO films.
Most people don't, I think statistically, I guess that's true.
That may be a fad that has uh temporarily waned. I am Ben Bullet and Noel, you and I were talking a while back about some of our favorite guests. We were talking about some of our favorite things to explore, and one name kept popping up. H and Max you were you were talking with us about this as well. It is the legendary the infamous AJ Bahamas Jacobs, as the FBI is want to call them.
I don't understand, and neither do you AJ, and neither will you Ridiculous Historians. But that's okay, because that's what makes a really good mysterious nickname.
Have you been to the Bahamas?
I have been to the Bahamas.
That's that's it.
I don't want to say anymore of what I did there.
But uh, what happens in the Bahamas stays in the boom.
There you go.
I am honored and delighted to be back and uh and have this mysterious nickname and have my tricorn hat. No judgment against Noel or Max for not wearing the tricorn.
But I just don't even know where one procures such a garment.
Well mine, I had to go order it online like a fancy one because those.
One was technically sideways. Okay, oh dear, there we go.
There you go. Now you're very Brotherhood of the Wolf the course, thank you? Is it felt? What is this material? It looks like a real robust material.
Yeah, the real the old ones were made of beaver felt beaver So I don't know one felt a beaver there.
Very carefully damn it.
Yes so, but I think mine is just yes, regular old non beaver material. I don't know what about Ben's, but I got mine from a colonial style haberd dasher that I went ye old internet and found.
They probably do a lot of reenactment business.
Oh yeah, no, that's where that's right. This is from when I joined the Third New Jersey Regiment of Revolutionary War re Enactors. This was part of my required kit, as they call it.
As part of your journey in the creation of your work, the year of living constitutionally. That's correct.
What you all were delightful enough to come to my book party about a year ago, and we, uh, we had a good time. We had some we burned some candles, We wrote with the quill pens. We had muskets, we can wielded muskets. We had some mead or actually I think it was uh, what is that? What did we have?
Oh, mold wine wine. No, it was.
Now we have to say a j First off, you're one of the busiest guys we know. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us. For anyone who is somehow unfamiliar with this, you are a podcaster as well. You have an excellent show called The Puzzler. Before we get into our exploration today, could you tell us a little bit about The Puzzler and just maybe some family time. What's been going on with you, how your folks, et cetera.
Well, thank you for asking. Yes, The Puzzler is a podcast produced by iHeartMedia, and we have celebrity guests such as Oh my gosh, Noel Brown and Ben Bolin And.
No one's ever called me that before in my life. How dare you, sir? I am anonymous.
You called me legendary, so well, I'm alive.
That's accurate.
And we play basically, we play some word games, nerdy word games with them, and we did some history ones with both of you. I believe we had, for instance, a character who had no idea. He knew the names of historical events but didn't know what they were. So he talked about one where it was a beret uh and a a bottle of white wine that went around in circles, and that's the French Revolution.
There.
There is still no pun left behind, as they say on so this our puzzle podcast, really no pun left behind. So that's good and uh oh. The only other exciting well I shouldn't say that. One other exciting thing is my son next year is going to Emory uh University.
So I'm I mean, you're gonna come visit, You're gonna hang.
I'm going to be hanging in Atlanta. Would you'll be sick of me?
You let it take you to our Atlanta equivalent of Barney greengrass, it's called it's called Goldbergs. It's not quite as good but as solid. Would you say, guys, would you say it's pretty good? It's I would say no, Barney.
Head and I great, hard true, but it's it's a nice way. And you know, we were again we were chatting about you singing your praises and said, when's the last time we had this guy on the show. What would aj want to talk about? And we pitched a couple of ideas to you, like a well three or four, which is more than a couple. And then you wrote back to us and you immediately said, ridiculous clothing, fads,
controversy of fashion throughout history. I have some thoughts indeed, and maybe we started this way because you are also what we call our research associate for our exploration here. Since we're wearing hats, could you tell us a little bit like hats are a functional thing, but they also become quite they can be quite flamboyant. They can be quite a statement more so than a like a piece of functional gear.
Everything about that, guys, like the moment the person that came up with the idea, where like you know what, maybe this maybe this could be more. Maybe I'll put a feather in it, and all of a sudden, I'll be a fancy.
Man, right, And there is a whole thing about the feather and the macaroni and Yankee doodle. And yes, I have always shocked when I see photographs from like the nineteen twenties and every man and most women are wearing hats. And I believe JFK had a lot to do with getting rid of that trend because he went hatless. And I don't know. I know you have a conspiracy podcast as well, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever posed that the Haberdashers of America were the ones who were
most angry at JFK for ruining their business. I don't know, it's just the thought. Big hat, Yeah, big hat exactly. But yes, the hats are and they have an amazing history. And what I decided to focus on in my research were controversial clothes, so literal crimes, literal fashion crimes, and clothes that led to UH laws or rebellions or reform or riots. There are several riot clothing based riots, So hats are a good way to start, you know, start at the top.
Yeah, let's do it. Work our way down to the sock. That's it.
I do have some shoe related not so much suck.
It's okay, Well there's a shoe, there's a sock, hopefully unless you're an animal.
Or wearing flip flops. But also Atlanta is the home of flip flops and socks.
So much talk about a statement piece.
Yeah, that could cause some some riots. I know.
It's like when people saw the rights of Spring, you know, and they just freaked out.
They couldn't handle it. So let's I love, We're going a little bit matt cap. Perhaps nobody left behind, thank you, sir. Let's start, as you said at the top, you found in your research that there were quote bird hats that started the environmental movement.
Yes, they helped to kick off the animal rights and environmental movement because this was in the late eighteen hundreds, and women loved their feathered hats. They loved these fancy parrot feathers, egret plumes, herons, birds of paradise, and they were very expensive. It was hard to get them. Egret plumes were worth twice their weight in gold. And then they decided, well, feathers are good, but why not just go for it and put the whole bird on top
of the hat. There were Taxa Dirmy. Women would wear these taxa dermied full birds, owls, egrets right on top of their head and it's insane. If you google the images, it is bizarre.
It's like the.
Full hat, but also been bird hats.
Around the neck. They would have a bird around the wrist. So it was a huge status symbol. But there were a couple people who found it a little offensive because they were killing literally five million birds a year to get these hats. So there were these two women who were society women in Boston, Harriet Heminway and Minna now
I'm looking Blackmair last name. They started a group in nineteen oh five, the first Audubon National Audubon Society, was to fight against these hats and they it took off. It struck a chord, and ten years later they were able to get a law passed, or five years later, the Audubon Plumage Law that protected birds from the depredations
of the plume industry. As one source put it, and yeah, it was it was fascinating to see that this was what kicked off the Audubon society, which then became a major player in the environmental movement.
Wow. Yeah, the National Audubon Society here in the States is still, as you said, very much active, right, And I think that is a bit of hidden history, the idea that you would see this wholesale slaughter of avian life to have people wearing look and I don't want to sound like a jerk, you guys, I might I'm shallow enough that I might have a different opinion if the hats did not look.
As goofy as they do.
Like, if they looked cool, I might say, yeah, hear us out.
You know, well, yeah, it's kind of come full circle, and now there are bird hats that are actually meant to preserve avian life, in the form of the quite bizarre falcon sex hat.
If you remember about.
This, it's key for falconry. It helps endangered birds reproduce. It's actually one of the primary reasons you might remember I was talking about this few years back. You might remember it's one of the reasons that I am not an out active falconer because the hat is the hat helps the birds reproduce by having you know, their human body, their falconer wear it and the bird flies onto the hat and mounts it, and he insiminates the hat.
Yeah, I'm going to read a little quick blurb here from a falconer on Reddit or a short explanation of why this is the thing. He says.
I don't get it either.
I don't know hat. I didn't know hats could get what.
Happens to the insemination, like it just hangs out in the hat. By the way, the hats are silly looking. They're sort of rubberized, little gritted.
They look like they have suction cups on them.
Kind of silly to you, but super hot.
They're super hot. Ten no notes say the falcons yep.
Falcons, as a reddit or tree Tree nineteen eighty four puts it, are often imprinted on humans for various reasons, so basically, they're sexually attracted to people. Breeders take the reverse role of whatever sex the imprinted falcon is and play out the courtship ritual, including bows and chirps and presenting food. If you've never seen birds mate, the male climbs on top of the female and then they rub
Kloika's Humans obviously don't have that hardware. But after courting the male birds will still try to get on top and do his thing, hence falcon breeding hats. This is the reason I stopped wanting to be a breeder. Hope this was informative.
For more information, check out Daily's eye geis from a few years back, because that was I think that's a surprise to a lot of people who are getting into falconry. But as as you found AJD the concept of controversial hats, I love the I love what you set up there and all that, that cycle of hurting birds and then helping birds. But we know that hats have also led to, as you so beautifully foreshadowed aj absolute chaos in the streets.
Yes.
Well, first of all, I love the falcon breeding hat, so thank you for that. I will never forget it.
Watch out, so one's birthday is on the way statistically all the time.
Why would you do that to Age's fair enough?
I don't know if you're aware I mentioned this from time to time.
I have.
I have long running fear of birds, so the idea of the taxidermy bird hat is particularly important to me.
All right, scratching it off your Christmas list right now?
Thank you. Yeah.
One of the most memorable hat history happenings. Hey, I don't know alliterations. You love that habit daring, do habitashery or daring?
Don't you know? It's up to you.
This was the.
Straw hat riot of nineteen twenty two. It's just such a bizarre and delightful well not delightful for the people involved, but looking back, it was just so bizarre. New York City Society had this rule that you should stop wearing straw hats. Straw hats were for the summer, not for the fall. And these are the flat top straw hats, sort of boaters, sometimes called yep.
It was a little band of fabric around them, usually right exactly.
And there was actually a day you were supposed to stop wearing September fifteen was called felt hat Day, okay, And if you wore your straw hat after that, you were opening yourself up to some real trouble because there was a trend this was in the early nineteen hundreds of people they would knock your straw hat off your head and stomp on it.
Guys, there is nothing more offensive than someone, even in jest, pulling knocking your hat off of your head. It is what the drag community would refer to you as having your wig snatched off. It is an act of violence, no matter how it occurs and what spirit right.
And then they got a little more violent, like as it reached its height in nineteen twenty two, people would they would not only knock the hat off, but then they would beat the crap out of you for wearing it.
Yee.
So this is like when this is when people who have anger issues take pinching someone on Saint Patti's Day too far. Hey, I've got a question here, and I think it's one that a lot of us are are asking to ourselves as we play along at home. Why is there any real specificity on September fifteenth? Because it reminds me of like not wearing white after labor. It feels like it's somewhat arbitrary, as a lot of fashion is.
Yeah, it was totally the arbitrary. In fact, originally it was September first, and then they moved it. They decided to be lax and move it to September fifteenth, but people took it very seriously and it culminated in this nineteen twenty two riot that lasted eight days, which is insane. So it started when some of youths, that's what the history books call them, youths, tried to take off some hats from dock workers. Dock workers were not amused, turned
into a brawl, and then it just escalated. There were apparently at one point a thousand, a mob of a thousand hat haters knocking off hats on Amsterdam Avenue in New York and beating people up. They had these wooden sticks with nails on the end so that they could hook the hat and get it off more efficiently.
That's kind of a fun little prank.
Can you imagine doing it like over a fence, you know, having a string attached to a dollar bill, you know, and drinking us too.
Far, you know, l through the crowd of the hat or whatever.
Now either and it's not as fun, but yeah, so it I mean, it eventually died down, but eight days of this people were arrested injured, And it's just such a bizarre little corner of history. And it's not the only related riot.
I was going to ask, you've got a little related note here about the zoot suit ryot And I really only know that because of the cherry popping daddies. Seminal nineteen nineties swing hit when there was like the Brian setz Or Orchestra. There was a moment the squirrel nut Zippers, kind of old timey music that was like being played on TRL that stands for Total Request Live if anyone forgets.
Lest we forget.
But yeah, what was the actual thing where the I always picture dudes in big hats ands loose zoot suits just brawling in the streets.
But what set it off?
Well, this was in nineteen forty three, in June, and it's called the zoot suit ryot and zuit suits. As you mentioned, there were these often colorful, but they had wide shoulders, big lapels, banky pants, and they were originally pioneered by by black men and then they were taken up by Latino men and it became sort of a.
White people took it eventually, right well they.
I mean, yeah, well the white people got very angry at the Latino So it was a race based This was a race based ryot.
Like marijuana mattiness type of stuff.
It was about the same air era, that's right. And so the white this was in Los Angeles. The white Angelino's attacked the mostly Mexican people who were wearing these zoot suits, and they had an excuse. Often these riots have an excuse. The white people said it was World War two and that they were these zoot suits were unpatriot because they were using too much fabric.
I remember this, is there maybe even a sense that they're a little too Italian?
You know?
Interesting?
I do wonder, I mean, like, it just seems like that kind of fashion is more associated with Europe. I just wonder if there was a certain inherent bias around that as well, maybe not just conjecturing from.
What I understand, that might be a piece of it, because if I recall correctly, one of the big issues that was sort of the public rationale for these acts of violence, it was the idea, like you were saying, Aja, that it was un American in a time of rations. Yeah, that makes sense to be flexing so hard with fabric. That Look, every trend reaches this sort of diminishing return where it becomes too extensive, or it goes far too it goes a little too far along the spectrum of
cutting edge fashion. So it is technically true that some of the suits of the time could have been you know, made into one and a half regular size suits. But I don't think that means they're at all, you know, some hidden fifth column of anti American activity, you know what I mean. I don't think it's time for red scare. So it does sound like they're justifying racism and violent action in in already very tense environments, right exactly.
I think there were probably bigger threats to America.
At that point. Maybe you don't think who are we?
But actually that can I segue back to hats for a second, means this idea of size actually plays a part in several other controversies. One of my favorite fashion crimes was this occurred in seventeen nine in London, and there was a man who was arrested. His name was mister Heatherington. We don't know that his first name. He was arrested and put in jail bond with five hundred pounds, so that's that's real. His crime was wearing a huge,
tall silk hat. And the article in the London Gazette says that this tall structure with shiny luster was calculated to frighten timid people.
And in fear of the hat that hat oh.
Well, apparently it was so tall that several women fainted at the unusual site. Can you imagine children screamed this was from the paper dog natural. One person was thrown down by the crowd and broke his right arm. So for these reasons, the defendant was seized by the guards. So I just love that. I mean, a tall hat, like you said, I forget whether it was it was which one of you said that the right of Spring that Servinsky.
It just freaked them out.
Yeah, it was a piece of music that didn't quite harmonize and people were so upset that they rioted. And I love that things that could make people riot in the past, where tall hats and atonal music.
I also I love the essummation and also without body shaving. Iind of want to see a picture of mister Heatherington's face because I don't you know what I mean, Like, there are I'm sure people who are uncomfortable with headgear and headwear and all that sort of stuff, But it feels like there's more to the story behind this guy in his top hat, like in the in the excellent limited series Taboo. If Everybody's familiar fan, Yeah.
I was good with Tom Hardy about what's it is there about the East India Trading Company is the big bad and he's this dude that has like gone disappeared for a long time, and he's been living with some sort of I believe Amazonian tribe and he's learned all this like kind of witchcraft kind of stuff and he comes back and.
Wreaks havoc on the man in Victoria in London. It's good.
And he does the entire thing in a tall hat, very tall, but it is, it is, and it's one of those tall, those top hats. The vertically I guess we'll say vertically accelerated hats are something that I've always wondered about, like will they come back? I believe Farrell did a very large like Park Ranger meets Cowboy kind of hat.
Almost like a tricorn hat kind of Yeah. I do have to wonder. I mean, when I think about the tall top hat too, you're I think you might have been getting to this bend asking about the dude's face. Is it may maybe an attempt to draw attention away from one's face because you've got this massive thing, you.
Know, lumbering over you.
I do one maybe he had an unsightly mole and he was just very insecure and wanted people to look at his top hat rather than his face. But then at the end of the day, the tall top hat does guide your gaze down to the face eventually.
Yeah, I think a tall top hat for a lot of people can just make you look shorter. So I'm not sure what the We're not sure of the calculus. We do know we love the name and aj this sounds like we don't have a ton of follow up on this guy, like when he got out, he just got five right, this was.
This was the only article about him. Unfortunately, I read about it in a great book called Dress Codes by Richard Thompson Ford. Two quick things. I don't want it to rail us, but you mentioned.
Oh rail us.
Please continue unsightly moles.
I remember reading when I first read the Encyclopedia, they held a whole section on patches, especially in France, so they the moles were not considered unsightly. They would you, people would pay good money for these fake moles, and sometimes they'd be in shapes of like spiders.
Yeah stars, Yes, I'm glad you mentioned shapes of spiders.
I just wanted to mention one last thing.
The tall skinny top hat really makes me think of the art of Edward Gory, Like if you think about that kind of macabre, sort of gothic kind of vibe, or like Tim Burton, like The Corpse Bride or something like that, or even Nightmember before Christmas. Those tall skinny top hats very much fit that aesthetic.
Yeah, I love it. You're right, we need them back. We need them back.
I think so clearly you guys are on board with this.
We'll figure it out. Yeah, because now that now that we're rocking the Tricorn, I can I can tell our accountant this was for work purposes. So that's that's really the reason we're having on the show. Uh. Also, we would be remiss as a US based UH researchers and podcasters if we did not shout out, perhaps what are the two most famous uses of the top hat in US mythos, which is of course former president amateur wrestler
Abraham Lincoln. Going to reach on that guy, Yeah, the guy who inspired Uncle Sam ah right by far, one of the most garish top hats.
That one kind of flares out at the top.
Right, Okay, kind of feels how the I guess that's a good point depends on how the cartoonist was feeling about the us on that day. Whatever they drew.
I love hat related satire.
And we're going to hold the phone, the rough, the corset or the collar. There, folks, this is going to be a two parter. Big Big thinks too. The legendary A J. Bahamas Jacobs, just the most like the nicest, most erud averdyke.
Guy indeed and just a yeah and a fashion icon, a real clothes horse with the try corner. Had that you were also rocking. I'm gonna gap to get me on for the next time we have ah on. But yeah, always always a delight to hang with the puzzler.
Yes, agreed, Big Big Things as well to our super producer mister Max Williams, his biological brother, our composer Alex Williams. Do we have a check in on Alex? How's he doing?
He's good, Yeah, he's still I think he's I think he's in town still.
Yeah.
Yeah, Alex around his code just playing guitar, singing, hiking, riding bikes.
Maybe we could get maybe we could get Alex on the show one day or return have him return one day soon. In the meantime, Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizzer, who else, Noel, who else? Who else?
Oh you know, Chris Frasciotis, E.
Jeff Codes here in Spirits, all the hits you know, Rachel Big, Spinach Lanch and all that good stuff.
The rude dudes over.
At Ridiculous Crime. And of course you've been thank you and also witch.
You mm hmm. You see you next time, folks.
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