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Hats Off · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. It was September six and brawls had broken
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  Speaker 1: out in multiple areas of New York City, resulting in
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  Speaker 1: a full blown riot. Before it was over, dozens were
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  Speaker 1: injured and required medical treatment. One man had been beaten
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  Speaker 1: so badly that he needed hospitalization. It started three days earlier,
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  Speaker 1: when thousands of teenaged boys stalk through the city, chasing
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  Speaker 1: citizens through the street eats. Smaller gangs of boys would
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  Speaker 1: wait in doorways for unsuspecting victims. Police were dispatched, although
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  Speaker 1: they were greatly outnumbered. They would just manage to break
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  Speaker 1: up a gang in one district, only to discover another
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  Speaker 1: had formed somewhere else, and the cause of all of
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  Speaker 1: it straw hats. You see. In the early twentieth century,
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  Speaker 1: men wore straw hats during warmer months, and then switched
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  Speaker 1: to felt hats when the weather turned chili after a time.
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  Speaker 1: The unofficial date was settled on September fift whereby all
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  Speaker 1: men young and old alike were expected to switch or
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  Speaker 1: be ridiculed. It was a fashion rule, sort of like
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  Speaker 1: not wearing white after Labor Day, only a lot less forgiving.
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  Speaker 1: The act of stomping on hats didn't start out as
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  Speaker 1: something violent, though. It actually stemmed from a tradition among stockbrokers,
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  Speaker 1: a way of having fun with their fellow co workers.
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  Speaker 1: There were rules, though, stealing and smashing the straw hat
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  Speaker 1: of a stranger was strictly forbidden. A straw hat was
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  Speaker 1: popular among New York stockbrokes during the summer to war
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  Speaker 1: during social events. Soon though, they hat became equally popular
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  Speaker 1: among other professions, and the tradition of hat snatching and
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  Speaker 1: stopping spread with it. It became so common, in fact,
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  Speaker 1: that newspapers published a warning each year alerting readers to
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  Speaker 1: the impending fashion faux paw deadline. But in nineteen youths
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  Speaker 1: in New York City decided to get a jump on
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  Speaker 1: the tradition, and one could argue that cool heads didn't prevail.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't the first time straw hats had caused trouble though.
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  Speaker 1: Back in September of nineteen ten, police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
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  Speaker 1: were called to safeguard pedestrians still sporting their summer headwear.
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  Speaker 1: The Pittsburgh press complained about the hat smashing ritual, even
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  Speaker 1: predicting that the practice would eventually get out of hand,
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  Speaker 1: which it did in ninety two. The trouble started when
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  Speaker 1: teens began stealing and smashing straw hats from factory workers
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  Speaker 1: in Manhattan. Sometimes they simply knocked the hats off men's head.
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  Speaker 1: Other teens carried sticks with hooks to better grab the hats.
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  Speaker 1: After that, the overly confident teenagers marched to the docks
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  Speaker 1: and tried stealing and stomping the hats off the heads
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  Speaker 1: of dock workers there. But those men retaliated, and an
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  Speaker 1: all out brawl ensued, bad enough to block traffic on
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  Speaker 1: the Manhattan Bridge. The police were forced to pull brawlers
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  Speaker 1: apart and make arrests, all except for boys under the
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  Speaker 1: age of fifteen. That is, their punishment was left to
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  Speaker 1: their parents, many of whom chose a public spanking at
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  Speaker 1: the police station on East one oh four Street. If
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  Speaker 1: any good came from the straw hat riot, it was
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  Speaker 1: that local stores stayed open way past closing hours to
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  Speaker 1: accommodate customers looking to buy the more seasonal and safer
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  Speaker 1: felt hats. Thankfully, no one died that year, but in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen four one man was murdered for wearing a straw
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  Speaker 1: hat past September, which is probably why in nineteen President
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  Speaker 1: Calvin Coolidge blatantly ignored tradition and wore a straw hat
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  Speaker 1: well past the acceptable date. The New York Times ran
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  Speaker 1: a front page headline in the following day featuring a
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  Speaker 1: picture of the president's doing so. Hat stomping died down
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  Speaker 1: after that. During the Great Depression, the half that had
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  Speaker 1: once been popular with stockbrokers became a symbol of the
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  Speaker 1: irresponsible twenties and quickly fell out of style. But that's
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  Speaker 1: to be expected, after all, fashion has always been very
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  Speaker 1: good at changing at the drop of a hat. The
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  Speaker 1: newspaper advertisement read absolutely Free on April six. All anyone
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  Speaker 1: wanting a personalized horoscope had to do was send in
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  Speaker 1: a submission with their name and address, their place and
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  Speaker 1: date of birth, and the answers to a few personal questions.
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  Speaker 1: And the ad was so successful that over five requests fled.
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  Speaker 1: It in after receiving their horoscopes over partis, scipients were
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  Speaker 1: so amazed at the results that they felt compelled to
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  Speaker 1: write in and say so. In fact, nearly everyone said
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  Speaker 1: their horoscope had been uncanny and how it described them
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  Speaker 1: to the tune of accuracy. What the participants didn't know
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  Speaker 1: is that they've been tricked. No, not by taking their
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  Speaker 1: money or by stealing their identity. The advertisement hadn't been
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  Speaker 1: placed with nefarious intent. Instead, the whole thing was part
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  Speaker 1: of an experiment. Dr Michelle go Clean, a psychologist and statistician,
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  Speaker 1: was researching astrology, mostly a study where he set out
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  Speaker 1: to prove that stars in the vast universe had little
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  Speaker 1: to do with someone's fate or personality characteristics. But even
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  Speaker 1: though he set out to discredit horoscopes, he hired a
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  Speaker 1: professional astrologer to assist him with it. Go Clean's test
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  Speaker 1: was based on an American experiment from twenty years earlier.
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  Speaker 1: In that experiment discovered what's become known as subjective validation. Essentially,
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  Speaker 1: it's the idea that people form a cognitive bias when
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  Speaker 1: presented with information that's close to their own values and beliefs.
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  Speaker 1: The theory had first been tested on students. They've each
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  Speaker 1: been given the exact same personality test, but instead of
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  Speaker 1: giving them results based on their answers, he ignored it
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  Speaker 1: and supplied the students with identical data, in this case
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  Speaker 1: a recent newspaper horoscope. Each student then graded the results
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  Speaker 1: on a scale of one to five for how close
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  Speaker 1: they seem to match them personally, one being totally wrong
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  Speaker 1: and five being right, and the results the collective average
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  Speaker 1: came in at four point two. The experiment has been
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  Speaker 1: repeated hundreds of times since, and the average results are
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  Speaker 1: almost always the same. Psychologists and researchers believe that people
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  Speaker 1: are likely to accept broad descriptions or statements when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to their own personalities, even though the same description
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  Speaker 1: or statement is probably true of almost anyone. So why
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  Speaker 1: does this work well? Human nature. We all want to
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  Speaker 1: el that we belong. Our species is hardwired for it.
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  Speaker 1: After all, we want to fit in, and we have
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  Speaker 1: a pretty good idea that certain traits and personalities fit
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  Speaker 1: in better with our peers than others. So when we
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  Speaker 1: read that we tend to seek approval from those we admire,
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  Speaker 1: or that we seek comfort and safety or have unused potential,
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  Speaker 1: or that we are our own worst critic. Well, the
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  Speaker 1: statements almost always sound spot on for most of us,
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  Speaker 1: and because the generalizations are more or less positive, we're
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  Speaker 1: more apt to believe them. On the flip side, we
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  Speaker 1: also tend to rate any negative assessments as less accurate,
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  Speaker 1: no matter how common the traits are among others. According
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  Speaker 1: to psychologists, people sometimes feel so strongly about the results
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  Speaker 1: that they tend to alter their behavior to appear consistent
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  Speaker 1: with these generalizations in hopes that others will then back
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  Speaker 1: them up, Which leads us back to the findings on
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  Speaker 1: that nineteen sixty eight horoscope experiment. While the astrologer created
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  Speaker 1: a generalized horoscope for the ninety eight experiment, it was
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  Speaker 1: at random. He'd been hired to specifically create an astronomical
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  Speaker 1: reading of a real, actual person. And what exactly did
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  Speaker 1: that personalized reading? Say? That the individual was intelligent, warm, ingenious,
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  Speaker 1: and had good judgment. It also stated that they had
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  Speaker 1: complete dedication to others. In this case, the real life
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  Speaker 1: person was a doctor who had served during World War One,
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  Speaker 1: so that makes sense. Here's the thing, though, this doctor
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  Speaker 1: wasn't even alive at the time the horoscope was written,
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  Speaker 1: having been dead since nine and his cause of death
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  Speaker 1: execution after being convicted of killing twenty three victims. And
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  Speaker 1: while his name was technically Marcel Petieu, most today simply
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  Speaker 1: referred to him as doctor Satan. So the next time
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  Speaker 1: you read a horoscope and feel as if it was
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  Speaker 1: written specifically for you, take it with a grain of salt.
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  Speaker 1: After all, you might just be in bad company. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,