The Pilgrims and the Puritans shaped early America, not always for the better.
After Henry VIII renounced the Catholic Church in 1534 it set England on a path towards total separation from Rome. The religious direction of the country swung back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism until Elizabeth I finalized the direction of the country making England a protestant country through the Church of England.
Religious dissent was not tolerated in Elizabeth’s England. During her reign the government ratcheted up the pressure for religious compliance. People were fined if they did not attend Church of England masses, Catholics practicing in secret risked possible execution if caught, etc. However, once the precedent of rejecting established beliefs had been set, others followed suit.
The Pilgrims and the Puritans moved to North America seeking religious freedom and greater control.
Pilgrims
Doing this unstable religious period some people began to create new faith ideas. In Nottinghamshire people started separatist congregations, turning away from the Church of England. To escape English persecution these separatists moved to the Netherlands in the early 17th century. While Holland was more religiously tolerant, it was foreign and had limited economic opportunities since the English separatists were classified as unskilled laborers. They wanted a place to call their own with a new start. In 1620 they left the Netherlands for Southampton where they boarded the Mayflower and the Speedwell sailing to North America. These congregational separatists would become known as the Pilgrims.
Theologically the Pilgrims completely separated themselves from the Church of England. They were largely Calvinists. They believed in a direct personal relationship with God, they rejected a hierarchical church leadership, they rejected most of the sacraments, and they believed in the predestination of souls (that God had already decided who goes to Heaven or Hell).
After 66 days at sea the Pilgrims arrived in Provincetown Harbor, at the tip of Cape Cod. A month later they moved across the harbor to Plymouth founding the Plymouth Colony. Incidentally it wasn’t until 121 years later in 1741 that a boulder was identified as “Plymouth Rock”, the alleged spot the Pilgrims landed at. In 1621 the Pilgrims worked with the Wampanoag to celebrate the first Thanksgiving, the thing they are perhaps most famous for.
Puritans
So who were the Puritans? In a nutshell they were better financed and a lot less tolerant than the Pilgrims. The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, 10 years after the Pilgrims, on 17 ships, with a lot more money and a lot more people. By 1640 the Puritans were around 20,000 in number while the Pilgrims of Plymouth were about 2,600.
Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans did not see themselves as separatists. In fact, they felt the Church of England didn’t go far enough to separate itself from Catholicism and worked to “purify” the faith (hence the name “Puritans”).
In a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutor, early settlers used their religious beliefs to persecute their neighbors.
Persecution
For a story of people seeking religious freedom, it’s perhaps surprising how much intolerance was baked into America from the beginning. In a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutor, many of the protestant settlers were intolerant of others just as England had been towards them. In establishing their colonies the settlers used their religious beliefs as a justification to discriminate against the Native Americans as well as other types of Christians.
The Pilgrims tended to be more tolerant than the Puritans, but even the Pilgrims would expel religious dissenters and killed Native Americans. In 1637 the Puritans massacred between 400-700 Pequot people along the Mystic River in Connecticut. Quakers were hung in Boston in 1659 and 1661 for returning to the city after having been cast out for their differing religious beliefs by the Puritans. By the end of the 17th century Puritan intolerance & suspicions led to the Salem witch trials, executing 19 people. Even after the American Revolution, depending on what state you were in, Catholics were banned from holding public office, Jews did not have full civil rights, etc. Puritanical protestants used their beliefs to justify their bigotry.
That said not every American colonist was intolerant. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams all advocated for religious freedom and established the separation of church and state. Adopted in 1791, the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise religion, but even today the struggle for tolerance and the secularization of government continues.
A short crash-course of the Pilgrims coming to North America.
QI discusses the Puritans long history of intolerance.
Iconic symbols of witches & Halloween, black cats are lovable felines shrouded in superstition.
Genetics
Black cats are cats with all black fur (probably obvious). That said they aren’t a specific breed of cat and span at least 22 breeds. The Bombay is the only breed that is exclusively black as they were specifically bred in the 1950s to look like tiny panthers.
The gene for black fur is on the x chromosome and so most black cats are male (since they only have one x chromosome). Female cats need two black fur x chromosomes to be black, which makes female black cats very rare. The genetics that give black cats the darker melanin for their fur also gives most black cats yellow eyes.
Some black cats can “rust”, where their black fur turns a bit brown. Sometimes this is due to dietary problems but seems to be most commonly caused by prolonged exposure to sunlight. Given time they go back to being black.
Cats, and specifically black cats, have a long association with magic and witchcraft.
Superstitions
Besides their beautiful appearance, black cats are famous for all sorts of superstitious beliefs (both good and bad). The association of cats with magic can goes back to the ancient Egyptians (in particular the goddess Bastet who had the body of a woman and the head of a black cat). The sinister reputation of black cats goes back at least as far as 13th century Germany where they were associated with evil magic. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX’s Vox in Rama condemned witchcraft, the occult, and Luciferianism which was said to be rampant in Germany.
As the church sought out heretics they formed connections (real or imagined) between black cats and demonic witchcraft. It was said the devil would appear as a black cat or a hybrid of part cat part man. By 1486 Pope Innocent VII said that “the cat was the devil’s favorite animal and idol of all witches.”
Over the centuries black cats continued to be associated with witches. Black cats played a part in the Salem Witch Trials where again they were signs that witchcraft was taking place (sometimes a cat was even thought to be a witch in disguise). Today a black cat crossing your path is generally considered bad luck but in Germany the direction the cat is crossing can bring either good or bad luck (with right to left being bad luck).
That said it isn’t all bad for black cats. British & Irish sailors believed that black cats as ship’s cats would bring good luck and ensure a safe return to harbor. In Scotland a black cat on your doorstep means money is coming your way. Black cats in Japan are believed to bring good fortune and possibly help single women find love. Pop culture witches are frequently accompanied by black cats. In the 1989 Studio Ghibli movie Kiki’s Delivery Service the little witch Kiki is accompanied by a helpful black cat named Jiji. Sabrina the Teenage Witch has a cat named Salem Saberhagen who had been a warlock but was subsequently transformed into a talking black cat.
Over the years the superstition around black cats has softened and they’ve become a fun part of Halloween.
Adoption & Halloween
Centuries of superstitions have made black cats both an iconic witchy part of Halloween as well as a bit of a pariah. Despite being innocent lovable feline friends, not enough black cats are adopted and as a result they are the most euthanized cat color in shelters. It should be noted though that black cats (fully black as well as mostly black) are also the most prevalent color of cat. So while black cats are the most euthanatized by total number there are also more black cats overall and the euthanasia rate seems to be similar to other cat colors (with white cats being the least euthanized).
There is an urban legend that black cats are used in dark rituals around Halloween but there has never been any evidence of this. Still, some shelters restrict black cat adoptions as Halloween approaches. For the shelters who do not restrict black cat adoptions there does not seem to be any increased adoption rate for black cats around Halloween. If you are looking to adopt a black cat some shelters have Black Friday adoption events where the adoption fees are waived for black cats.
Added info: Black cats found another way into classic Americana kitsch, the Kit-Cat Klock. Created in Portland, Oregon in 1932 the Kit-Cat Klock is a black & white cat clock whose eyes and tale move side-to-side in time. The clock is still produced and the design is largely unchanged from the original. The classic black & white model is around $60. Their manufacturer California Clock estimates that they have sold one clock every three minutes for the last 50 years.
Cereal mascots as we know them began in 1933 with the Rice Krispies characters of Snap, Crackle and Pop. After WWII with televised commercials cereal mascots became animated, increasing the competition for attention & dollars. In the late 1960s General Mills had new flavoring ideas and was in search of a marketing strategy that would appeal to kids. They had a chocolate and a strawberry flavoring that, when added to milk, would flavor the milk like chocolate or strawberry. What they needed were mascots to sell the cereal.
Laura Levine of the ad agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, who had been hired to help sell these new cereals, was the person who had the inspired idea of using monsters. Introduced in 1971 Count Chocula and Franken Berry were the first monster cereal creations, based on the classic horror monsters of Dracula and Frankenstein (or “Frankenstein’s monster” if we’re being pedantic). In 1973 the ghost Boo Berry (whose animated voice was loosely modeled off of actor Peter Lorre) was added to the lineup, selling a blueberry flavored cereal.
Various monsters have been a part of monster cereals over the years.
Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry have been the reliable trio of monster cereal flavors since the 1970s but other flavors have been tried. Frute Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy were both been launched, discontinued, relaunched, and discontinued again over the years with their flavoring reconfigured at different times. In 2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of monster cereals General Mills began selling “Monster Mash” boxes, which are a mix of the monster cereal flavors. In 2023 the zombie themed, caramel apple flavored, Carmella Creeper was released as the latest new monster cereal. Finally, monster cereals used to be available year round but in 2010 they became a seasonal product, rising from the darkness every autumn Halloween season (but you can search for them all year round).
Frankenstool
One curious side effect of the Franken Berry strawberry flavoring was realized in 1972 when a 12 year old boy was admitted to the hospital with pink / red poop. Documented by the University of Maryland Medical School the condition of “Franken Berry stool” was publicized in the paper“Benign red pigmentation of stool resulting from food coloring in a new breakfast cereal (the Franken Berry stool).” Later it was discovered that Boo Berry would change poop green.
The formulation of both cereals was eventually changed to avoid this.
Long before Goths were dressing in all black they were Germanic warriors who brought about the Dark Ages.
The original Goths were a host of 4th century Germanic tribes. As the Huns invaded from the east some Goths joined the Huns (later becoming the Ostrogoths) while others moved west invading areas controlled by the Romans. As the Roman empire split in two becoming the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, some Goths joined the Romans while others remained independent.
Many goths moved west to avoid the Huns, eventually invading and overthrowing the Roman empire.
On September 4th, 476 CE the Goth warrior Odoacer led an invasion of Rome and successfully deposed the 16 year old Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus. In so doing he brought about the end of the Western Roman Empire, an end of Roman control, and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Gothic architecture soared to new pointy heights.
Gothic architecture
With the fall of the Western Roman Empire the continent fractured into various local powers. This change in power also led to a change in culture, turning away from Roman influence. Out of this came (what we call today) Gothic architecture. This new style featured pointed arches (instead of the rounded Roman style), flying buttresses, rib vault ceilings, stained glass, tall pointed spires, and more.
In actuality the Goths had nothing to do with Gothic architecture. The name was applied later as an insult by Renaissance painter & architect Giorgio Vasari. The Renaissance swung the cultural pendulum back towards all things Roman and Vasari applied “Gothic” to the interregnum medieval style that had turned away from the Rome. He blamed the Goths for the destruction of Rome (and Roman culture) and so “Gothic” was his name for this non-Roman architectural style. Perhaps if Vasari had been less biased he would have credited the Middle Eastern / Islamic architectural influence more and named the style accordingly.
A division of the Romanticism movement, Gothic fiction focused on the supernatural and the darkness.
Gothic literature
Fast forward to the 18th century and the Goths appear again (or their name at least). Gothic fiction grew out of Romanticism which was broadly emotional with a spiritual reverence for nature. Gothic fiction took that but focused on the supernatural and darker feelings – fear & loathing if you will.
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is considered the first gothic novel. Published in 1764 it features a family in a haunted castle, an ancient prophecy, death, and sorrow. These elements are typical of Gothic fiction which by the Victorian era included literary classics such as 1818’s Frankenstein, 1845’s The Raven, 1886’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and 1897’s Dracula among others.
Gothic fiction got its name from Walpole whose The Castle of Otranto was subtitled “A Gothic Story”, in reference to Gothic architecture. Gothic stories were frequently set in spooky old Gothic castles & ruins. Simultaneously the Gothic Revival architectural movement brought Gothic architecture back into fashion – what’s old is new again.
Goth culture of today has gone mainstream (while still living in the shadows).
Gothic rock
Gothic fiction’s dark and brooding nature served as the foundation for today’s Goth culture. Gothic rock formed as a subgenre of late 1970s British post-punk music. It took the dark deathly themes of Gothic fiction and set them to minor key, dirgelike melodies. Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cure and others helped define the genre.
Gothic rock also led to Gothic fashion. While the many subgenres of Gothic rock each have their own subgenres of Gothic fashion, the prevailing vampiric style is dressing in black clothes, dyed black hair, pale skin, with some degree of androgyny. Beyond music & fashion Goth culture can be found in the 1983 vampire film The Hunger, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic series, the 1994 film The Crow, and a host of projects by Tim Burton from Beetlejuice to Edward Scissorhands to Wednesday.
From the Goths, to Gothic, to Goths
So the Goths inadvertently lent their name to an architectural movement, a movement that became the name of a literary genre with sad spooky themes, which then became the basis of the dark & gloomy Goths of today. From the old Goths to the new Goths, they’ve helped push culture in new directions for millennia.
Added info: a fun element of Gothic architecture are gargoyles & grotesques. True gargoyles channel rain water off buildings as waterspouts. The name “gargoyle” coming from the French “gargouille” meaning “throat”. This also gets us the word “gargle” for the same reason.
Grotesques on the other hand do not channel water. They’re also stone creatures on Gothic buildings but they are pure ornamentation.
A crash course of Gothic.
QI discusses the Goths.
The BBC investigates the growing Gothic rock scene of the 1980s.
Considered the first Gothic rock song, 1979’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead is like a Goth two-for-one. It combines the Gothic rock sound with Bela Lugosi, who played one of Gothic fiction’s greatest characters Dracula.
From wireless telegraphs to 5G data, the modern world runs on radio waves.
In the electromagnetic spectrum, radio waves are the lowest frequency & longest wave length waves available. The name “radio” doesn’t mean the waves are just for radios, it comes from the idea to “radiate energy” and the waves are used for lots of things. Wireless telegraphs, TV broadcasts, walkie talkies, radar, GPS, wireless routers, bluetooth, your mobile phone data – it’s all radio waves.
The existence of radio waves were proposed in 1867 by James Maxwell, but it took twenty years until 1887 for Heinrich Hertz to first demonstrate them (and because of this the hertz unit of measurement was named for him). The potential of radio waves was first realized by Guglielmo Marconi who used them to create wireless telegraphs. Marconi’s invention allowed people to send messages wirelessly through the air (which won him the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics). His invention is also one half of the very good Erik Larson book Thunderstruck.
Radio waves sit on the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Wave
We can send & receive data through the air thanks to transmitters & receivers. A transmitter antenna will send out a radio wave, modifying the wave form as need be. Then a receiver antenna will take the wave and process it as information. In the modern world most of that information is converted into binary ones & zeros as data.
Rather than sending out a consistent steady wave (which wouldn’t be very useful), transmitters modulate waves in various ways. You can modulate a wave’s amplitude as well as its frequency (which, incidentally, is why we have AM and FM radio – amplitude modulation and frequency modulation). You can also change where you begin & end a wave’s phase. This can create thousands of combinations, each of which can mean combinations of binary data. Using this complicated system of changing wave types we can have lots of devices sending & receiving information in relatively close proximity to one another. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the prolific use of mobile phones.
Cellular data (and the 5G boogeyman)
Mobile phones interact with antennas to send & receive data using radio waves. Each antenna covers a certain territory (a cell), but they are all working together (a network) – hence “cellular network”. Early mobile car phones had very few antenna to interact with so, once you left one’s area, you lost service. As mobile phones became popular in the 1990s more complex cellular networks with many towers were created.
5G is the fifth generation of the technology that runs these cellular networks. The challenge for 5G is to give even more devices even faster information. Part of how it does this is through an increase in the number of antennas. It also uses a wider range of wave frequencies. 5G uses radio waves but it also uses higher frequency microwaves (millimeter waves) to send more information, faster, across short distances. To do this the millimeter waves use smaller network cells, with more antennas, closer to the ground than the typical radio waves use.
As 5G was arrived out so too did the conspiracy theories.
The rollout of 5G began in 2019 and with it came the conspiracy theories. Some people claimed 5G weakens our immune systems leaving us vulnerable to viruses (such as COVID-19). Others claimed Covid was caused by 5G waves or that the Covid vaccines contained secret microchips that would be controlled by 5G. There are also conspiracy theories that 5G causes cancer and specifically because of the millimeter microwaves. None of this is true.
The waves used in 5G are non-ionizing waves (meaning they do not remove electrons from atoms or damage human cells). Ionizing radiation is found on the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond visible light. Ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays will damage your cells, radio waves and microwaves do not. The waves used in 5G can’t penetrate your skin and no credible study has found them to be dangerous to humans. Alcoholic drinks and processed meats have higher likelihoods of causing cancer than 5G.
A really great explanation of how modern cellular networks operate.
From Duran Duran to nail salons, the iconic work of Patrick Nagel.
Most artists go their entire careers and never achieve the iconic status that Patrick Nagel had in the late 1970s / early 1980s. Like Warhol or Dali, his style is instantly recognizable. Influenced by Japanese wood block prints, French poster illustration, and Art Deco, he created an ultra simplified high contrast illustrative style most famously seen in his paintings of women.
A Nagel woman has paper-white skin, stylistically simplified, idealized, detached, and is out of your league.
Nagel Women
The “Nagel women” are a series of paintings begun in the mid 1970s. In 1974 Playboy began publishing some of these paintings as illustrations alongside stories which introduced Nagel’s idealized women to a whole new audience. Nagel’s women have paper-white skin, jet black hair, they’re confident, they’re detached, and they are out of your league.
Nagel would work from photographs of models and Playboy Playmates as inspiration but he also painted portraits of celebrities such as Joan Collins and Brooke Shields. He used a photo of model Marcie Hunt, from the February 1981 issue of Vogue France, for his illustration of a woman smiling. This painting became known the world over after it was used on the cover of Duran Duran’s classic 1982 album Rio.
There’s no Nagel woman more famous than the smiling woman found on the cover of Duran Duran’s 1982 album Rio.
Duran Duran and beyond
No piece by Nagel is more famous than his Rio album cover painting. Duran Duran found Nagel through his Playboy illustrations and after the mega success of Rio his style was everywhere. Even though his work began in the 1970s it helped to define the style of the 1980s.
Nagel’s influence spread around pop culture. The dancers in Robert Palmer’s 1986 video Addicted to Love were modeled after Nagel women. The character Desire in Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman was modeled after Nagel women. The Catherine Deneuve vampire character in 1983’s The Hunger has the style of a Nagel woman.
Soon imitators were creating illustrations of women in Nagel’s style. This gave us the nail & hair salon posters of Nagel-esque women which never quite measured up to the real thing.
Nagel’s influence can be found around pop culture.
Nagel’s 1980s success was cut short in 1984 when he died at 38 of a heart attack following 15 minutes of participation in a celebrity Aerobathon (which was raising money for the American Heart Association). In the years since his death his work has been seen in collaborations with Forever 21 and Gucci. The Nagel style can be found in Grand Theft Auto, the short-lived 1980s styled TV show Moonbeam City, as a prompt in Midjourney AI art, and more.
Duran Duran’s classic Rio.
A great crash course on the work of Patrick Nagel.
A 1982 interview with Nagel and his publisher/collaborator Karl Bornstein.
The pointy headwear for eccentrics, geniuses, deities, and dullards.
Some of the oldest conical hats come from Egypt in the form of the hedjet.
Egypt
Some of the oldest conical headwear come from ancient Egypt. The Pharaohs and their deities wore a variety of headdress crowns (the hedjet, the deshret, the pschent) depending on the individual and the era. These tall conical crowns were of religious significance, thought to connect the pharaohs to the gods, with the hedjet being the most conical of the group appearing between 3200 BCE to 3100 BCE.
We only know of these crowns through Egyptian art because none of them have been found, suggesting they were either handed down from ruler to ruler (so there aren’t many of them to be found) and or they were made with perishable materials.
The golden hats are the oldest known European conical hats. The decorative markings along the cone is coded calendar information.
Golden hats of Central Europe
The golden hats of central Europe are four tall conical hats made of gold from the Bronze Age originating sometime between 1400 BCE to 800 BCE. It’s unknown exactly who made them but it’s most likely people of the Tumulus or Urnfield cultures (as the hats are in the right area, time, and styling as other artifacts from these groups).
As to what purpose they served the hats were most likely religious for high-status individuals but nobody is certain. They vary in height but the line & ring ornamentation along the cone portion of each hat is thought to be lunisolar calendrical information, documenting a skilled understanding of the sun & moon’s cycles.
Similar hats (although not so tall) have been found in Ireland and Spain, which probably made their way there by Urnfield people or the Celts.
The pileus of Greece eventually made its way to Rome where it later transformed into the Phrygian cap.
Greece & Rome
The ancient Greeks had the pileus, which was a soft rounded conical hat made of felt or leather. Unlike other conical hats of the ancient world it wasn’t associated with religion and instead was a hat of the common people. It’s estimated to have been worn between 800 BCE and 300 BCE with a bronze helmet version, looking not unlike the top of a bullet, having been introduced around 500 BCE.
The Romans, always borrowing from the Greeks, also had the pileus but it wasn’t worn in the same way. When a Roman slave was to be freed they participated in a ceremony where their head was shaved and a pileus hat was placed on their head. This hat became a symbol of freedom & liberty which later morphed into the Phrygian cap and became a symbol of liberty particularly during the French and American revolutions.
The mitre worn by Christian bishops got its name from Judaism but its design from Roman judges.
The Mitre of Christianity
Back to religion however, ancient Jewish priests had a variety of headwear depending on their role. Common priests wore a conical hat known as a migbahat. The High Priest however wore mitznefet (aka mitre) which was more of a turban.
From this word “mitre” we get the Christian pointed cap of the same name worn by bishops. The tails (aka the lappets) in the back are said to have come from ancient Greek olympic athletes who would wear ribbons from a band around their head. Beyond the name however the main body of the cap is only speculatively associated with the turban of Jewish High Priests.
As Catholicism spread throughout the Roman Empire local bishops took on additional authority. In matters of law the thinking was that Christians should be judged by other Christians and so bishops could serve as judges in legal disputes between Christians. Judges in the Roman Empire wore certain vestments including conical hats, which led to bishops wearing similar hats that became the pointed mitre of the Catholic Church.
The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl went from being a feathered serpent to being a man around 1200 CE, which is also when he started wearing a conical hat.
Mexico
Conical hats also appear in Aztec culture. The great god Quetzalcoatl was the god of wind, life, priests, knowledge, calendars, he taught humans a variety of skills, and more. His name comes from the Nahuatl for “feathered serpent” which is how he was represented until around 1200 CE when he began to be depicted as a man wearing a tall conical hat.
In the Middle Ages, European Jewish men wore conical hats (at first by choice, but then by law).
Jewish Hats
During the Middle Ages, European Jewish men wore a pointed cone-shaped hat later called a “Jewish hat” or “Judenhut”. This hat, originally worn by choice, soon became required by regional laws to distinguish Jews from Christians. For example the Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 required Jews and Muslims to be distinguishable by their clothing. A 1267 provision passed in Breslau (in modern day Poland) required Jews to wear “the horned hat”. In the same year the Council of Vienne made the hat required in Vienna. In 1555 Pope Paul IV ordered the hat to be yellow and worn in all Papal States.
The exact design of the hat varied. Looking at paintings and illustrations some look soft, some hard, some are pointed at the top while others have a circular bobble at the top. They are seen in various colors with some looking more like metal helmets than hats.
This Jewish hat (as well as the hats of John Duns Scotus followers, “Dunce caps”) later served as the inspiration for the funnels worn by people & creatures in the works of 15th century Dutch artist (and Father of Surrealism) Hieronymus Bosch. Absurd strange characters can be seen throughout Bosh’s paintings wearing metal funnels marking them as fools, charlatans, and sinners.
The hennin and tantour were similar conical hats for women, the hennin in Europe and the tantour in the Middle East.
Hennins and Tantours
The hennin is the conical hat worn by women of nobility in the courts of England and France during the 15th century. It’s the iconic fairy tale princess hat that is tilted back with a thin veil (a cointoise) worn dangling from the back. Today the term “hennin” is a bit of a catch-all for a variety of headwear worn by women of the time, including the double horned or heart shaped style.
The tantour is similar to the hennin, a tall conical hat worn by women, but was worn in the Middle East especially in Lebanon. The height and materials used to make a tantour reflected the wealth of its owner, with precious metals & jewels being used to make the most extravagant hats which could be as tall as thirty inches. A tantour would have been presented to a woman on her wedding day, and thus only worn by married women.
When the tantour was created is unknown with some saying it existed during the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, others saying the design may have been introduced to the area from Europeans during the crusades. Either way it remained popular long after the hennin. The tantour was still being worn by Lebanese women into the early 19th century.
The hat we think of as a witch hat has its origins with the Quakers.
Witch Hats
The Religious Society of Friends (aka the Quakers) was founded in the mid 1600s. Founder George Fox had lived through the English Civil War and came out changed (similar to Thomas Hobbes, one half of the namesake for Calvin & Hobbes). Quakers preached that you could have a direct relationship with God, without a priest. They refused to pay taxes, they refused to serve in the military, they believed in racial and gender equality, and more. All of this was seen as both a religious and a financial threat to the crown and to the Church of England and as such the Quakers were persecuted.
At the same time there was a fashion trend of tall black conical hats. By the end of the century the hat was going out of style but it became strongly associated with Quaker women who continued to wear them. These women were independent, vocal, and and didn’t conform to the gender role of 17th century English women. The style and message of the Quakers made them outsiders in English society. While Quaker men were persecuted, Quaker women bore the greater share of the attacks. Many of the insults & accusations hurled at these women were incredibly similar to the ones that had been used towards women suspected of witchcraft.
Soon Quaker women and witches were thought of as nearly the same and it became visual short-hand to represent a witch using the general look of a Quaker woman (pointed hat and all). This is why English witches are represented wearing the “witch hat” that we think of today. Interestingly by the early to mid 18th century Quaker women underwent a change of fashion, abandoning their pointed hats for caps. The Enlightenment helped to end some of the religious oppression & superstitious thinking of the past, the result of which was that witches went from something to be feared to amusing folk characters (complete with pointed black hats).
The Spanish capirote began as a punishment during the Inquisition, then became a symbol of penitence during Easter, but also influenced the style of the Ku Klux Klan.
the Capirote and the Klan
During the 15th century any man or woman who ran a foul of the Catholic Church (via the Inquisition) was forced to wear a conical hat (the capirote) in public as a form of humiliating punishment. Eventually the Inquisition punishments changed but the capirote remained. The hat’s new life was in being worn by penitent Catholics during Holy Week leading up to Easter. The point of the cap is thought to bring the wearer closer to heaven. The capirote eventually gained a full hood and, along with ornate robes, hides the wearer’s identity during Holy Week processions.
Unfortunately the design of the capirote was also adopted by the Ku Klux Klan, but not initially. To hide their identities Klan members originally wore a variety of folk masks and costumes. This lack of uniform also helped hide the entire organization, allowing them to deny there was a Klan at all since every attack looked different. The 1905 book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon was the first to represent the Klan in white robes & hoods, but with spiked tops. It wasn’t until D.W. Griffith adapted the book into the 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation that the Klan got the capirote style hoods that we associate with them today. Later the Klan would mythologize their style claiming they were dressing as the ghosts of confederate soldiers, but in reality it was chance and the influence of Hollywood that helped this confederacy of dunces.
The dunce cap was originally worn by followers of gifted theologian John Duns Scotus, but came to symbolize being slow witted.
the Dunce cap
Perhaps the most famous conical hat of them all, the dunce cap actually started its life as a sign of intelligence. John Duns Scotus was a 13th century Scottish theologian, philosopher, Franciscan priest, and all around great thinker. Among other arguments he used logic to explain why God was metaphysical as opposed to a man in robes sitting in the sky. He developed devotees, nicknamed “Dunsmen”, who followed both his logic and his proclivity towards wearing a conical pointed hat.
Scotus felt that the cone shape of the hat would work like a reverse funnel, directing wisdom from the heavens towards his brain. This cone shaped hat became a sign of intelligence … until the theological tide turned in the 16th century. Renaissance humanist thinking turned away from Scotus’s logic and the hat of the dunsmen lost its cache, becoming a source of ridicule and a sign of foolishness.
Over the centuries a dunce (the spelling changed over time) became a term for a slow-witted person especially for unsuccessful children in school. As early as 1624 there was the “dunce-table”, a place where slow or disruptive children were placed away from others. Eventually sitting at a table was replaced with wearing a pointed dunce cap as a form of public humiliation (akin to the capirote worn as humiliation during the Inquisition). The heyday for the dunce cap was the Victorian era into the early 20th century, ending in the 1950s. Even though it’s no longer used as a form of discipline the dunce cap still remains a symbol of stupidity, even though it once represented the greatest of intelligence.
Learn more about the Golden Hats.
Abby Cox does a really great job discussing the origins of the witch hat.
The fedora hat was created sometime in the late 19th century. Its name comes from the title of the 1882 play Fédora, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. Interestingly, because of Bernhardt the hat was originally popular with women, only later becoming a staple of men’s fashion.
By the early 20th century, a time when basically all adults wore hats, the fedora was thee hat for men. Its popularity lasted up until the middle of the century when it faded out (for example President Kennedy famously broke with tradition and tended to not wear hats, unlike his predecessors). But with so many men were wearing so many fedoras, many of these hats took on second lives as hand-me-downs.
Bruised and battered fedoras found a second life as whoopee caps.
Jughead
As fathers gave their sons their beat up old fedoras, kids would modify them as an expression of their personalities. Old fedoras would be turned inside-out, the brim would be upturned and cut to create interesting patterns. Kids would further customize these creations with pins and other trinkets. These fun repurposed fedoras came to be known as whoopee caps.
By 1929, with the increasing popularity of whoopee caps, the Six Jumping Jacks released the song The Whoopee Hat Brigade. By the 1930s manufactured versions became available for sale – for those who didn’t want to go the DIY route. Whoopee caps spread to pop culture with two of the most famous whoopee cap wearers being Goober Pyle from The Andy Griffith Show, and Jughead Jones from Archie comics. Over time Jughead’s hat became so stylized it became more of a crown than a whoopee cap. Thanks to the 2017 Archie TV show Riverdale the Jughead whoopee cap has evolved again taking on more of a knit beanie style.
Added info: the name Fedora is the feminine version of the Russian name Fedor, which is the equivalent of the Greek Theodore, which means “gift of the gods”.
Eating local honey doesn’t help with your seasonal allergies (but it tastes good at least).
Broadly speaking, trees and other plants use one of two methods for reproduction. One method is to rely on bees, animals, or other creatures to interact with the plant and then spread the pollen to other plants. The second method is to release pollen into the wind and hope for the best. It’s this second category, scattering pollen to the wind, that people are allergic to when they have seasonal allergies.
Delicious but unhelpful
There is an idea that eating local honey can help you deal with seasonal allergies because local honey is made from the local pollen you’re allergic to – that through exposure to small amounts of what triggers your allergic reaction you can teach your immune system to not react (ie. immunotherapy). Unfortunately this doesn’t work for a few reasons.
To start, when you consume local honey you don’t know what sort of pollen it contains or in what amount. So while it may theoretically contain the pollen that triggers your allergic reaction you can’t be sure and every batch of honey is different.
Further, local honey is made with the “wrong” kind of pollen. Honey is made with the pollen bees collect through physical contact with plants, but the pollen of your seasonal allergies is the kind that’s spread on the wind. As such there isn’t going to be much (if any) of the pollen that triggers your allergies in honey. Therefor eating local honey won’t help with your seasonal allergies.
Since 1926 all pedigree dogs in France have been named based on the letter of the year.
The Société Centrale Canine (the Central Canine Society) is the kennel club of France. Since 1926 the SCC has had a naming convention that all pedigree dogs born in the same year are given a name starting with the same letter – the letter changing each year. So all pedigree dogs born in 1926 had names that started with the letter A, in 1927 they started with B, and so on. The intention was to simplify the work of dog genealogists tracking the lineage of pedigree dogs in the country.
Over time some letters were removed from the system because of how few French names begin with those letters. The letter Z was omitted from the system at the beginning and in 1973 K, Q, W, X, Y were all removed. This left a 20 letter system where, when you meet a fancy pedigree dog, you know exactly how old it is by its name.
Added info: this French naming rule only applies to pedigree dogs, not all dogs. Pedigree dogs are dogs whose lineage has been recorded. Mutts, adopted dogs, shelter dogs – none of these are restricted by the naming convention.
As for the difference between purebred and pedigree, purebred dogs are those whose parents are of the same breed. Pedigree dogs can be purebred or can be mixed breed, but whatever their lineage their genealogy is recorded.
