110 Fun Facts About Hat

Which British naval hero had London hatter Lock & Co. fit his hats with a built-in eye visor?

Horatio Nelson. He had lost the sight of his right eye in Corsica, and wore one of the hats from Lock & Co., billed as the world's oldest hat shop, at the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Sorting Hat first belonged to which Hogwarts founder?

Godric Gryffindor. In the Hat's own song, he whipped it off his head and the four founders put some brains in it, so it could go on sorting students after they were gone.

Which veteran British actor voiced the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films?

Leslie Phillips. Famous for playing plummy cads with a 'Ding dong!' catchphrase, he was born a Cockney in Tottenham and was sent to stage school to lose the accent.

What colours are the stripes on the tall top hat worn by Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat?

Red and white. Dr. Seuss wrote the book to replace dull Dick and Jane school primers and, by his usual account, built it on the first two rhyming words he found on the approved word list.

Who played the title role in the 2003 live-action film The Cat in the Hat?

Mike Myers. The film was so widely panned that Dr. Seuss's widow, Audrey Geisel, banned any further live-action adaptations of her husband's books.

Which fictional detective is popularly pictured wearing a deerstalker cap?

Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle's stories never mention a deerstalker by name; illustrator Sidney Paget drew it on Holmes for The Strand Magazine, and the image stuck.

The sombrero takes its name from the Spanish word for what?

Shade. Sombrero comes from sombra, and in Spanish the word means any hat at all, so Mexicans call the giant wide-brimmed kind a sombrero de charro.

Despite its name, the Panama hat is traditionally woven in which country?

Ecuador. The hats were shipped to the Isthmus of Panama for sale and export, so buyers named them after the place they bought them, not the place they were woven.

Which small, brimless hat became First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's trademark in the early 1960s?

Pillbox. She had not cared for hats until the milliner Halston made her one for the 1961 inauguration; it became her trademark and made his name.

The bowler hat is known by what alternative name in the United States?

Derby. Americans probably named it after England's Derby horse race, where fashionable men wore the new stiff felt hat.

Which US president kept important papers tucked inside his tall stovepipe hat?

Abraham Lincoln. The silk top hat he wore to Ford's Theatre on the night he was shot carried a black mourning band he had added in memory of his son Willie.

Which Harrison Ford character is rarely seen without his brown fedora?

Indiana Jones. The Last Crusade's prologue shows how he got it: a treasure hunter who has just beaten the teenage Indy to a prize hands over his own fedora as a mark of respect.

Fans of which sport throw their hats onto the playing surface when a player scores three goals?

Ice hockey. Rival legends from Toronto, Montreal and Guelph each credit a local hatmaker who gave a free hat to any player scoring three goals in a game.

The sporting term 'hat-trick' was first used in which sport?

Cricket. A bowler who took three wickets with three balls in a row is said to have been rewarded with a new hat, bought by his club or with a collection from the crowd.

Which frontiersman's 1950s Disney TV series set off a children's craze for coonskin caps?

Davy Crockett. Fess Parker's fur cap set off an overnight craze, and Walt Disney admitted being caught with only three episodes and a hero already killed at the Alamo.

In the classic winter song, which character comes to life when children place an old silk hat on his head?

Frosty the Snowman. The 1950 song was written to follow Gene Autry's hit 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' of the year before, and Autry recorded it in search of a second seasonal success.

The ushanka, a classic Russian hat, takes its name from the Russian word for what?

Ears, ushi in Russian. The Red Army adopted the hat after the Winter War of 1939–40, modelling it on the fur caps of the better-equipped Finns.

The Hebrew word 'kippah', the name of the Jewish skullcap, literally means what?

Dome. The Yiddish name, yarmulke, is popularly explained as Aramaic for 'fear of the King', but dictionaries trace it to Polish and perhaps to a medieval Latin word for a hood.

The word 'milliner' for a hat-maker derives from the name of which Italian city?

Milan. A milliner was probably first a 'Milaner', a merchant selling the city's ribbons, silks and straw work, and the original milliners were men.

The fedora is named after an 1882 play written for which famous actress?

Sarah Bernhardt. She wore a soft, centre-creased hat as Princess Fédora, and women's-rights campaigners took up the style before it became a men's hat.

Which hat takes its name from the heroine of an 1894 novel by George du Maurier?

Trilby. The heroine wore the soft felt hat in the 1895 stage version, and the same novel gave English the word Svengali, after the hypnotist who controls her.

The bowler hat is said to have been designed to protect which workers from low-hanging branches?

Gamekeepers. By the hatter Lock & Co.'s account, Edward Coke ordered it for his keepers in 1849, and legend says he stamped on it twice to test it before paying.

Which British general adopted a black beret with two badges as his trademark during the Second World War?

Bernard Montgomery. The beret was a gift from the tank crewman who drove him in the desert, and he wore the Royal Tank Regiment badge on it beside his general's badge.

The homburg hat, popularised by the future Edward VII, is named after a spa town in which country?

Germany. Edward, then Prince of Wales, brought the hat home from the spa at Bad Homburg, near Frankfurt, and it caught on as a less formal alternative to the top hat.

'Mad as a hatter' is popularly traced to hat-makers poisoned by which element used in felt-making?

Mercury. The tremors it caused were so common among hat-makers in Danbury, Connecticut, that the condition was known there as the 'Danbury shakes'.

In which US city did youths smash men's straw hats in the Straw Hat Riot of 1922?

New York. An unwritten rule said men must switch to felt hats by September 15, and youths who began knocking off straw hats two days early set off days of street brawls.

Which US president was photographed in a Panama hat at the canal site in 1906, boosting its popularity?

Theodore Roosevelt. He was on the first trip abroad by any sitting president, but gold-rush travellers crossing the isthmus had made the hats popular decades earlier.

Which leader banned the fez in Turkey in 1925 as part of a modernising 'Hat Revolution'?

Kemal Atatürk. A century earlier Sultan Mahmud II had imposed the fez for much the same reason: to modernise dress and replace the turban.

The Grenadier Guards adopted their bearskin caps after beating Napoleon's Imperial Guard at which battle?

Waterloo. The 1st Foot Guards took the tall fur cap, a grenade badge and their new name, the Grenadier Guards, from the French grenadiers they were thought to have beaten.

In which South American country are bowler hats a signature of the indigenous women known as cholitas?

Bolivia. The hat was a European import first made for men, which Aymara and Quechua women adopted as their own; in La Paz it is worn small and balanced on top of the head.

Which James Bond henchman uses a razor-edged bowler hat as a weapon in Goldfinger?

Oddjob. The hat is his undoing: it lodges between metal bars inside Fort Knox, and Bond electrifies them with a severed cable as he pulls it free.

Which style of hat was famously worn sideways by Napoleon?

Bicorne. Around 1800 most armies turned the two-cornered hat to point front to back, but Napoleon is usually pictured still wearing his side to side.

Which US president was nicknamed "The Last Cocked Hat" for sticking with the tricorne after it fell from fashion?

James Monroe. Wounded at Trenton as a teenage officer in Washington's army, he went on dressing like a man of the Revolution, powdered wig and knee-breeches included.

The modern beret began as the cap of shepherds in which mountain range?

Pyrenees. Shepherds on both sides of the range wore it, and the so-called Basque beret was first made commercially not in the Basque Country but in neighbouring Béarn.

The flat-crowned straw hat with a grosgrain ribbon takes its English name from which pastime?

Boating. Before it was a holiday hat it was working kit: fashion historians trace the boater to the flat straw hats worn by sailors in the British navy.

In 2012, which British race meeting barred fascinators from its top enclosure and insisted on proper hats?

Royal Ascot. Until then women in the Royal Enclosure were merely advised that 'many ladies wear hats'; the tightened code demands a solid base at least four inches across.

Which NFL head coach's trademark fedora is depicted on his cenotaph in the Texas State Cemetery?

Tom Landry. He is buried in Dallas, so the Austin stone marks no grave, and the Cowboys wore a patch of his fedora on their uniforms through the 2000 season.

Which painter's The Son of Man shows a bowler-hatted man whose face is hidden by a green apple?

René Magritte. He painted it as a self-portrait and then hid his own face, saying that everything we see hides another thing we want to see.

Which Scottish cap is named after the hero of a Robert Burns poem?

Tam o' shanter. In the poem a witch chases the drunken farmer Tam and snatches his mare's tail; her nickname, Cutty Sark, later named the famous clipper ship.

In 1993, which company was named the exclusive supplier of on-field caps to Major League Baseball?

New Era. It began in Buffalo in 1920 making Gatsby-style fashion caps, and turned to baseball in the 1930s when demand for those faded, starting with Cleveland's team.

E. W. Bullard's 1919 safety headgear, made of steamed canvas, glue and black paint, went by what name?

The Hard-Boiled hat. Bullard drew on the steel 'doughboy' helmet he knew from World War I, and built it first for miners before construction crews took it up.

Chief engineer Joseph Strauss made safety helmets compulsory for workers on which landmark, begun in 1933?

Golden Gate Bridge. Strauss also strung a safety net beneath the deck, and the 19 men it caught came to be known as the Halfway-to-Hell Club.

Which fraternal organisation made the red fez its official headgear in 1872?

Shriners. Its founders, an actor and a physician, built the fraternity's Middle Eastern theme on a party the actor attended in Marseille, thrown by an Arab diplomat.

Whose 'pretzel' fascinator by milliner Philip Treacy caused a media stir at the 2011 royal wedding?

Princess Beatrice. After the hat became an internet phenomenon with its own Facebook page, she auctioned it on eBay and raised tens of thousands of pounds for children's charities.

Pharrell's oversized 'Buffalo' hat at the 2014 Grammys came from which designer's 1982-83 collection?

Vivienne Westwood. She made the collection with Malcolm McLaren, the former Sex Pistols manager, and three decades later the hat was popular enough to inspire its own Twitter account.

Which US president broke with tradition by wearing a homburg instead of a top hat to his inauguration?

Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kennedy brought the top hat back in 1961 but delivered his address bareheaded, and Lyndon Johnson went without one altogether in 1965.

Parisian magician Louis Comte is credited with first pulling what out of a top hat in 1814?

A rabbit. The hat was not even his: Comte borrowed one from a man in the audience, though some credit the trick to the later Scottish magician John Henry Anderson.

Which headgear takes its name from the site of a Crimean War battle of 1854?

Balaclava. British soldiers wore knitted caps against the bitter Crimean winter, yet the name 'Balaclava helmet' is not recorded until 1881, long after the war.

An NHL 'Gordie Howe hat trick' consists of a goal, an assist and what else in the same game?

A fight. Howe himself managed the feat only twice in an NHL career that spanned five decades.

Europe's appetite for felt hats nearly wiped out which North American animal?

Beaver. Its soft fur was prized for hat felt, and trappers pursued it across the continent until silk top hats came into fashion in the 1800s and eased the demand.

Which close-fitting women's hat became the signature headwear of the 1920s flapper?

Cloche. Named after the French word for 'bell', it hugged the skull so closely that it suited the bobbed hair women adopted after the First World War, and was worn pulled down almost to the eyes.

The 5,000-year-old iceman Ötzi was found wearing a cap made from the fur of which animal?

Bear. DNA tests show the cap came from a wild brown bear, while his coat, leggings and loincloth came from domestic sheep and goats, so his people drew on hunting as well as herding.

The 'ten-gallon' hat is said to take its name from the Spanish word 'galón', meaning what?

Braid. Rows of braid were wrapped above the brim of Spanish-style hats, though dictionaries call the origin uncertain and some put the name down to the hat's sheer size.

Which French army corps was the first regular unit to wear the beret as standard headgear?

Chasseurs Alpins. British tank officers who saw their big berets in the First World War borrowed the idea, choosing black so that oil stains would not show.

Which silent-film star topped his most famous character's shabby outfit with a bowler hat too small for him?

Charlie Chaplin. He threw the Tramp's outfit together in 1914, wanting everything to be a contradiction: the trousers baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

The standard bearskin cap of the British foot guards is made from the fur of which animal?

Canadian black bear. Each cap takes one whole pelt from Canada's licensed bear hunt, and in 2024 the Ministry of Defence said no fake fur had yet passed its tests.

Which hatmaker's 'Boss of the Plains' became the model for the cowboy hat?

Stetson. Told he was dying of tuberculosis, John B. Stetson went west to see the frontier while he could, recovered on the trail and came home to Philadelphia to make hats.

The toque blanche is the traditional hat of which profession?

Chefs. In 1821 the French chef Carême slipped a round of cardboard into the floppy cotton cap cooks then wore, saying the old one made them look ill; the tall pleated toque came later.

Which 'Brazilian Bombshell' of 1940s Hollywood musicals was famous for towering hats piled with fruit?

Carmen Miranda. The fruit on her turbans was fake, and the look helped make her the highest-paid woman in 1940s Hollywood.

Which Dutch master often painted himself wearing a beret?

Rembrandt. The beret was already old-fashioned in his day: for his portraits he liked to dress in the costume of a century earlier.

Which board game's classic metal tokens include a top hat, a thimble and a Scottie dog?

Monopoly has had a top hat among its tokens since the 1930s, and its tycoon mascot wears one as well: satirists had long used the hat as shorthand for big business.

Which dancer plays Jerry Travers opposite Ginger Rogers in the 1935 musical film Top Hat?

Fred Astaire made nine RKO films with Rogers, and Top Hat, with songs by Irving Berlin, was the most successful picture of the partnership.

The guitarist Slash, whose black top hat is his stage trademark, found fame with which rock band?

Guns N' Roses were a new band in 1985 when Slash shoplifted the hat from a Los Angeles store and dressed it with pieces of a silver concho belt.

Which patriotic figure wears a star-banded top hat in James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 recruiting poster?

Uncle Sam owes his standard look to Flagg's poster, and legend traces his name to Samuel Wilson, a meatpacker who supplied army rations in the War of 1812.

Which revolutionary wears a star-badged black beret in Alberto Korda's 1960 photograph Guerrillero Heroico?

Che Guevara was at a Havana memorial for the victims of a freighter explosion when Korda caught him; an art college later called the picture the world's most famous photograph.

Which musician reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985 with the song Raspberry Beret?

Prince wrote the song for the album Around the World in a Day, and only Duran Duran's Bond theme A View to a Kill kept it from the top of the chart.

Which marmalade-loving storybook character from Peru wears an old hat with his duffel coat?

Paddington is named after the London railway station where the Brown family finds him; his creator Michael Bond lived nearby and liked the sound of it.

In which 1940 Disney film does Mickey Mouse, a sorcerer's apprentice, try out magic in his master's hat?

Fantasia's hat belongs to the sorcerer Yen Sid, and a giant replica of it later stood as the icon of the Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.

Which storybook character is brought from Africa to America by the Man with the Yellow Hat?

Curious George lives with a keeper the original books never name; a later screen version finally called the Man with the Yellow Hat Theodore Shackleford.

Which BBC crime drama takes its name from a Birmingham street gang known for their flat caps?

Peaky Blinders were a real gang, but the tale that they stitched razor blades into their cap peaks is doubted: disposable blades were only made in Britain from 1908, years after the gang got its name.

Which actor plays the Hatter, renamed Tarrant Hightopp, in Tim Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland?

Johnny Depp's character is plain 'the Hatter' in Lewis Carroll's books: the author never once used the name Mad Hatter, which caught on through adaptations.

Which snack mascot, born from a schoolboy's 1916 contest drawing, wears a top hat, monocle and spats?

Mr. Peanut began as young Antonio Gentile's entry in a design contest; the monocle and the top hat were added to his drawing afterwards.

Which graduation cap is named for its likeness to the flat square tray a bricklayer holds?

Mortarboard caps probably began in Italy by 1520 and may descend from a hat worn by Catholic clergy; the tassel only arrived in the 18th century, replacing a simple tuft.

The jarabe tapatío, in which a couple step around the brim of a hat, is which country's national dance?

Mexico turned the dance into a national emblem even though colonial and church authorities had once banned it as morally offensive; English speakers call it the Mexican hat dance.

Which horror-film killer pairs a brown fedora with a striped sweater and a bladed glove?

Freddy Krueger got the hat from director Wes Craven, and actor Robert Englund fought to keep it by showing the crew how strong its silhouette looked as a shadow on the wall.

The nón lá, a hat forming a perfect cone from base to tip, belongs to which country's national costume?

Vietnam shares the cone-shaped sun hat with much of Asia, where it goes by names such as ngop and salakot, but its own special versions carry hand-stitched pictures or words.

Soldiers serving which international body wear blue berets or helmets with their own countries' uniforms?

The United Nations borrows its peacekeepers from member states, so the headgear is the one thing they share: it earned them the nicknames Blue Helmets and Blue Berets.

In Britain, the tissue-paper crowns worn at Christmas dinner come out of which festive table item?

Crackers snap when two diners pull them apart, thanks to a chemically treated strip of card, and spill out a paper hat, a small gift and a joke.

The expression about throwing your hat into the ring, meaning to take up a challenge, comes from which sport?

Boxing matches were once fought inside a circle of onlookers, and a challenger tossed in his hat to announce himself; by 1917 the phrase also meant declaring a run for office.

Which barefoot wanderer of American frontier folklore is said to have worn a cooking pot as a hat?

Johnny Appleseed was the real nurseryman John Chapman, and a writer who knew him recalled that the tin vessel on his head did double duty as his cap and his mush pot.

Which spring-loaded top hat, also called a gibus or chapeau claque, folds flat with a click?

Opera hat wearers needed something that would collapse in a cramped theatre, and the French name chapeau claque records the click it makes as it folds and springs back.

In John Tenniel's drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, what does the '10/6' card in the Hatter's hat show?

The hat's price was ten shillings and sixpence, or half a guinea in pre-decimal British money; the full hatband reads 'In this style 10/6'.

Which comedy duo, stars of the lost 1927 silent short Hats Off, both wore bowler hats on screen?

Laurel and Hardy wore different versions: Stan's hat was narrower than Ollie's, with a flattened brim, and the headgear became as much a trademark as their theme tune.

Which flat-topped hat links silent comedian Buster Keaton and Breaking Bad's Heisenberg?

Pork pie hats were home-made in Keaton's case: he converted fedoras and stiffened their brims with dried sugar water. Heisenberg's was later donated to the Smithsonian.

The fez is thought to take its name from a dye-producing city in which North African country?

Morocco's city of Fez is said to have supplied the crimson berries once used to dye the felt, and the country is one of the last places where the hat remains part of royal court dress.

The sombrero vueltiao, a hat first made by the indigenous Zenú people, is a national symbol of which country?

Colombia defends the hat in law: in 2013 its government brought in heavy fines for vendors dealing in counterfeit versions made in China.

The tall ceremonial headdress of Christian bishops shares its name with which angled woodworking joint?

Mitre comes from a Greek word meaning headband; the joint of the same name is made by cutting two pieces at an angle, usually 45 degrees, so that they meet in a corner.

In the Catholic Church, a man said to have received the red hat has been given which rank?

Cardinal was the rank a pope once conferred by setting a broad-brimmed scarlet galero on a man's head; Paul VI ended the ceremony in 1969, but the phrase outlived the hat.

Men Without Hats, a Canadian synth-pop band, reached number three in the United States with which 1980s hit?

The Safety Dance was the big hit for Men Without Hats, who took their name from the founding brothers' refusal to cover their heads in Montreal's cold winters, putting style ahead of comfort.

Which neurologist's 1985 book of case histories is titled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

Oliver Sacks took the title from a patient with visual agnosia, a condition that left the man unable to recognise faces or everyday objects.

Which soft conical cap with a bent-over tip became a symbol of liberty in the American and French Revolutions?

The Phrygian cap was not the first badge of freedom: that was the Roman pileus, the felt cap of emancipated slaves and an attribute of the goddess Libertas.

Which traditional British paper size is named after the jester's cap and bells once used as its watermark?

Foolscap had become the name of the paper size itself by 1674, whatever the watermark; a doubtful tale has the Rump Parliament putting the jester's cap on its paper in place of the royal arms.

From 1910, Chicago, Milwaukee and other US cities passed laws limiting the length of which hat accessory?

Hatpins of the day ran to six or eight inches, and councils feared they could be used as weapons; later rules made women cover the tips as well.

Which US conservation group began in 1896 as a Boston campaign against the feathers on women's hats?

The Massachusetts Audubon Society was founded by Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall, who enlisted 900 women against the slaughter of birds for hats; a national Audubon body followed in 1905.

Which hat brand's berets and bucket hats were adopted by 1980s hip-hop stars such as LL Cool J?

Kangol, a British firm founded in 1938, only added its kangaroo logo in 1983, because Americans kept asking for 'the kangaroo hat'.

Which folk hero of legend was arrested for refusing to bow to an official's hat hung on a pole?

William Tell walked straight past the hat that the bailiff Gessler had raised under the village linden tree; his punishment was the famous shot at an apple on his son's head.

The gat, a partly see-through hat of bamboo and horsehair, was worn by men of which country's Joseon era?

Korea's gat sat over a man's topknot and signalled his standing; a white version, made of hemp, was worn in times of national mourning.

The white canvas hat of US Navy enlisted sailors is nicknamed after which brand of disposable drinking cup?

Dixie cup became the sailors' name for the hat because its upright brim gives it the shape of the throwaway cup; another nickname for it is the gob hat.

Which American new wave band wore red plastic hats shaped like stepped ziggurats as part of its stage outfits?

Devo had the hats custom-made from vacuum-formed plastic; the band has its own name for them, but outsiders often, and wrongly, call them flowerpots.

Under the British hat tax of 1784 to 1811, which offence could bring the death penalty?

Forging the tax stamps was the capital crime: every man's hat had to carry a revenue stamp pasted inside its lining to show that the duty had been paid.

Which US state's legislature named the cowboy hat its official state hat in 2015?

Texas made it official in 2015, long after the state's Rangers had become the first American law-enforcement agency to wear the Western hat as part of their uniform.

In Hollywood Westerns of the 1920s to 1940s, a black cowboy hat usually marked a character as what?

The villain wore black for a practical reason too: audiences could follow who was who in fast action scenes shot in black and white, even when an actor was filmed from behind.

Which showman's touring Wild West spectacle, founded in 1883, spread the mystique of the cowboy and his hat?

Buffalo Bill took his large company on tours across the United States and, from 1887, around Europe, carrying the image of the cowboy far beyond the frontier.

Which horsemen, the forerunners of the American cowboy, may have influenced the design of the cowboy hat?

Vaqueros became the foundation of the North American cowboy, and the word buckaroo is thought to be a corruption of their name.

Which gentle giant of the Cartwright family wore a big ten-gallon hat in the TV Western Bonanza?

Hoss, played by Dan Blocker, was the middle brother, real first name Eric; after Blocker died in 1972 the role was not recast, and the show ended the following January.

Which Canadian city has presented visiting dignitaries with a white cowboy hat since the early 1950s?

Calgary's white hat was first worn at the city's rodeo in 1946, and in 1983 it was worked into the design of the city flag.

In the Old West, which feature of a cowboy hat could reveal the very ranch its wearer came from?

The crease in the crown was set by softening the hat in hot steam, shaping it and letting it dry, so a practised eye could place a rider right down to his ranch.

Which star of silent Westerns, signed by Fox because he did his own stunts, popularised the cowboy hat on screen?

Tom Mix's films helped make the cowboy hat a symbol of the American West, and he lived like a star: a columnist reported his initials in electric lights on top of his house.

Which cowboy hat maker, founded in Dallas in 1927, has counted John Wayne and Henry Fonda among its wearers?

Resistol was coined to say that the hats could resist all weather, though another account credits headbands that stood up better to scalp oil.

Fans and players of which baseball team made the inside-out rally cap famous in the mid-1980s?

Mets fans at Shea Stadium turned their caps inside out as a makeshift talisman for late comebacks in 1985, and TV cameras later caught the players doing the same in the dugout.