60 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.