Today in 1832, the birthday of Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice In Wonderland.”
One of the most memorable characters in the book is the Mad Hatter.
And while there are competing explanations for the phrase that gave the Hatter his name, in Carroll’s time, those working in the hat industry did sometimes turn “mad.”
The big reason why was connected to a process called felting.
Producers would take a piece of animal hide, separate the hide from the hair and use heat, pressure and moisture to make the pieces of those big top hats strong and stiff.
One of the top ways to do this work in the 1800s was through chemicals: the hatters could soak their material in a special bath that would make the animal hair easy to remove and speed up the overall hatmaking process.
A common recipe: seven and a half pounds of water, three pounds of nitric acid and three ounces of mercury.
Hatters who were brewing up mercury nitrate, in little workrooms without much ventilation, were essentially giving themselves mercury poisoning.
They suffered from tremors, known as “hatter’s shakes,” they had trouble walking and speaking, and that was before their gums turned black and their teeth started falling out.
Many had emotional issues, and some would hallucinate.
Now the phrase “mad as a hatter” may have originally been a play on words; “mad as an adder” was a phrase back when “mad” could describe a venomous person, for example.
But it grew more and more popular because people thought hatters actually were going mad.
Fortunately for hatmakers, the 1900s eventually got safer when scientists and advocates pinpointed mercury as the root of hatters’ problems.
The world found other chemicals to do the work that the mercury had been doing, and hatters stopped going “mad.”
Today in 1937, the birthday of history-making broadcast journalist Nancy Dickerson.
She got her start in the 1950s, when she convinced CBS to hire her to produce a recurring radio show about US politics.
And that show today is known as “Face the Nation.”
Poisons Part I: The Mercurial World of Felt (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
Nancy Dickerson, 70, First Woman to Be a Reporter at CBS (New York Times)
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