31–40 of 46 posts
This is where the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking-Glass comes from.
It's funny to me, a Canadian, that this even warrants a did-you-know article because everything about the beaver fur/hat making industry is something I learned extensively about in elementary and high school because it was like, a major driver of the European exploration and colonization and therefore significant to the history of my country. But outside of here it's just a footnote to a fashion trend.
> Factory workers soaked the skins in a orange-coloured solution containing mercuric nitrate; a process called 'carroting'. Vapours from the mercury poisoned the workers' nervous systems, making them prone to tremors, irritability, depression, paranoia, dementia and worse. This is where the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking-Glass comes from.
The other interesting but useless fact is that silk top hats (which as the article points out supersede beaver as the fibre of choice) are no longer made - and the technique for making them is effectively lost because they need specialised looms which are also no longer made. But if you want to go somewhere super fancy like Ascot and look the part, a silk top hat is de rigueur. There are now a handful of shops that b…
The other interesting but useless fact is that silk top hats (which as the article points out supersede beaver as the fibre of choice) are no longer made - and the technique for making them is effectively lost because they need specialised looms which are also no longer made. But if you want to go somewhere super fancy like Ascot and look the part, a silk top hat is de rigueur. There are now a handful of shops that b…
The flag of New York City also features beavers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_New_York_City Edit: it's clearer in the seal of the city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_New_York_City
My daughter once spent a bunch of time going through all the flag emojis classifying them as stars, animals, trees, religious symbols (and probably some others). We found three flags with maps. Animals were almost exclusively birds, but there was also a sheep, a pair of lions, seahorses, a lobster and a conch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was stopping the British from taking their pelts directly across the Pacific? It can't have been American control of the region if this is the explanation for how America got control of the region. Spain certainly wasn't exporting silver from the New World to Europe before shipping it on to China; they shipped it directly there.
I guess it depends on what you call the new world, but for what it's worth that's not quite correct, the main transit point was Manila. In true pedantic HN fashion I am currently vacationing on the west coast of Mexico and learned this fact yesterday.
Also explored in detail in Neal Stephensons "Cryptonomicon"
See also: https://buc-off.com