Fact or Crap

I'm impressed with myself. I knew the answer to this one!

Fact or Crap: The phrase “mad as a hatter” came from the fact that hat makers tended to go insane.






Fact! In the 18th and 19th centuries, hat makers used mercury for curing felt, causing as many as one in ten to go insane at one point. Unfortunately, the thousands of hat workers who handled the chemical did not know it was a deadly poison, whose side effects were anemia, inflammation of the gums, kidney damage . . . and insanity. Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was therefore rooted in reality.