37. Pittsburgh Pioneered Straw Hat Riots
Pittsburgh was home to one of the earliest recorded instances of widespread crime, violence, and rioting surrounding the end of straw hat season. On September 15th, 1910, Felt Hat Day demonstrations were organized. Mobs descended upon straw-lidded pedestrians to snatch away and destroy their headgear. When some stood up for their right to wear whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, and resisted the wrecking of their straw hats, they came close to getting violently wrecked by the demonstrators.
As crime and violence spread, some straw hat wearers pulled guns to protect their headgear. Elsewhere in the city, some had their hats taken off their heads at gunpoint. Eventually, police were mobilized to disperse the rioters, and serious bloodshed and loss of life were narrowly avoided. The following day, many newspapers wrote it off as “youthful exuberance”. As the scale of the September 15th rioting grew in subsequent years, however, the public’s and the media’s patience with such exuberance grew thin.