Hi there. I'm Washington Post reporter Lillian Cunningham. Stay tuned after the show to hear about my latest podcast, Moonrise. It's the dark but true story of why we went to the moon and what we found there. The full series is available now.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod.

A show about the past.

Rediscovered.

The United States Congress has been at the center of debates over the most contentious issues the country has ever faced.

Slavery, war, civil rights.

But there's a very old and very heady debate you probably haven't heard of.

A debate, it turns out, that was only recently sort of settled.

The debate I'm talking about concerns hats.

Okay, let's go back like 200 years. Congress was not the dignified place it is today.

It was essentially a bunch of men hanging out in a really large man cave.

Members in the house chewed and spit tobacco.

They carried guns and knives.

They propped their feet on their desks, smoking cigars while downing liquor.

Oh, they wore hats, too.

And back then, there were hat naysayers. Hats, they said, had no place

atop the heads of men debating the great issues of the day. They weren't dignified. Also, the hats

were so large, they allegedly muffled even the loudest voices. So, in 1822, Representative Charles F. Mercer of Virginia proposed that no member remain in the hall

covered during the session of the house. Covered, meaning, wearing a hat.

Mercer's proposal won 63 votes, but it didn't pass. The hats prevailed.

Six years later, in 1828, along comes another lawmaker opposed to hats, Representative George

McDuffie of South Carolina, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

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