Since 1986, October 6 is marked as the Mad Hatter Day — a famous character in Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Here are some interesting facts about the iconic comic character:
English illustrator John enniel depicted Hatter wearing a hat with 10/6 written on it. The 10/6 refers to the cost of a hat — 10 shillings and 6 pence, and later became the date and month to celebrate Mad Hatter Day.
The idiom “mad as a hatter” was around long before Carroll started writing. Colloquially used to describe an eccentric person, “mad as a hatter” is based on a problem that arose in the 1800s when hat companies used lead in the hat-making process. The lead got into their systems and they went insane, hence the term “mad as a hatter”.
The Mad Hatter asks Alice several times, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” Carroll admitted that there never was an answer to this classic riddle. However, after being badgered by fans for long, Carroll put an answer in the preface of the later editions. The answer was: “Because both produce a few notes, though they are very flat and it is ‘nevar’ put with the wrong end in front!”
Rumour has it that Carroll intended the character of the Mad Hatter to be an outlandish caricature of a man named Theophilus Carter — an eccentric British furniture dealer from Oxford.
Even though Hatter is popularly known as the Mad Hatter, Lewis Carroll never refers to the character as the Mad Hatter.
The Mad Hatter comic book character made his debut in Batman #49 in 1948. He is the supervillain who keeps his Wonderland counterpart’s costume and personality, with a lot of his gadgets stored in his hat. In the world of Batman, he is a scientist who uses mind-controlling devices to manipulate his victims.
Source: alice-in-wonderland.net, theguardian.com
