…that hard hats were first created in the 1930s for the men working on the Hoover Dam? Called “high scalers,” these men were required to scale the canyon walls, removing loose rock before construction of the dam walls could begin.

According to the Bureau of Reclamation, these men were more in danger of dying from falling objects than from actually falling themselves, so they started to fashion their own protection by pouring tar onto their cloth hats. The practice caught on, and eventually, commercially made hard hats became the standard for all dam workers.

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