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Where did the idea of the tin foil hat come from?


The tin foil hat is a cultural symbol for conspiracy-minded people. Where did the idea come from and why do some think it works?

The tin-foil hat can be traced back to 1927, first spotted by Business Insider roughly a decade ago, in a short story titled “ The Tissue-Culture King. When Gizmodo reached Recht’s former professor at MIT in 2005, who oversaw the lab the experiment took place in, he emailed back, “That was a joke, which got taken surprisingly seriously.” In the jokey study, the authors say: The emergence of 5G towers has fueled a newfound fear of electromagnetic radiation, spurring a resurgence in modern products promising Faraday cage abilities to protect people from the so-called dangers.

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