A tricorn is a hat with a wide brim folded up and pinned against the crown to form three corners or points.

These distinctive hats were extremely popular in Europe and America during the 1700s, worn by everyone from common workers to military officers to the Founding Fathers. If you've seen paintings or movies about the American Revolution, you've seen tricorns: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere all wore them. Pirates in stories often wear tricorns too, though real pirates wore whatever hats they could get.

The tricorn wasn't just fashionable. Its folded-up brim kept rain from dripping down your neck and let you tip your hat politely in greeting without it falling off. Soldiers appreciated that the folded brim didn't get in the way when shouldering a musket. By the early 1800s, the tricorn went out of style, replaced by tall top hats and other designs, but it remains an iconic symbol of the Revolutionary era.