Walk down the street in any American neighborhood today and you're unlikely to see a lot of people wearing hats. Sure, you'll find the occasional person in a baseball cap or something like that, but that's hardly the norm. And in most downtown thoroughfares, you'll rarely see anyone wearing any other type of hat.

But that wasn't always the case. For most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people wore hats everywhere. And in the early 1900s, American women -- particularly those from wealthy families -- wore rather large hats. Here's an illustration of some of those hats from the 1910s (via the New York Public Library), below, and you'll see for yourself.

In 1903, "Leoti Blaker, a young tourist from Kansas, was sitting on a crowded New York City stagecoach. A well-dressed fifty-something man got handsy with her, and when it became clear he wasn’t going to stop, Blaker moved to stop him herself. 'At last I reached up and took a hatpin from my hat. I slid it around so I could give him a good dig, and ran that hatpin into him with all the force I possessed.' she told The Evening World. The needle pierced the lecher’s arm, and he scurried away.

[One rainy day that year;] 18-year-old Elizabeth Foley found herself in the midst of an armed robbery. She had been walking home with a male colleague from the bank when someone came up behind them. In a flash, the robber swung his arms high and smashed her male companion in the head. The entire payroll for the staff was in his pocket.

Foley, however, was not shaken. In one swift movement she reached for her hatpin, jumped at the robber and aimed right for his face.