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Axios
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
When Utah passed an "emergency" ban on tall hats at live performances
With Kilby Block Party heralding the start of our summer concert season, I find myself torn between wanting to join in the fun and not wanting to spend hours staring at some guy's shoulder blades because I'm too short to see anything else. Catch up quick: Turns out I'm not the first Utahn to tire of neck-craning. The legislature once passed an "emergency" ban on tall hats in theaters because no one behind them could see the show. This is Old News, our weekly quest for an unobstructed view of Utah's past. The intrigue: The 1897 ban was the first Utah bill ever filed by a woman. Eurithe K. LaBarthe was one of two women elected to the state House in 1896, when Utah's new constitution granted suffrage. When LaBarthe proposed the hat ban, the men in the chamber laughed at its frivolity. Yes, but: "High hat" bans were sweeping the nation, starting in Ohio. Context: Women's hats of the day were, admittedly, way over the top. What happened: The ban swiftly passed both chambers and was signed by the governor as an " emergency measure." How it worked: Guests at theaters, opera houses and other "indoor places of amusement" faced fines ranging from $1 to $10 for wearing hats that blocked the view for other patrons — about $40 to $400 in today's money. Friction point: Women kept wearing their high hats, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, noting: "Just how many ostriches had been stripped to supply these mammoth creations would be hard to tell." The next month, lawmakers called for the arrest of one theater owner who refused to sell them tickets in protest of the hat ban. The other side: In an editorial, the Broad Ax newspaper of Salt Lake City argued that women looked prettier without hats anyway. The Salt Lake Herald pointed out that men were constantly getting up mid-show to go hang out with their friends in the theater. The newspaper called on the legislature to ban that, too. The bottom line: Until Utah implements a tall person ban, my 6' 4" husband will be avenging my shortness at all the live shows I skip. Previously in Old News
Axios
12-05-2025
- Health
- Axios
How Utah became the No. 1 state for forced sterilization
A century ago Monday, forcible sterilization became legal in Utah. This is Old News, our weekly competency evaluation of our forebears. What drove the news: In 1925, the Legislature authorized directors of the prison, Utah State Hospital and some other institutions to sterilize inmates and patients "afflicted with habitual sexual criminal tendencies, insanity, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy." When the state opened a job training school for people with disabilities in the 1930s, the law was amended to include students there, too. By the numbers:"At least 830 men, women and children were coercively sterilized in Utah" during the 60 years that the law was in effect, per a 2023 study by the University of Utah. Many were teenagers; at least one was a child younger than 10. The big picture: Sterilization is one of many 20th-century eugenics programs now held up as a catastrophe of medical ethics. Meanwhile, many victims did not exhibit even the heritable maladies those programs purported to address. Case in point: In 1928, a teenage girl told her "local religious leader" that she'd been raped repeatedly by a family member, U. researchers wrote in the 2023 study. The faith leader did not believe her, and she was admitted to the Utah State Hospital. There, she was forcibly sterilized for being diagnosed as a "moron." Later, the religious leader admitted she'd probably been a victim of human trafficking, researchers found. Flashback: Utah's sterilizations peaked in the early 1940s, with more than 120 operations from 1941 to 1943, the researchers found. The intrigue: Most states dialed back their sterilization efforts in the 1940s and '50s after learning about the horrific outcomes of eugenics in Nazi Germany, researchers wrote. But in Utah, lawmakers just changed the rationale to keep sterilizing people. In 1961, a new law allowed sterilization for any institutionalized person with the same disorders from the 1925 law if they were "probably incurable and unlikely to be able to perform properly the functions of parenthood." Under the new law, forced sterilizations continued well into the 1970s. What they said: Utah sterilized a greater share of its residents than any other state in 1947, which the Rocky Mountain Medical Journal lauded as an "important achievement in public health." The latest: The state discontinued sterilizations under those laws in 1974, per the study.
Axios
08-05-2025
- General
- Axios
How Vietnam's refugees made their way to Utah
Fifty years ago this week, refugees from Vietnam began to arrive in Utah after the fall of Saigon. This is Old News, our weekly relocation to Utah's past. The big picture: After nearly two decades of conflict, the collapse of South Vietnam happened at a speed that took most Americans by surprise. In the final two days of April 1975, more than 7,000 American civilians and imperiled Vietnamese citizens were flown by helicopter out of Saigon — now officially called Ho Chi Minh City — as North Vietnamese troops seized control. By the numbers: A week before that, the first wave of about 130,000 refugees had begun to flee Vietnam, most of them to Guam. They joined about 2,600 orphaned children who were taken there earlier that month. As refugees started to arrive, the U.S. military estimated space for only about 13,000 refugees on the island territory. What they said: Then-president Gerald Ford told Americans to prepare for a massive influx of refugees being transported from tent cities in Guam to U.S. military bases — and sought funds as members in Congress increasingly fielded "anti-refugee" calls and letters from constituents. "It makes me damn mad. It just burns me up, these great humanitarians," Ford said mockingly of the reluctant lawmakers. "Now they just turn their backs." How it worked: By May 8, the Utah National Guard was preparing resettlement camps for up to 1,000 refugees — though that plan was soon scrapped in favor of seeking individual sponsors to support the newcomers for at least two years. Yes, but: By July, about 20,000 refugees still languished in Camp Pendleton, California, waiting for sponsors as representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Catholic Charities in Salt Lake tried to drum up volunteers. Zoom in: 17 refugees — some of them children separated from their parents — were among the first arrivals in Utah. A West Valley City family with ties to Vietnam acted as their sponsor, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Neighbors helped provide beds as the group made frantic phone calls trying to find other loved ones who had made their way to the United States. The bottom line: From 1975 to 2000 some 3 million refugees fled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Axios
22-04-2025
- Science
- Axios
A 35-year view of space from Utah, via the Hubble Space Telescope
In a development that literally gave humans a fresh glimpse of the past, the Hubble Space Telescope launched 35 years ago this week. This is Old News, our weekly warping of the space-time continuum. Why it matters: University of Utah astronomers have used Hubble's images to find new(ish) black holes. How it works: When it launched on April 24, 1990, Hubble was the biggest telescope ever sent into space. It orbits the Earth, watching the cosmos from outside our atmosphere, which blurs the view from the ground. That has allowed it to produce many of the first — or clearest — images ever seen of space. The big picture: Hubble has changed what we know about the size and age of the universe — 13.8 billion years is the latest estimate. Because the telescope amplifies and measures faraway light — which takes time to travel — we see what its subjects looked like long ago. The farthest image is of a galaxy as it appeared more than 13 billion years ago — just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Catch up quick: The James Webb Telescope, which launched in 2021, is more advanced than Hubble — but there's a whoooooole lotta sky for both of them to see. Zoom in: Hubble has been instrumental in identifying medium-sized black holes — a specialty of the U.'s astronomy program.
Axios
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
How Utah reacted to Lincoln's assassination
A wave of mourning swept over Utah 160 years ago this week as news of President Lincoln's assassination reached the territory. This is Old News, our weekly procession through the past. The timeline: John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre on April 14; he died the next morning. Western newspapers learned of the shooting via telegraph soon thereafter, and at least one paper mentioned printing an "extra" that is now lost to the archives. But the news didn't hit the regular presses here until April 16. The Salt Lake Daily Telegraph had the story first — and they described the shock as word spread through the city. What they said:"From the moment of the reception of this news on East Temple St. the throbbing of busy life on that lovely spring morn began to subside," the Telegraph wrote. "Business was at once and simultaneously suspended, and such charnel stillness cast its shadows down this broad avenue of merchandise and trade as Utah, in her darkest hour, never felt before. No untutored voice, nor even sound of rushing car disturbed the seemingly sacred stillness of the hour." "Every person we saw appeared wrapped in the solitude of his own reflections. Grouped here and there upon the pavement or store step, sat breathless listeners, impulsive to catch ... the dispatched accounts of the most fearfully daring tragedy that ever wrested from a nation its rulers." Between the lines: Just days earlier, Utahns were celebrating Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Virginia, which signaled the denouement of the Civil War. "The stars and stripes so recently flung to the breezes on occasions of successive and glorious triumphs over armed resistance to the constitutional authority now hang gloomily at half mast, draped and folded by the insignia of a nation's grief," the Telegraph wrote.
