>If you’re envisioning miscreants being slathered with bubbling roofing tar, think again. Unlike the petroleum-based tar that we now use for paving roads, the sticky stuff used for tarring and feathering unlucky truants for hundreds of years has usually been either pine tar (derived from the wood of pine trees, as the name suggests) or pitch, which traditionally was the name for resin and only later got attached to petroleum products.
>>If you’re envisioning miscreants being slathered with bubbling roofing tar, think again. Unlike the petroleum-based tar that we now use for paving roads, the sticky stuff used for tarring and feathering unlucky truants for hundreds of years has usually been either pine tar (derived from the wood of pine trees, as the name suggests) or pitch, which traditionally was the name for resin and only later got attached to petroleum products.
[A Brief, Sticky History of Tarring and Feathering](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66830/brief-sticky-history-tarring-and-feathering)
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