100 Interesting Facts About Colors

The atmospheric debris caused by the eruption of Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia in 1883 resulted in blood red sunsets all over the world for months. Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” depicts a Krakatoa sunset over Oslo, Norway.

27. Flamin' Hot Cheetos have caused panic among parents whose kids ate too much of them, resulting in a reddish stool that sent them running to the emergency room. It was just the chemicals that turned the stools red.

28. Hydrangea flowers are a naturally occurring pH indicator and can change color depending on soil acidity. In acid soils, chemical reactions occur in the soil that turns the flowers blue. In alkaline soils, these reactions cannot occur causing the flowers to remain pink.

29. Ordinary Scotch tape produces a glowing blue light where the end of the tape is being pulled away from the roll. In 1953, Soviet scientists first observed that unpeeling a roll of tape in a vacuum produced X-rays.

30. In 2012, beekeepers in France were confused to discover that their bees were producing blue and green honey. Investigations later found it was the result of bees foraging in the waste from an M&Ms factory.

The Shoshinsha mark is a green and yellow symbol that new Japanese drivers must place on their cars for a year; conversely, the Fukushi mark (orange and yellow) is for elderly drivers. Both marks warn other drivers that the marked driver is not very skilled due to inexperience or old age.

32. Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra can cause a person to see everything tinted with blue. This is referred to as Cyanopsia or blue vision.

33. Chronic exposure to Silver or silver dust can cause Argyria. The most dramatic symptom of argyria is that the skin permanently turns blue or bluish-grey.

34. Smarties are flavored as such: White is orange/cream, yellow is pineapple, pink is cherry, purple is grape, orange is orange and green is strawberry.

35. The sun glows a cool blue as it sets in the Martian sky. The red dust in the atmosphere scatters red light, so when anyone looking around would see a reddish sky. Meanwhile, the red wavelengths are filtered out of the direct path of light from the sun, leaving light towards the bluish end of the color spectrum. Those looking at the sun will see it as blue.

“Ripe Black Olives” in a can are actually olives which are neither black nor ripe when they are picked. They are picked very green and then cured using dilute brine and lye solutions.

37. Prescription bottles are orange or light brown due to its ability to prevent ultraviolet light from degrading the potentially photosensitive pill through photochemical reactions, while still letting enough visible light through for the pills to be easily visible.

38. Oranges are actually green when grown in a tropical climate. They only become orange in color when grown in more temperate climates.

39. eBay once tried changing their background from yellow to white but received complaints. So they reverted it to yellow, then gradually changed it to white over several months. Nobody complained.

40. Green eyes make up only 1-2% of the entire human population, and natural occurring Violet colored eyes do exist.

Errant Thai police are required to wear big bright pink Hello Kitty armbands against their dull gray uniform as a form of punishment if they commit petty offenses such as showing up late, parking illegally, and getting in fights with other officers.

42. In the 1880s, Margarine had to be dyed pink in order to prevent confusion between butter substitutes and actual butter.

43. Peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopically structured surfaces make them appear blue, turquoise, and green, and often they appear iridescent.

44. Cyanide was named after the color cyan because it was originally isolated from the Prussian blue dye.

45. Lake Hillier is a bubble-gum-pink lake right on the edge of Recherché Archipelago’s largest island in Australia. The color is permanent and does not alter when the water is taken in a container. It is speculated that the color is either caused by a reaction of sea salt and sodium bicarbonate or by red halophilic bacteria in the salt crusts.

In medieval times, Japanese used to dye their teeth black. Dyeing was mainly done by married women, though occasionally men did it as well. It was also beneficial, as it prevented tooth decay, in a similar fashion to modern dental sealants.

47. In modern times, the color Tyrian purple has been recreated, at great expense. When the German chemist Paul Friedlander tried to recreate Tyrian purple in 2008, he needed 12,000 mollusks to create 1.4 ounces of dye, enough to color a handkerchief.

48. Almost all carrots used to be purple and it wasn’t until the 17th century that most of them became orange.

49. Films were colorized as early as 1902 by hand-painting each frame, resulting in a fantastically bright color scheme.

50. Chickens with white earlobes lay white or lightly tinted eggs, and chickens with red earlobes most commonly lay brown eggs. There are exceptions, of course, but this is the general rule.