100 Interesting Facts About Colors

The reason that (research) submarines are yellow is because yellow is one of the last few colors to be visible at great depth.

77. There is a 20 storey light spire on a building in downtown Stockholm, and anyone with a smartphone can change the colors on the lights that are shining in it. Its creators hope that the work can stand as a statement on the power of democracy and the power of the public.

78. Sulfur has all of the primary colors. It melts into a red liquid, burns blue, and is a yellow solid.

79. The pizza Margherita owes its name to Italy's Queen Margherita who in 1889 visited the Pizzeria Brandi in Naples. The Pizzaiolo (pizza maker) on duty that day, Raffaele Esposito created a pizza for the Queen that contained the three colors of the new Italian flag.

80. NES and SNES consoles turn yellow as they age because of a breakdown of a flame retardant chemical added to plastics used on older computer hardware.

The most complex eyes throughout the animal kingdom belong to the mantis shrimp, who can manipulate light polarization throughout its entire visible spectrum. That’s at least 10x as many colors in our visible spectrum.

82. Disney Imagineers created two colors (Go Away Green, and No Seeum Gray), which are used to help disguise buildings, bins, and anything else visually distracting, or unappealing.

83. We see the colors that we do because it’s the only spectrum of light that passes through water, the area where eyes first evolved. There hasn't been any evolutionary reason on land to see any broader spectrum.

84. Golden poison frogs are curious, bold, and seemingly aware of the fact that they are next to invulnerable. They make no attempt to conceal themselves and actually flaunt their beautiful colors to intimidate potential predators.

85. Purple as a color is similar to violet, but violet is a spectral color with its own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light whereas purple is a composite color, made by combining red and blue.

Red color-blind monkeys who underwent gene therapy by having their eyes injected with a red cone, had their color blindness cured, potentially opening a door for curing color blindness in humans.

87. A fireman's eyes at the Chernobyl disaster are said to have turned from brown to blue because of the intensity of the radiation he received.

88. A device has been developed that can kill 100 mosquitoes per/sec up to 100 feet away using infra-red motion censoring and a Blue laser. The idea came about after Bill Gates requested help to fight mosquito-spread Malaria in underdeveloped countries. Production cost is around $50.

89. The Araucana Chicken is also called the “Easter Egg Chicken” because it lays natural blue, green, pink, and brown eggs.

90. The Filipino flag is flown with the red stripe up in times of war and blue stripe up in times of peace.

When Microsoft bought all rights to Charles O’Rear’s iconic ‘Bliss’ photo, depicting green hills and a blue sky, they wanted the original film. When the courier learned how valuable it was, they declined to ship it due to lower insurance limits. O’Rear had to personally deliver it to Seattle.

92. Octopuses have copper-based blood instead of iron-based blood, which is why their blood is blue rather than red.

93. In 1962, US Air Force blew up a hydrogen fusion bomb in space. It turned the atmosphere green and blue, which could be seen for hundreds of miles.

94. The Honolulu Police Departments police cruisers are required to have their blue steady lights on when they are on duty to so people are aware where police officers are.

95. Filmmakers use the green and blue screen in films instead of red because there is no blue or green pigment in our skin.

In 1997, Mötley Crüe released a soda called "Mötley Brüe", which promised to turn the urine into blue color.

97. The gold prospectors of Yogo Gulch, Montana would notice “blue pebbles” in their stream but ignored them for 16 years before a cigar box of them was sent by regular uninsured mail to Tiffany’s, and found to be part of a huge deposit of very high-quality sapphires.

98. During the filming of Ben-Hur, an extra turned blue when he fell into a pond that had dye poured into it. He was kept on the MGM payroll until the color wore off.

99. ESPN won an Emmy for the creation of the superimposed yellow line representing the first down line for American football games.

100. Blue-eyed people probably have a single, common ancestor, who had a genetic mutation between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago.