60 Fun Facts About Love

In Roman mythology, who is the god of desire and love, usually shown as a winged boy with a bow?

His Greek counterpart is Eros; the chubby-cherub look only arrived in the Hellenistic period.

Cupid is usually described as the son of the goddess Venus and which god?

Love and War as parents made a tidy allegory; Seneca preferred Vulcan, Venus's actual husband.

Cupid's gold-tipped arrow causes desire; what does the lead-tipped one cause?

Ovid tells how Cupid shot Apollo with gold and Daphne with lead, so she fled him and became a laurel tree.

Which hormone, released during hugging, childbirth and sex, is popularly nicknamed the 'love hormone'?

It is made in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary, and it works by positive feedback: release triggers more release.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher split love into three brain systems: lust, attachment and which other?

Her MRI work linked early romantic love to the ventral tegmental area, which pumps out dopamine when you look at your beloved.

Robert Sternberg's 'triangular theory' says love has three components: intimacy, passion and what?

Consummate love, in his model, is the rare case where all three corners are present.

Does research support the saying 'opposites attract'?

The one odd exception is the immune system: people seem to prefer partners whose immune genes differ from their own.

Which word did Dorothy Tennov coin for the obsessive, madly-in-love state when reciprocation is uncertain?

She interviewed more than 500 people about love in the 1960s and built the term from the discarded 'amorance'.

Which ancient Greek word for love describes friendship or affectionate regard between equals?

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics treats it as loyalty to friends, family and community, requiring virtue and familiarity.

In Greek, which word names the natural affection between parents and children?

It is rarely used in ancient texts and almost always about family, though it can stretch to a favourite sports team.

The Greek 'xenia' is a form of love or friendship directed at whom?

Hospitality was a moral duty under Zeus Xenios; the suitors' failure to welcome Odysseus home helps justify their slaughter.

The 'honeymoon' originally referred to what?

Sixteenth-century writers used it a little sourly: affection, like the full moon, 'is no sooner full than it begins to wane'.

What Latin name is given to the medieval belief in a vein running from ring finger to heart?

All veins lead to the heart, as William Harvey showed in the 17th century, but the ring stayed on that finger anyway.

A Roman bride-to-be got a gold ring for public wear and one of what material for use at home?

For centuries Romans wore iron rings at home and gold ones out and about.

Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave the first documented diamond engagement ring in 1477 to whom?

Before De Beers's 1939 advertising campaign, only about one in ten American engagement rings held a diamond.

Before the Second World War, roughly what share of American engagement rings contained a diamond?

De Beers's campaign, which also taught the public the '4 Cs', changed that within a generation.

Whose 1840 wedding is usually credited with making the white wedding dress fashionable?

Earlier royal brides favoured heavy brocade, and red was a popular colour across Western Europe.

Roughly how many people watched Lady Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles in 1981?

Her ivory taffeta dress had a 26-foot train.

Complete the bridal rhyme: 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something...'

The full Lancashire version adds 'and a sixpence in her shoe'; the earliest recorded form dates from 1871.

Traditionally, which material is the gift for a first wedding anniversary?

Wood is the fifth and tin the tenth; gold and silver for 50 and 25 go back to 16th-century Germany.

Which is the world's most famous monument built as a tomb for a beloved wife?

Shah Jahan commissioned it in 1631 for Mumtaz Mahal; more than 20,000 workers built it and he is buried there too.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona and which other Italian city?

The plot came from an Italian tale by Matteo Bandello, put into English verse by Arthur Brooke in 1562.

Which Babylonian lovers from Ovid, whispering through a cracked wall, inspired Romeo and Juliet?

Their blood is said to have turned white mulberries red; Shakespeare also spoofed them in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the medieval legend, Tristan and Iseult are struck by forbidden passion after accidentally drinking what?

Tristan was escorting the Irish princess to marry his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, when it happened.

In the classic Arabic love story, the poet Qays earns the nickname Majnun, meaning what?

Nizami's 1188 Persian poem carried the tale into Turkish and Indian literature.

Cleopatra's affair with Mark Antony produced how many children?

Antony was married to Octavian's sister at the time, which did not help relations with Rome.

The medieval literary idea of a knight performing deeds for an idealised lady is called what?

It grew up in the courts of Aquitaine and Provence in the late 11th century and fed Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer.

The Roman poet Ovid wrote a three-book instruction manual on seduction around 2 AD. What was it called?

The Art of Love may have contributed to Augustus exiling him to the Black Sea.

The Kama Sutra's title translates roughly as what?

Despite its reputation, most of the text is about courtship, living well and the theory of love, not positions.

The Romans had a special word, suavium, for what?

An osculum was for the hand or cheek and a basium the closed-mouth kiss for family.

The scientific study of kissing is called what?

Charles Darwin was among its early students; roughly ten percent of human cultures are thought not to kiss at all.

The oldest known references to kissing-like behaviour, about 3,500 years ago, come from which texts?

One theory has kissing spreading from India to Europe after Alexander the Great's conquests.

The first known depiction of a heart shape as a symbol of romantic love, from the 1250s, appears in what?

In the Roman de la poire miniature a kneeling lover offers his heart, drawn pine-cone-shaped and point-up as medieval anatomy described it.

Which small Midwestern rodent is famous for lifelong pair bonds, with widowed males not seeking a new mate?

Its fidelity is tied to oxytocin and vasopressin; its close cousin the meadow vole is a cad.

In seahorses, which parent carries the fertilised eggs in a brood pouch until they hatch?

After a courtship dance that can last hours, the female deposits her eggs into his pouch.

A study of mute swans found roughly what 'divorce' rate for successfully breeding pairs?

Pairs that fail to breed split up three times as often; a widowed swan will take a new partner.

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross tagged in 1956, is the world's oldest known what?

She has flown an estimated three million miles and has worn out six leg bands.

Albatross pairs form bonds over several years using what?

Once bonded they stay together for life and raise a single chick per breeding season.

Which Paris bridge partly collapsed in 2014 under the weight of tourists' love padlocks?

The city launched a 'Love Without Locks' campaign asking couples to take a selfie instead.

The love-lock custom is traced to a WWI-era story about a schoolmistress named Nada in which country?

Jilted when her officer fiancé fell for a woman on Corfu, she inspired local girls to padlock their names to the bridge where the couple had met.

The Wall of Love in Montmartre, Paris, displays the phrase 'I love you' in how many languages?

It is written 311 times on 612 enamelled lava tiles, including in Navajo, Inuit and Esperanto.

Roughly how many Valentines does Loveland, Colorado's re-mailing program hand-stamp each year?

Each year a new verse and cachet are chosen by contest and the cards go out postmarked from 'Sweetheart Town'.

A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas is famous for offering vows through what?

Sinatra, Judy Garland, Michael Jordan, Britney Spears and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore all married under Charolette Richards's roof.

Folk tradition in Scotland, Ireland, England and Finland lets women propose marriage on which day?

A man who refused was traditionally expected to pay a forfeit, usually a gift of clothing.

Which British monarch proposed to her future husband, rather than the other way round?

As sovereign she outranked Albert, so protocol required that she ask him.

Throwing rice at newlyweds symbolises what?

Despite the myth, uncooked rice does not harm birds.

The 1989 film When Harry Met Sally... asks which question?

Nora Ephron based Harry on director Rob Reiner and Sally partly on herself.

Which 2004 romance, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, was based on a Nicholas Sparks novel?

It grossed $118 million on a $29 million budget and won the MTV award for Best Kiss.

The 1942 romance Casablanca was based on an unproduced stage play with what title?

Nobody at Warner Bros. expected it to stand out from the year's other pictures.

Which 1997 romance became the first film ever to gross a billion dollars?

It stayed the highest-grossing film of all time until James Cameron beat himself with Avatar.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was written under what working title?

She wrote it aged 20 or 21; it has since sold more than 20 million copies.

In Dirty Dancing (1987), Baby falls for Johnny Castle at a resort in which region?

Screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein based it on her own childhood summers; it was filmed in North Carolina and Virginia.

Love Actually tells how many separate interlinked love stories?

It was Richard Curtis's first film as director and has become a Christmas staple on both sides of the Atlantic.

The story of Cupid and Psyche, whose name means 'soul', comes from which second-century Latin novel?

Apuleius's tale of a mortal girl who marries a god she is forbidden to look at has been retold in opera, painting and even wallpaper.

The Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, was married to which god, whom she cheated on with Ares?

The Odyssey has the lame smith-god catching the lovers in a net he forged himself.

According to Hesiod, Aphrodite was born from sea foam produced by what?

Homer gives her tamer parents, Zeus and Dione; her name was linked to aphros, the Greek for foam.

Where was Charles, Duke of Orléans, when he wrote the earliest surviving valentine to his wife?

He was captured at Agincourt in 1415 and held in England for a quarter of a century.

Which English poet first linked St Valentine's Day to romantic love, in a 1382 poem about birds choosing mates?

The Parliament of Fowls did the linking; nobody before it seems to have thought February 14 romantic at all.

St Valentine supposedly wore a purple amethyst ring engraved with what?

Legend says Roman soldiers recognised the ring and asked him to marry them in secret.

Which Chinese philosopher argued for 'universal love' (jian'ai) against Confucian family-first duty?

His 4th-century BCE school held that love should be offered to everyone without regard to reciprocation.