50 Fun Facts About Purple

In the RGB colour model, purple is made by mixing which two colours of light?

Unlike violet, purple has no single wavelength of its own, which is why it is called a non-spectral colour.

Which colour sits at the short-wavelength end of the visible spectrum, just before ultraviolet?

Purple, by contrast, is a mixture and never appears in a rainbow.

Who divided the visible spectrum into seven named colours in 1704?

He is said to have picked seven to match the notes of the musical scale.

Tyrian purple, the dye of emperors, was extracted from what?

Predatory rock snails of the Muricidae family secrete it; the smell of the dye works was notorious.

Tyrian purple takes its name from a city in which ancient civilisation?

It has even been suggested that the name Phoenicia itself means land of purple.

Roughly how many murex molluscs were needed to yield 1.4 grams of pure Tyrian dye?

That was enough to colour only the trim of one garment.

Unusually for an ancient dye, what happened to Tyrian purple when exposed to sunlight and weather?

That colour-fastness was a big part of why it was so prized.

By the fourth century AD, who was the only person in Rome permitted to wear Tyrian purple?

Sumptuary laws had tightened steadily; breaking them was treason.

What is the coloured compound in Tyrian purple?

It is a close chemical cousin of indigo, with two bromine atoms attached.

Production of Tyrian purple as a fabric dye ended in which year, with the fall of a city?

The Ottoman capture of Constantinople ended the Byzantine industry, and scarlet became Europe's royal colour instead.

The Byzantine title porphyrogennetos, 'purple-born', went to a ruler's child who was born when?

Empresses gave birth in a chamber of the Great Palace lined with purple porphyry stone.

Roman senators and senior magistrates were entitled to wear what purple detail on their togas?

Under the empire, wearing full purple without permission could be punished as treason.

Which Frankish ruler was crowned in 800 wearing Tyrian purple and buried in a shroud of the same colour?

He died in 814 at Aachen.

In 1464 Pope Paul II decreed cardinals should swap Tyrian purple for which colour?

The dye's supply had collapsed after Constantinople fell, and scarlet from kermes insects took its place.

Which culture developed the first synthetic purple pigment, around 700 BC?

Han purple, a barium copper silicate, was used on the Terracotta Army.

What was 18-year-old William Perkin trying to make in 1856 when he accidentally created the dye mauveine?

His professor had challenged him to synthesise the malaria drug; instead he founded the synthetic dye industry.

The name mauve comes from the French word for which flower?

The dye was originally sold as aniline purple before the name was adopted in 1859.

Which monarch made mauve fashionable with a mauveine-dyed silk gown at the 1862 Royal Exhibition?

The colour became so common that Punch magazine joked about an outbreak of mauve measles.

Who established the Badge of Military Merit, forerunner of the Purple Heart, in 1782?

He ordered it from his headquarters at Newburgh, New York; the award lapsed after the Revolution.

The Purple Heart was revived in 1932 to mark what?

It is now the oldest US military award still given.

For what is the Purple Heart awarded?

About 1.5 million were manufactured in World War II, many in anticipation of an invasion of Japan that never came.

Purple, green and white were the colours of which early-20th-century movement?

Purple stood for dignity, white for purity and green for hope.

In Nazi concentration camps, prisoners made to wear a purple triangle belonged to which group?

Other groups were marked with red, black, pink and other coloured triangles.

Prince's Purple Rain spent how many consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200?

It also won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score and has sold more than 25 million copies.

Which Purple Rain track's lyrics helped prompt Tipper Gore to campaign for Parental Advisory stickers?

The PMRC's 'Filthy Fifteen' list put it at number one.

Which Prince single from Purple Rain was his first Billboard Hot 100 number one?

It stayed on top for five weeks in the summer of 1984.

Jimi Hendrix said the title of Purple Haze came from what?

The 1967 single reached number three in the UK; in concert he sometimes joked about kissing 'this guy'.

What was sprayed on anti-apartheid protesters in Cape Town on 2 September 1989?

A protester turned the cannon on National Party headquarters, and graffiti soon declared 'The purple shall govern'.

Amethyst is a purple-hued variety of which mineral?

Iron impurities and natural irradiation give it the colour.

The name amethyst comes from Greek words meaning what?

The ancients believed the stone protected its wearer from drunkenness, and drank from amethyst cups.

Amethyst is the birthstone for which month?

It was ranked among the cardinal gems with diamond and ruby until huge Brazilian deposits crashed its price.

Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple won which award in 1983, making her the first Black woman to do so?

The 1985 Spielberg film adaptation was nominated for eleven Oscars and won none.

Who plays Celie in the 1985 film of The Color Purple?

It was her first major film role; Oprah Winfrey played Sofia.

The term 'purple prose' traces back to which Roman poet's Ars Poetica?

He mocked writers who tacked on gleaming 'purple patches' that did not fit the rest of the work.

The Chinese name of Beijing's imperial palace, Zijincheng, literally means what?

The 'purple' refers to the North Star, believed to be the home of the Jade Emperor, not to the palace's colour.

Cadbury adopted purple as its company colour in 1905 to honour whom?

It later trademarked the shade for chocolate, prompting a long legal fight with Nestlé.

Before Dutch growers popularised the orange carrot, carrots in the 10th century were mostly which colour?

Purple carrots get their colour from anthocyanins, the same pigments found in grapes and eggplants.

What natural pigments make grapes, eggplants and pansies appear purple?

They also help plants by blocking harmful wavelengths of light.

Barney, the purple star of PBS's Barney & Friends, is what kind of dinosaur?

He first appeared in the 1988 home-video series Barney & the Backyard Gang.

When McDonald's Grimace debuted in 1971, what was the 'Evil Grimace' known for stealing?

The original had four arms; he was softened into the friendly purple blob soon after.

Who created the purple Marvel villain Thanos, who first appeared in Iron Man #55 in 1973?

Josh Brolin took over the role in the films from Guardians of the Galaxy onward.

Sheb Wooley's 1958 novelty hit about a purple creature spent how many weeks at number one?

It later gave the Minnesota Vikings' defensive line its nickname.

The Purple People Eaters were the celebrated defensive line of which NFL team?

Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen played under the motto 'Meet at the quarterback'.

In US politics, a place described as 'purple' is what?

Red for Republicans and blue for Democrats only became fixed in the media after the drawn-out 2000 election.

In the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, purple-hued vestments are worn during which two seasons?

Rose replaces it on Gaudete and Laetare Sundays as a small break in the penitence.

Imperial porphyry, the purple stone used for Roman emperors' sarcophagi, was quarried in which country?

The single quarry at Mons Porphyrites in the Eastern Desert supplied every red porphyry column in Rome.

The Lavender Scare of the 1950s was a US government campaign against whom?

It ran alongside McCarthyism and cost thousands of federal employees their jobs.

Gelett Burgess's nonsense poem Purple Cow first appeared in 1895 in which magazine?

He grew so tired of its fame that he published a follow-up poem two years later regretting he ever wrote it.

A gram of Tyrian purple made by the original method cost roughly how much in the year 2000?

Ten thousand molluscs went into it.

Cobalt violet, the first modern synthetic purple pigment, was manufactured in which year?

It turned up in the palettes of Monet, Signac and Seurat but was expensive with weak tinting power, so manganese violet soon replaced it.