59 Fun Facts About Rainbow

A rainbow caused by sunlight always appears in which part of the sky?

Directly opposite the Sun: the arc is centred on the point where the shadow of your own head falls, so you only ever see one with the Sun at your back.

In a primary rainbow, which colour is on the outer edge of the arc?

Red light leaves the raindrop at the widest angle, so it forms the outside of the bow.

From flat ground, no rainbow can appear when the Sun is where?

High overhead: once the Sun climbs more than about 42° above the horizon the whole arc drops out of sight, which is why early morning and late afternoon are the best times to spot a rainbow.

Which three things happen to sunlight inside a raindrop to make a rainbow?

Refraction, internal reflection and dispersion: light bends as it enters the drop, bounces off the back and bends again on leaving, and because each colour bends by a different amount the white light fans out.

What happens to a rainbow when someone walks towards it?

It moves away: the bow is made by whichever drops sit at the right angle from the viewer's eye, so it shifts with every step, and no two people see quite the same one.

From where can a rainbow sometimes be seen as a complete circle?

An aeroplane: every rainbow is really a full circle, and the ground simply hides the lower half from anyone standing on it.

How does a double rainbow's outer bow differ from the inner one?

Its colours are reversed: the outer bow is an inside-out copy of the main one, brightening the sky beyond it instead of within, which leaves a darker strip between the two.

What is the name for the strip of darker sky between a primary and a secondary rainbow?

Alexander's band is dark because raindrops there send their light either inside the main bow or outside the second one, never toward your eye. Alexander of Aphrodisias described it around AD 200.

Why is a double rainbow's outer bow always fainter?

Its light bounces twice inside each drop, leaking a little more each time, and what survives is spread across a wider arc of sky than the main bow's.

Which colour did Isaac Newton add to his list of rainbow colours to bring the total to seven?

Indigo sits so close to blue that scientists have doubted the eye can tell the two apart, and Isaac Asimov argued it was merely a deep blue, not a colour in its own right.

Newton settled on seven rainbow colours by analogy with what?

The notes of a musical scale: Newton suspected colours were proportioned like musical tones, and the unequal slices of his colour circle follow the intervals of a scale.

Which name do American schoolchildren use to remember the order of a rainbow's colours?

Roy G. Biv: British pupils learn the same initials as 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain', a line said to recall a Yorkist defeat in the Wars of the Roses.

What name is given to a rainbow that appears at night?

A moonbow usually looks white to the naked eye, because its light is too faint to trigger our colour vision, yet long-exposure photographs bring the colours out.

Which waterfall is famous for night-time rainbows in its spray?

Victoria Falls throws up so much spray that on clear nights around full moon the mist catches enough light to form a pale arc.

Why does a fog bow look almost white?

Its water droplets are too small: far finer than raindrops, they smear the light by diffraction, so the colours overlap and blur into a broad, ghostly white arc.

Sun dogs, the bright spots that flank the Sun, are caused by light passing through what?

Hexagonal ice crystals drifting with their flat faces level act as tiny prisms, bending sunlight by at least 22 degrees, which is why the spots sit that far either side of the Sun.

Why would a rainbow on Titan be larger than one on Earth?

Its rain is liquid methane, not water: methane bends light less, so a bow on Saturn's largest moon would be several degrees wider, and in Titan's haze it might show up best in infrared.

What hid third-order rainbows from cameras until 2011?

The Sun's glare: the third bow rings the Sun itself, and it is far fainter and broader than the first two, which is why sightings had been so rare.

Which classical Greek scholar was the first to devote serious attention to explaining the rainbow?

His qualitative account was flawed but went unmatched for centuries; much later rainbow theory was a reaction to it.

Which medieval English friar measured the greatest height a rainbow can reach in the sky?

Roger Bacon made the rainbow his showcase for 'experimental science' in the Opus Majus, fixing its greatest height with a measurement probably taken by astrolabe.

Which Muppet sings 'Rainbow Connection' at the start of The Muppet Movie?

Kermit the Frog strums it on a banjo in his swamp; the song became a real Top 40 hit and an Oscar nominee, though it lost to 'It Goes Like It Goes' from Norma Rae.

Which Frenchman explained the rainbow in 1637 after experiments with a large water-filled glass sphere?

René Descartes tucked it into an essay published with his Discourse on Method, using the sphere as one giant raindrop because he had noticed that drop size made no difference to the bow.

In Greek mythology, which goddess personifies the rainbow and serves as messenger to the Olympians?

Iris is also the Greek word for rainbow, and it went on to name the coloured part of the eye, the iris flower and 'iridescent', which literally means rainbow-coloured.

In Norse mythology, the burning rainbow bridge Bifrost connects Midgard to which realm?

Asgard, home of the gods: the red in the bridge is said to be burning fire, there to stop the frost giants from simply walking up into heaven.

Which Norse god lives at Himinbjörg and guards Bifrost from the giants?

Heimdall needs less sleep than a bird and can hear grass growing, and at the onset of Ragnarök, when the bridge is fated to break, he sounds his horn to warn the gods.

The Rainbow Serpent, a creator deity linked to water, comes from the mythology of which people?

Aboriginal Australians: in many of their traditions the serpent lives in deep, permanent waterholes, and a rainbow in the sky is the serpent travelling from one waterhole to the next.

In the Book of Genesis, the rainbow is set as a token of God's promise after which event?

The great flood: in Genesis the bow is a reminder for God himself, who tells Noah, 'I will look upon it, that I may remember' never again to let the waters destroy all life.

Which rock group let fans pay whatever they liked, even nothing, to download its 2007 album In Rainbows?

Radiohead's contract with EMI had ended, so the group sold In Rainbows straight from its own website, a landmark move for a major act that made headlines around the world.

Which two-headed creature represents the rainbow in Chinese mythology?

A dragon called Hong: the oldest Chinese character for 'rainbow', carved on Shang oracle bones, shows an arched dragon or serpent with a head at each end.

In Irish folklore, which creature is said to keep a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

The leprechaun of older folklore is a solitary fairy shoemaker who, W. B. Yeats wrote, grew rich on treasure buried in old wars, and he was generally dressed in red, not green.

Which artist is credited with designing the rainbow pride flag, first flown in San Francisco in June 1978?

Gilbert Baker marked the flag's 25th birthday by making one that stretched across Key West from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, then sent pieces of it to more than 100 cities.

What does the green stripe of the rainbow pride flag stand for?

Nature: each stripe was given a meaning, and the flag itself was made to replace the triangle badge the Nazis had forced on gay prisoners with a symbol the community had created for itself.

Which colour was dropped from the pride flag first because its fabric was hard to obtain?

Hot pink went first because no flag fabric came in that colour; turquoise followed so the remaining six stripes could be split evenly down both sides of Market Street's lamp posts.

Which archbishop coined the term 'rainbow nation' for post-apartheid South Africa?

Desmond Tutu first called a multiracial protest crowd 'the rainbow people of God' in 1989, and Nelson Mandela took the image up at his 1994 inauguration, promising 'a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world'.

Which country's intelligence service bombed Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985?

France: its agents sank the ship before it could lead a protest flotilla to the nuclear test site at Mururoa, photographer Fernando Pereira drowned, and the scandal cost the French defence minister his job.

Rainbow Row, a run of pastel-painted historic houses, is a landmark of which US city?

Charleston, South Carolina: the row was run-down until Dorothy Legge and her husband bought a house there in 1931 and painted it pastel pink, and neighbouring owners followed their lead.

Rainbow Bridge National Monument, one of the world's largest natural arches, is in which US state?

Utah: tucked among canyons at the foot of Navajo Mountain, the bridge took early visitors such as Theodore Roosevelt an arduous pack trip to reach, until the rising waters of Lake Powell let boats get close.

What destroyed the Niagara Falls bridge that collapsed in 1938 and was replaced by the Rainbow Bridge?

An ice jam in the gorge: in January 1938 a windstorm on Lake Erie sent ice over the falls, it piled up against the old Honeymoon Bridge's supports, and crowds gathered to watch the span fall.

Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge links Shibaura Pier with which waterfront district?

Odaiba takes its name from the 'daiba', cannon forts built on small man-made islands in the bay in the 1850s to keep Commodore Perry's warships away from the city.

In the 'Rainbow Bridge' prose poem, who waits to rejoin loved ones?

Departed pets: Edna Clyne wrote it in Scotland in 1959, aged nineteen, the day after her Labrador Major died, and unsigned copies spread for decades before she was identified as its author in 2023.

Why did MGM bosses nearly cut 'Over the Rainbow' from The Wizard of Oz?

It slowed the film down, MGM's producers felt, and they ordered it out; associate producer Arthur Freed talked the studio into restoring it, and it went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Which composer of 'Stormy Weather' also wrote the music for 'Over the Rainbow'?

Harold Arlen jotted the melody down in a parked car outside Schwab's Drug Store on Sunset Boulevard, after asking his wife to pull over on their way to a film; Yip Harburg then wrote the words.

The hard rock band Rainbow was formed in 1975 by which guitarist after he left Deep Purple?

Ritchie Blackmore filled the first line-up with four members of Elf, an American band that had opened for Deep Purple, then replaced all of them except singer Ronnie James Dio after one album.

Who hosted the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow from 1983 to 2006?

LeVar Burton licensed the brand after the show ended, and when he asked fans to help revive it in 2014 his Kickstarter campaign hit its $1 million goal in under twelve hours.

Zippy, George and Bungle starred in Rainbow, a long-running children's show on which country's TV?

United Kingdom: Thames Television conceived it as a home-grown equivalent of Sesame Street, and it ran for twenty years until Thames lost its ITV franchise.

Rainbow Brite, the 1984 cartoon and doll franchise, was created by which company from outside the toy business?

Hallmark Cards licensed the dolls to Mattel and moved fast: a television special aired in June 1984, and a cinema film, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, followed from Warner Bros. in 1985.

Rainbow Road is a notoriously difficult track that usually closes out which video game series?

Mario Kart saves Rainbow Road for the last race of its Special Cup, and with few or no railings the real opponent is the drop; Nintendo's F-Zero X even borrowed the Mario Kart 64 version as one of its own tracks.

Which candy's advertising slogan is 'Taste the Rainbow'?

Skittles were an import at first, made by a company in England, and only began to be manufactured in the United States in 1982.

What is a rainbow trout called when it migrates to the ocean and returns to rivers to spawn?

A steelhead: the sea-run fish are the same species, and rainbow trout released around the world for anglers sit on a list of the world's 100 worst invasive species.

Vinicunca, Peru's 'Rainbow Mountain', gets its coloured stripes from what?

Its mineral composition: iron-rich claystone gives the reds, sandstone laced with sulphur minerals the mustard yellows and clays rich in iron and magnesium the greens.

Most eucalypts are Australian, but the rainbow eucalyptus grows wild in which region?

The Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea: it is the only eucalyptus that normally lives in rainforest, and the only one whose natural range crosses into the Northern Hemisphere.

In which city did Fred Hampton's Black Panthers form the original 1969 Rainbow Coalition with the Young Lords?

Chicago: the alliance also took in the Young Patriots, poor white Southern migrants who used a Confederate flag as their emblem, years before Jesse Jackson borrowed the coalition's name.

What are the faint pastel fringes sometimes seen just inside a bright primary rainbow called?

Supernumerary bows appear where light waves leaving the drops fall in step and reinforce one another, with gaps where they cancel, an effect that treating light as simple rays cannot explain.

What is thought to cause a rare twinned rainbow, whose arcs split from a single base?

Raindrops of two different sizes: the air squashes big drops flatter than small ones as they fall, so each size bends the light into its own, slightly different bow.

A reflection rainbow forms when sunlight first bounces off what?

Calm water: sunlight glancing off a large, still lake or sea lights the rain from below, making a second bow that arcs higher than the first and meets it at the horizon.

Why is a rainbow at sunrise or sunset sometimes entirely red?

Shorter wavelengths have been scattered away: low sunlight crosses so much air that its blues and greens are lost on the way, which is also why the setting Sun itself looks red.

Which Roman philosopher's Naturales Quaestiones, around AD 65, noted rainbows in spray from oars and burst pipes?

Seneca the Younger, tutor to the emperor Nero, also described the rainbow colours thrown by a ribbed glass rod held across sunlight, some sixteen centuries before Newton's prism.

Which author's 1998 thriller Rainbow Six gave its name to a long-running series of tactical shooter games?

Tom Clancy's title is a call sign: Rainbow is the secret multinational counter-terrorist unit in the book, and 'Rainbow Six' the code name of its commander, John Clark.

Which rock group's 1973 album cover shows a prism turning a beam of white light into a rainbow?

Pink Floyd's keyboardist Richard Wright had asked for something simple and bold; shown several designs for The Dark Side of the Moon, the four members chose the prism at once, without an argument.