50 Fun Facts About Umbrellas

From which Latin word, meaning shadow, does umbrella derive?

Umbra is Latin for shade, and shade was the point: the word reached English from Italian around 1600 as the name of a sunshade, and only in rainy England did it come to mean protection against showers.

What does the word parasol literally shield you from?

The sun: Italian parasole means 'protection from the sun', and French later borrowed its first half to build parachute, 'protection from a fall'.

Which French phrase named a 19th-century parasol sturdy enough to double as an umbrella?

En-tout-cas means 'in any case': the parasol was built to cope whether the day brought sunshine or a shower.

Umbrellas were once called gamps in Britain after a character by which author?

Dickens gave Mrs Gamp, the tipsy nurse of Martin Chuzzlewit, a big, baggy umbrella she was never seen without, so readers took her name for the thing itself.

Biologists call the rounded body of which sea creature its umbrella?

Jellyfish squeeze that umbrella to push themselves through the sea, even though the animal is about 95 per cent water.

Which Seattle music and arts festival is named after a slang word for umbrella?

Bumbershoot is a playful American coinage that splices an altered 'umbrella' onto the '-chute' of parachute; the festival has taken over Seattle Center since 1971.

Which star danced through a downpour twirling an umbrella in the 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain?

Gene Kelly filmed the routine while running a high fever, and it took more than a day to shoot.

In Harry Potter, which character does secret magic with a pink umbrella after his wand is snapped?

Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts and banned from magic, and the books hint that the pieces of his broken wand are hidden inside the umbrella.

In which Studio Ghibli film does a girl lend a forest spirit her father's umbrella at a rainy bus stop?

My Neighbor Totoro: the giant spirit turns up with only a leaf on his head against the rain, and is delighted when Satsuki hands him the umbrella.

The Umbrella Academy comics were written by Gerard Way, the frontman of which rock band?

My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way created the comic with artist Gabriel Bá, and Netflix later turned it into a series that ran for four seasons.

Which artist duo opened 3,100 giant umbrellas across valleys in Japan and California in 1991?

Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose blue for the Japanese valley and yellow for the Californian one; the show ended in tragedy when the wind tore one loose and killed a visitor.

An oil-paper umbrella in a traditional Chinese wedding is what colour?

Red, the colour of good fortune at a Chinese wedding: by custom the bride is sheltered under the umbrella as she arrives, to keep evil spirits away.

The Royal Nine-Tiered Umbrella is part of which country's royal regalia?

Thailand lets a king sit beneath the nine tiers only once he is crowned: until the coronation rites are complete, a new king must make do with seven.

Which brand's logo, the 'Umbrella Girl', has walked through the rain on American grocery shelves since 1914?

Morton Salt drew her spilling salt in a downpour to show that its salt still poured in damp weather, the point of the slogan 'When it rains it pours'.

The papal umbrella replaces the tiara on the Holy See's coat of arms during which period?

While there is no pope, the umbrella sits above the crossed keys in place of the tiara, a sign that a caretaker cardinal, the camerlengo, is minding the Holy See.

Paris merchant Jean Marius launched Europe's first folding umbrella in the early 1700s, under which French king?

Louis XIV was nearing the end of his long reign when Marius's lightweight folding model went on sale, and within a few years it was a fashion accessory in Parisian high society.

Which US insurance company's logo is a red umbrella, which it bought back from Citigroup in 2007?

Travelers lost its own trademark in a merger: when Citigroup spun the insurer off again in 2002 the bank kept the umbrella for itself, and only sold it back five years later.

Which fictional castaway builds his own umbrella covered with skins?

Robinson Crusoe copies umbrellas he had seen in Brazil, and the novel was so widely read that a big, heavy umbrella became known as a 'robinson' in both English and French.

Who is credited as the first man to habitually carry an umbrella in London, braving ridicule?

Jonas Hanway, it is said, was hooted and hustled by London's hackney coachmen for carrying one, and outlasted them all; the same man waged a public campaign against tea drinking.

Before Samuel Fox's steel ribs of the 1850s, umbrella frames were made of wood or which animal material?

Whalebone, the springy baleen from a whale's mouth, left its mark: the French still call an umbrella's ribs 'baleines', whales.

Which sitcom made a yellow umbrella the symbol of a woman whose face stayed hidden for eight seasons?

How I Met Your Mother has Ted carry the umbrella home from a club after a party his future wife also went to, and seasons pass before she gets it back.

Which overheating space station was cooled in 1973 when astronauts pushed a parasol out through an airlock?

Skylab lost its protective shield during launch and began to bake, so the astronauts fed a folded parasol through a small airlock and opened it over the hull.

Which Nintendo princess sets out to rescue Mario with a talking parasol named Perry?

Peach turns the usual rescue around in Super Princess Peach: Bowser has kidnapped Mario and Luigi, and she fights her way to them by hitting enemies with Perry or having him swallow them.

Why do portrait photographers fire a flash into an umbrella?

To soften and spread the light: bounced off the umbrella's white or silver lining, a small, harsh flash becomes one broad, gentle glow, which is why it is a staple of portrait lighting.

Which German company's name became a synonym for small folding umbrellas?

Knirps is German for a little lad, a name picked for the umbrella's small size; Hans Haupt devised the telescoping design, and Germans now call any pocket umbrella a Knirps.

Which Ohio company's owner patented the working folding umbrella in 1969?

Bradford E. Phillips ran the firm in Loveland, Ohio.

The Senz storm umbrella rides out 100 km/h winds thanks to which unusual feature?

A lopsided, asymmetric canopy lets the wind glide over the umbrella rather than catch underneath it, so it does not flip inside out the way an ordinary one does.

Which Bulgarian dissident was killed in London in 1978 by a poison pellet thought to have been fired from an umbrella?

Georgi Markov felt a sting in his thigh at a bus stop by Waterloo Bridge and turned to see a man picking up an umbrella; he died four days later, and doctors found a tiny metal pellet in his leg.

Critics of which British prime minister brandished open umbrellas at him?

Neville Chamberlain was so rarely seen without his black umbrella that, after his deal with Hitler, cartoonists and hecklers turned it into a symbol of appeasement.

A bystander dubbed the 'Umbrella Man' opened an umbrella on a sunny day as which US president was shot?

John F. Kennedy's 'Umbrella Man' fed conspiracy theories for years, until Louie Steven Witt came forward in 1978 and told Congress the umbrella was a heckle, not a signal to gunmen.

Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella Movement was named for umbrellas raised against what?

Police pepper spray, and then tear gas, backfired: the outcry brought tens of thousands more people onto the streets, and their camps blocked main roads for more than two months.

In Disney's Mary Poppins, the handle of the nanny's umbrella is shaped like the head of which bird?

A parrot, and a talking one: its voice came from David Tomlinson, the same actor who plays the children's stern father, Mr Banks.

Which Batman villain wields umbrellas fitted with machine guns and flamethrowers?

The Penguin has carried one since boyhood: in several tellings his overprotective mother insisted on it after his father was soaked in the rain and died of pneumonia.

Who wrote Rihanna's Umbrella alongside The-Dream, and guests on the track?

Jay-Z was more than a guest: as president of Def Jam he was the boss of Rihanna's record label and the mentor who had helped launch her career.

Rihanna's Umbrella topped which country's chart for ten weeks in its flood-hit summer of 2007?

The UK. Its ten weeks at number one ran through a summer of repeated floods, and one tabloid jokingly blamed the song and urged readers to stop buying it.

For which singer was Umbrella originally written?

Britney Spears never even heard the demo: her label turned it down, saying she already had enough songs for her next album.

Which French star became internationally known as the heroine of the all-sung 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg?

Catherine Deneuve never sings a note of it herself: like most of the cast she was dubbed, her songs supplied by the singer Danielle Licari.

Which top prize did the French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg win in 1964?

Palme d'Or is today's name for it: in 1964 Cannes was calling its top prize the Grand Prix, and the jury gave it to a musical in which every line of dialogue is sung.

Which Impressionist painted The Umbrellas, a crowded street scene that galleries in London and Dublin take turns to show?

Renoir's canvas belonged to Sir Hugh Lane, who went down with the Lusitania in 1915 leaving an unwitnessed note that switched his bequest from London to Dublin, so the two cities ended up sharing it.

In which language is an umbrella a 'paraguas', literally a 'stop-waters'?

Spanish builds the word from parar, to stop, and aguas, waters, and makes its parachute the same way: a paracaídas is a 'stop-falls'.

Cocktail umbrellas are a signature garnish of which style of bar, born in 1930s Hollywood at Don the Beachcomber?

Tiki bars began when Don's Beachcomber opened as Prohibition ended; an Oakland restaurateur, Victor Bergeron, came to eat, bought some of Don's wares and went home to remake his own place as its great rival, Trader Vic's.

The Umbrella Corporation is the sinister drug company behind the outbreaks in which video game series?

Resident Evil casts Umbrella as a respectable pharmaceutical giant that secretly breeds viruses as weapons, and its creations turn the people of Raccoon City into zombies.

Architect Frei Otto built giant stage umbrellas for which British rock band's American tour?

Pink Floyd played beneath Otto's canopies, which rose out of the stage and opened over the band like huge umbrellas; he had been turning the hand-held umbrella into lightweight architecture since the 1950s.

Which painter caught his wife Camille and their son on a windy hilltop in Woman with a Parasol?

Claude Monet returned to the pose in 1886 and painted it twice more, this time with Suzanne Hoschedé, the daughter of his future second wife, holding the parasol.

Which painter filled A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with parasols, using tiny dots of colour?

Georges Seurat invented the dot technique, pointillism, for pictures like this one; it now hangs in Chicago, where Cameron loses himself staring into it in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

John Steed, the bowler-hatted spy with a sword hidden in his umbrella, was the hero of which 1960s British TV series?

The Avengers gave Steed a swordstick umbrella and a steel-lined bowler but almost never a gun, at the insistence of its star, Patrick Macnee, who had seen friends killed in the war.

Chhatris, domed pavilions whose name means 'umbrella', sit around the main dome of which famous monument?

The Taj Mahal sets its chhatris on the roof, but Rajput kings also built them to stand alone as memorials to their dead, often on the royal cremation ground.

The umbrellabird of the Central and South American rainforest is named for which feature?

Its head crest: the tuft of feathers the bird raises on top of its head looks vaguely like an open umbrella, while a wattle dangling from the throat amplifies its deep, booming call.

In conservation, protecting an 'umbrella species' is meant to do what?

Shelter the other wildlife sharing its habitat: an animal like the northern spotted owl needs so much protected forest that the molluscs and salamanders living there are covered too.

Alongside the royal umbrella, Burma's kings prized which rare animal so highly that they named it in their title?

The white elephant was read as a sign of a rightful ruler, so Burmese kings styled themselves 'lord of white elephants'; an old story of kings ruining courtiers with the gift of one gave English its phrase for a costly burden.