50 Fun Facts About Umbrellas

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

Parasol combines parare and sol, sun; parapluie shields from rain and paraneige from snow.

What does the word parasol literally shield you from?

A parapluie shields from rain and a paraneige from snow.

What is the French term for a combined parasol and parapluie?

It means in any case.

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

Mrs Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit was known for carrying one.

Brolly is a slang word for umbrella used in Britain, Ireland and which other countries?

A rarer, fanciful American term for it dates from the late 19th century.

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

It takes place at Seattle Center every Labor Day weekend.

On whose victory stele, around 2310 BC, does the oldest known umbrella appear?

Later Assyrian sculptures at Nineveh show umbrellas frequently.

The earliest Egyptian umbrellas in art date to which dynasty, around 2450 BC?

In temple paintings a parasol is held over a god carried in procession.

What was a parasol called in Classical Greece?

It was indispensable to a lady of fashion in the late 5th century BC.

At the Panathenaea, whose daughters carried parasols over Athenian women as a mark of inferiority?

The service was called sciadephoria.

Which Chinese city alone had more than a thousand umbrella factories?

Modern production has largely moved to China and other Asian countries.

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

The matron of honour covers the bride with it to ward off evil spirits.

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

Umbrellas signalled rank across East and Southeast Asia.

Which pope bestowed a jewelled parasol on Pepin the Short in the 8th century?

It is the earliest known written evidence of the parasol in medieval Europe.

What is the umbrella of the papal regalia called in Italian?

In Latin it is the umbraculum, and it appears on the arms of a sede vacante.

Which Paris merchant introduced Europe's first lightweight folding umbrella in 1710?

The King granted him a five-year monopoly on folding umbrellas.

Which town became the umbrella capital of France by the end of the 18th century?

Cheaper Auvergne makers replaced Paris as the industry's centre.

Which fictional castaway builds his own umbrella covered with skins?

He copies ones he had seen in Brazil.

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

He founded the Magdalen Hospital and carried one for thirty years before his death in 1786.

Which industrialist is credited with the steel-ribbed umbrella of 1852?

He also founded a steelworks at Stocksbridge in a former cotton mill.

What was the name of the U-section steel umbrella frame developed in Stocksbridge in 1851?

Its inventor also founded the town's steelworks in a former cotton mill.

In what year was London umbrella shop James Smith & Sons founded?

Its New Oxford Street premises is Grade II* listed.

Which US city was long the country's umbrella capital, with seven makers in 1920?

The Beehler Umbrella Factory of 1828 was the first American umbrella company.

Whose pocket umbrellas appeared in 1928?

The same year, Vienna sculpture student Slawa Horowitz developed a compact folder she patented in 1929.

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

The word means little chap or nipper.

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

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

A Delft student's 2005 storm umbrella, sold as Senz, resembles what?

It withstands wind force 10, up to 100 km/h.

Which Bulgarian dissident was killed in London in 1978 by ricin from a modified umbrella?

He felt a jab in his thigh; a micro-engineered pellet was later found.

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

His furled umbrella became a symbol of appeasement.

The Umbrella Man in the JFK assassination films was later identified as whom?

He told a 1978 congressional committee he was protesting Joseph Kennedy's support of Chamberlain.

What did protesters in the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement use umbrellas to block?

The name Umbrella Revolution followed the September protests.

How does Mary Poppins leave the Banks home in Cherry Tree Lane?

In the film her umbrella has a talking parrot-head handle voiced by David Tomlinson.

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

Oswald Cobblepot first appeared in Detective Comics #58 in December 1941.

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

Producers Tricky Stewart and Kuk Harrell also received songwriting credits.

For how many consecutive weeks did Umbrella top the UK Singles Chart in 2007?

That was the longest number-one run of the decade in Britain.

For which singer was Umbrella originally written?

Producer Tricky Stewart had worked with her on Me Against the Music.

Who directed the 1964 sung-through musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg?

Catherine Deneuve stars; Michel Legrand wrote the music.

What prize did The Umbrellas of Cherbourg win, the only French New Wave film to do so?

Every line of dialogue in the film is sung as recitative.

Renoir's painting The Umbrellas alternates between London's National Gallery and a gallery in which city?

It is part of the Lane Bequest and hung in Dublin from 2013 to 2019.

A cocktail umbrella is traditionally made from paper, paperboard and what?

Under the collar sits a sleeve of folded recycled newspaper.

Which Hollywood restaurateur is a possible source of the cocktail umbrella?

He sold merchandise including the umbrellas to Victor Bergeron of Trader Vic's.

In the Resident Evil games, what did the Umbrella Corporation's founders discover in 1968?

Spencer, Ashford and Marcus built the Arklay laboratory beneath a mansion.

Which architect turned the umbrella into lightweight architecture in the 1950s?

Le Corbusier's Villa Shodhan also uses a parasol as its roof structure.

Roughly when did the parasol and parapluie reach France and England, probably from China?

John Evelyn described Chinese fans with long handles in his diary for June 1664.

The oil-paper umbrella spread among ordinary Chinese people after which dynasty?

A late Song divination book of about 1270 shows a collapsible umbrella like today's.

Which peoples brought the umbrella to the Ashanti, according to Zeinab Badawi?

Osei Kofi Tutu I received one as a gift after defeating the other Akan kingdoms.

In Chinese tradition the umbrella was invented by the wife of which legendary craftsman?

The Rites of Zhou, some 2,400 years old, already describes an imperial carriage canopy with 28 arcs, the equivalent of modern ribs.

The Book of Han records a collapsible umbrella made in AD 21 for the ceremonial carriage of which ruler?

A first-century collapsible umbrella has since been excavated from a tomb at Lelang Commandery on the Korean Peninsula.

In the Aztec capital, a feather-and-gold umbrella served as the pantli, which was the equivalent of what?

The pantli was an identifying marker carried by the army general.

A 19th-century King of Burma styled himself lord of how many umbrellas in a letter to the Marquis of Dalhousie?

The 1855 letter also called him 'King of the white elephant'; in Siam only the king could carry a multi-tiered umbrella.