into a status symbol. Only the royal family itself could wear all-purple garments. Lesser aristocrats wore togas with purple stripes or borders to designate their rank—the more purple on the clothing, the higher the status.
The original “royal purple” was a different color than what we call purple today. It was a dark wine-red, with more red than blue. Many written accounts liken the color to blood. Indeed, the Phoenician dye was prized because it symbolized the unity, strength, and bonding of blood ties, and the continuity of royal families based on bloodlines. The spiritual quality supposedlyimparted by the purple color is suggested by its Roman root, purpureus (“very, very holy”).
The association of purple with royalty crossed many cultures and centuries. Greek legend explained royal purple as the color of Athena’s goatskin dyed red. Kings in Babylonia wore a “lanbussu” robe of the same color. Mark’s Gospel says that Jesus’ robe was purple (although Matthew describes it as scarlet). In many churches, purple became the liturgical color during Lent, except for Good Friday. Consistently, in the succeeding centuries, the color purple was always identified with blood, as late as the time of Shakespeare, for the Bard himself referred to the “purpled hands” of Caesar’s assassins, “stained with the most noble blood of all the world.”
Curiously, marketing research indicates that today, purple is one of the least popular colors, which helps explain why it is so seldom used in packaging. Is the current aversion to purple stirred by a rejection of the patrician origins of the color, its close approximation to the color of blood, or a rejection of our contemporary purple royalty, Prince?
Submitted by Raymond Graunke of Huntersville, North Carolina. Thanks also to Sharon M. Burke of Los Altos, California; and Brian Dunne of Indianapolis, Indiana .
Was Ben Gay?
We don’t have the slightest idea. But we do know how the product got its name.
Ben-Gay was created by a French pharmacist, whose name was, conveniently enough, Dr. Ben Gué. He introduced his product in France in 1898, and called it Baume Gué (baume means “balm” en français ).
When the analgesic was launched in the United States, it was decided that the unwashed masses of North America couldn’t contend with a French word like baume or pronounceone of those nasty accent acutes . So marketers settled on naming their product after an Anglicization of its creator’s name.
Submitted by Linda Atwell of Matthews, North Carolina .
Why are haystacks increasingly round rather than rectangular?
Everything old is new again. Round stacks were the fashion in the early twentieth century, as Oakley M. Ray, president of the American Feed Industry Association, explains:
Fifty to one hundred years ago, it was the usual practice for the wheat farmer to “thresh” wheat (separate the grain from the straw). The threshing machine discharges the straw in one location for a given field so that the result was normally a round stack of straw.
Some years later, the hay baler was invented, which compressed either hay or straw into a much smaller space, much as a household trash compactor does in many houses today. The bales were commonly three feet or so in length, perhaps eighteen inches wide, and perhaps eighteen inches high. They were held together by two wires or two strong pieces of twine. Each bale would weigh fifty to one hundred pounds, with the baler set in such a manner that all of the bales in a given field were essentially the same size.
Obviously, the uniform, rectangular shape made it easier to stack rectangular bales neatly and efficiently, first lengthwise in the wagons used to pick up the stacks, and then later in boxlike fashion in warehouses or barns.
But in the last fifteen to twenty years, “swathers” have gained popularity. These machines feature a sickle in front that cuts the hay and a belt
The original “royal purple” was a different color than what we call purple today. It was a dark wine-red, with more red than blue. Many written accounts liken the color to blood. Indeed, the Phoenician dye was prized because it symbolized the unity, strength, and bonding of blood ties, and the continuity of royal families based on bloodlines. The spiritual quality supposedlyimparted by the purple color is suggested by its Roman root, purpureus (“very, very holy”).
The association of purple with royalty crossed many cultures and centuries. Greek legend explained royal purple as the color of Athena’s goatskin dyed red. Kings in Babylonia wore a “lanbussu” robe of the same color. Mark’s Gospel says that Jesus’ robe was purple (although Matthew describes it as scarlet). In many churches, purple became the liturgical color during Lent, except for Good Friday. Consistently, in the succeeding centuries, the color purple was always identified with blood, as late as the time of Shakespeare, for the Bard himself referred to the “purpled hands” of Caesar’s assassins, “stained with the most noble blood of all the world.”
Curiously, marketing research indicates that today, purple is one of the least popular colors, which helps explain why it is so seldom used in packaging. Is the current aversion to purple stirred by a rejection of the patrician origins of the color, its close approximation to the color of blood, or a rejection of our contemporary purple royalty, Prince?
Submitted by Raymond Graunke of Huntersville, North Carolina. Thanks also to Sharon M. Burke of Los Altos, California; and Brian Dunne of Indianapolis, Indiana .
Was Ben Gay?
We don’t have the slightest idea. But we do know how the product got its name.
Ben-Gay was created by a French pharmacist, whose name was, conveniently enough, Dr. Ben Gué. He introduced his product in France in 1898, and called it Baume Gué (baume means “balm” en français ).
When the analgesic was launched in the United States, it was decided that the unwashed masses of North America couldn’t contend with a French word like baume or pronounceone of those nasty accent acutes . So marketers settled on naming their product after an Anglicization of its creator’s name.
Submitted by Linda Atwell of Matthews, North Carolina .
Why are haystacks increasingly round rather than rectangular?
Everything old is new again. Round stacks were the fashion in the early twentieth century, as Oakley M. Ray, president of the American Feed Industry Association, explains:
Fifty to one hundred years ago, it was the usual practice for the wheat farmer to “thresh” wheat (separate the grain from the straw). The threshing machine discharges the straw in one location for a given field so that the result was normally a round stack of straw.
Some years later, the hay baler was invented, which compressed either hay or straw into a much smaller space, much as a household trash compactor does in many houses today. The bales were commonly three feet or so in length, perhaps eighteen inches wide, and perhaps eighteen inches high. They were held together by two wires or two strong pieces of twine. Each bale would weigh fifty to one hundred pounds, with the baler set in such a manner that all of the bales in a given field were essentially the same size.
Obviously, the uniform, rectangular shape made it easier to stack rectangular bales neatly and efficiently, first lengthwise in the wagons used to pick up the stacks, and then later in boxlike fashion in warehouses or barns.
But in the last fifteen to twenty years, “swathers” have gained popularity. These machines feature a sickle in front that cuts the hay and a belt
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