Purple Prose
Sunday
Purple is the color of royalty because of snails. Natural sources of purple dye are very rare, but a single drop can be squeezed from the Murex, a Mediterranean sea snail. This process was so labor- and snail-intensive that over a quarter million snails were needed to make an ounce of dye. Ancient Greek and Romans tightly controlled the trade of “Tyrian Purple” dye, which was so expensive that only royalty could afford it. The Byzantines even banned the use of the color outside of the imperial household.
Monday
Despite its regal history, purple is rare on modern national flags. Only the flags of Nicaragua and Dominica have any purple, and each just have a small amount.
Tuesday
Purple became common thanks to a young chemist’s chance discovery. At age 18, British chemist William Henry Perkin was attempting to synthesize the antimalarial drug quinine, but instead chanced upon a way to produce the purple shade mauve. It became the first commercialized synthetic dye and jumpstarted this industry.
Wednesday
Scientifically speaking, purple is a mental construct, or, to quote one article, a “pigment of our imagination.” Indigo, violet, red, and blue are each distinct colors with wavelengths on the visible light spectrum, but purple is not, and is really just your brain mixing these colors.
Thursday
Contrary to popular belief, there are several words which rhyme with purple, including “curple” (the rear of a horse or human) and “hirple” (to walk with a limp), though these terms are more common in Scotland.
Friday
Purple is one of the the original colors of carrots. While consumers in Europe and the Americas may be used to orange carrots, these have only been common for a few hundred years, while ancient varieties were purple, black and white. Some modern purple varieties have 20% less sugar than their orange counterparts.
Saturday
Distant mountains can appear purple or blue, and the patriotic song “America the Beautiful” refers to “purple mountain majesties.” This visual effect occurs for the same reason that the daytime sky appears blue, or sometimes purple shades. The gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere scatter the shorter-wavelength violet and blue parts of white sunlight more extensively, so our eyes detect these colors more readily, particularly with distant objects which reflected light has travelled farther from.