In a few Appalachian forests, some fireflies glow blue for up to a minute instead of flashing yellow.
100 Mind-Blowing Yellow Facts
Sunsets only exist because Earth’s atmosphere acts as a prism for light. In scientific terms, it’s called “scattering”. a) Molecules and particles in the atmosphere (which are more numerous at sunset) scatter short-wavelength violet and blue light away from your eyes, so we can see the other colours on the spectrum, like yellow and orange.
Red, blue and yellow are the only primary colours.
Bananas glow blue under black lights. To the everyday eye under normal conditions, ripe bananas appear yellow due to organic pigments called carotenoids. When bananas ripen, chlorophyll begins to break down. This pigment is the element that makes bananas glow, or fluoresce, under UV lights and appear blue.
Playing dance music helps ward off mosquitoes. According to a study in 2019, the song ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ contains both low and high frequencies that yellow fever mosquitoes dislike. Just dance the mosquitoes away.
The colours in fireworks depend on the different salts used and mixed with different metals. Lithium salts produce red fireworks. Iron produces yellow or gold colours. Magnesium forms white.
DUI offenders in Ohio are required to use yellow license plates. These special yellow plates were issued in 2004 to let officials know if a vehicle has had multiple DUI violations already. It also serves as a cone of shame for the owners of the vehicles to push them to be better drivers.
Originally, carrots were a purple colour. When carrots were cultivated in Afghanistan 1000 years ago, carrots were described as yellow or purple roots. Once carrots were exported into Southern Europe during the 14th century, they began to widely grow around the country.
Yellow and red stimulate hunger. Picture all the major fast-food joints in your country. What do McDonald’s, KFC, Popeyes, and Chick-fil-A have in common aside from being fast food giants? All of their logos and branding have elements of red and yellow. This is because red and yellow psychologically stimulate hunger.
Yellow is the most common highlighter colour. Yellow is a preferred highlighter shade because it doesn’t leave a shadow on the paper once photocopied.
Cheddar cheese is not orange. Originally, the colour of cheese changes with the seasons because of the cow’s diet. During the summer or spring, the beta-carotene in grass makes cows produce yellow cheese. On the other hand, fall and winter cause them to eat hay instead, producing whiter cheese. With that, farmers started dying the cheese since people preferred yellow ones.
Bananas glow blue under UV light. Bananas may be associated with yellow, but according to one study, the fruit glows an “intense” blue colour under black light (or UV lights). Scientists later found that the degradation of chlorophyll as the fruit ripens causes the blue glow.
There’s a McDonald’s with a turquoise arch. The McDonald’s in Sedona, Arizona, is the only joint in the world with turquoise arches instead of the yellow, golden ones. The restaurant used turquoise arches after government officials said the yellow-gold ones contrasted too much with the area’s red rocks.
Abraham Lincoln’s dog was also killed. Another one for unfortunate WTF facts: President Abraham Lincoln’s dog suffered the same fate as his owner. For 14 years, Abraham Lincoln had a yellow mongrel named Fido. A year after the president was assassinated, Fido was stabbed by a drunkard and later found dead.
Pencils are yellow because of Chinese royalty. In the 1800s, the best graphite in the world came from China. The Americans wanted to pay tribute to the Chinese for the graphite used in their pencils. Yellow means royalty and respect in China, which is why the Americans manufactured their pencils in yellow. To this day, the default colour for pencils is still yellow.
In Peru, it’s considered good luck to wear yellow underwear on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Goal posts are painted yellow in football.
The Tibetan plateau is Earth’s ‘third pole’. The Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the ‘third pole’ owing to the amount of freshwater it contains. With over 46,000 glaciers, the Tibetan Plateau holds the largest reserve of freshwater outside of the North and South Poles. These glaciers feed the rivers that run through the region, including the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, providing a vital source of water for millions of people in China and Southeast Asia. The Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers, along with other glaciers around the world, are under threat from climate change. Rising temperatures are causing the glaciers to melt at an unprecedented rate, which could have devastating consequences for the people and ecosystems that depend on them. New findings have found that values of ice lost from Himalayan glaciers from 2000 to 2020 were, on average, underestimated by 6.5%. This discovery has critical implications for predicting the demise of the region’s glaciers and for manageing critical water resources.
M&Ms were exclusively sold to the US military during World War II. When they were first produced in 1941, they came in cardboard tubes, and the colours were violet, green, yellow, orange, red, and brown. By the time the US entered WWII, M&Ms had grown big enough to score a contract exclusively producing the conveniently easy-to-transport chocolate for the military. Following the war, M&Ms were wildly popular, as they were the best part of the day for many soldiers in the trenches.
Strawberries can also be white or yellow, and some can even taste like pineapples!