It’s National Color Day.
I’m a big fan of bold colors, like crimson red, kelly green, sky blue and jet black.
Today we’re focusing on the name of that last color, which, by the way, has nothing to do with jet planes.
The “jet” in “jet black” refers to a gem.
One that’s really, really black.
Jet is a form of coal, one that’s been used by humans for 5,000 or 10,000 years, maybe even longer.
The name is a version of a French word that is itself a version of a Latin word rooted in the ancient name of a town that’s in what is now Turkey.
Peak jet came in the mid-1800s.
Queen Victoria was on the throne in England, spending decades mourning her late husband and wearing lots of black.
And the jewelry that went best with all those black clothes was made out of jet.
Lots of people wanted to wear what the queen was wearing, so jet was the height of fashion for the rest of the Victorian Era.
Not long after, though, it fell out of fashion.
For one thing, it got so popular that people started making cheap knockoffs, which stole some of the gem’s luster.
Plus, jet had become associated with mourning, and after living through World War I people wanted to think about virtually anything else.
The only part of the jet era that hung around was actually one that first appeared in the 1400s: its use as an adjective for deep, deep shades of black.
Today in 1973, the birthday of Ichiro Suzuki, one of the great hitters of modern baseball history, and a guy who had one of those fascinatingly quirky baseball personalities.
During his major league career, reporters tried to learn more about the star, not always successfully.
One asked for the name of his pet dog, but Ichiro said no, because, “I do not have the dog’s permission.”
Maybe the dog wanted to stay out of the public eye?
A forgotten gemstone that reigned during the Victorian era comes back into focus (CNN)
Being Ichiro (New York Times)
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Photo by Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikicommons
