9 September: Turquoise

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, have had a special awareness day every year since the tradition began back in 1999, on September 9. In 2020, in honour of this day, Murcia illuminated its night sky in turquoise. 10 things you might not know about the colour turquoise:

1. The colour gets its name from the gemstone turquoise. The word comes from the French for "Turkish", as the gem was originally imported from Turkey.
2. The stone is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral which has been highly prized for thousands of years. It's a hydrous phosphate of Copper and Aluminium, and its chemical formula is CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8·4H2O.
3. In ancient Egypt, the stone, and the colour, were associated with the goddess Hathor, because she was the patron deity of Serabit el-Khadim, where it was mined. Her titles included "Lady of Turquoise", "Mistress of Turquoise", and "Lady of Turquoise Country".
4. In the ancient Persian Empire, turquoise stones were worn round the neck or wrist to protect the wearer from unnatural death. If the stone changed colour, it was a sign of approaching doom.
5. In fact, the gemstone can change colour, due to exposure to light or chemical reactions with cosmetics.
6. The first recorded use of turquoise as a colour name in English was in 1573.
7. The turquoise ribbon is a symbol for promoting Native American reparations, Addiction Recovery, Bone Tumour Awareness, Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia and Cystitis and Renal Cell Carcinoma.
8. Talking of Native Americans, the stone was important to the Apache as a talisman. They used it to make amulets, beads, pendants, and fetishes, and believed that a shaman who didn't possess the stone wouldn't be recognised by the tribe. If you were a shaman in need of a turquoise stone, the place to look was at the end of Rainbow after a storm.
9. “The Turquoise” is a slang term for the waters of the Caribbean.
10. The turquoise is one of the stones in the Jewish High Priest's breastplate, described in Exodus chapter 28, and the colour is often associated with the domes and interiors of large mosques in Iran, Central Asia and Russia.

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