February 10th: Umbrella Day

To celebrate Umbrella Day here are 10 things you may not know about brollies:

1. The word umbrella derives from the Latin word, umbra, meaning shadow, and the French suffix -ella, meaning little, so the literal meaning is "little shadow".

2. Other words for umbrella include: brolly or umbrolly (UK slang), gamp (archaic UK slang derived from the character of Mrs Gamp in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, who was known for always carrying an umbrella), and bumbershoot (US slang). The cricket ground at Edgbaston, Birmingham, used to be protected by a large rainproof cover, which was nicknamed the "Brumbrella" from "Brum", a nickname for Birmingham, and it's function as a rain cover.

3. Umbrellas, and their fine weather counterparts, parasols, appear in ancient Persian and Chinese art. Sculptures found in Nineveh (in present day Iraq) depict a king with a parasol held over his head by a servant. In that time, no-one other than the king was allowed to use a parasol or umbrella. In Burma, too, umbrellas were a status symbol and the kings and princes there would give themselves titles, such as "King of the White Elephant and Lord of the twenty-four Umbrellas" or "His great, glorious, and most excellent Majesty, who reigns over the kingdoms of Thunaparanta, Tampadipa, and all the great umbrella-wearing chiefs of the Eastern countries." The servant who held the king's umbrella for him was usually a very high ranking one.

4. The first reference to an umbrella that can be collapsed and folded away is from China in 21AD, when the Emperor Wang Mang had one designed for his ceremonial carriage. The ancient Greeks had parasols that could open and close.

5. According to Sanskrit legend, Jamadagni, a descendent of the god Vishnu, was a skilled archer, and his wife's job was to retrieve his arrows. She was usually very quick at this, but one day, it took her the whole day. She blamed the delay on the heat of the sun, so Jamadagni shot at the sun in a temper. To stop his onslaught, the sun gave them an umbrella.

6. Despite the umbrella being an iconic accessory for the British today, they weren't widely used until the seventeenth century, when they were probably introduced from China. Before that, people would use their cloaks to protect them from the rain, and the first people to carry umbrellas in England were ridiculed.

7. Aztec army chiefs carried elaborate umbrellas made from feathers and gold, which also served as flags.

8. A large umbrella, or Umbraculum, was once a piece of the regalia for the Pope, and used on a daily basis to shield him from the sun. Nowadays it is largely ceremonial. Every basilica has one, to be opened when the Pope visits.

9. It is generally considered unlucky to open an umbrella indoors. Some say this superstition originated in Victorian times, when umbrellas were clunky, spring loaded contraptions, which would open quite violently, often breaking valuable ornaments or doing some innocent bystander an injury. Telling people it was unlucky to open umbrellas indoors reduced the number of umbrella related accidents substantially. Others believe the superstition originated in ancient Egypt, where umbrellas were used as protection from the sun, and opening one indoors was insulting to the sun god, or to the umbrella itself. Also, because only nobility were allowed to use them, any commoner unfortunate enough to pass under the shadow of one faced potentially very serious punishment.

10. As well as protecting people from the weather, umbrellas can be used in photography to deflect light, or as a weapon. Late 19th and early 20th century publications gave instructions on how to defend yourself with an umbrella. It is possible to go one step further and adapt an umbrella to make it even more deadly, as is believed to have happened with dissident Georgi Markov, who was injected with deadly poison by means of an umbrella. In fiction, Batman's adversary, The Penguin, has an umbrella that can fire bullets and poison gas. And of course, James Bond had a modified umbrella - in For Your Eyes Only, there was an umbrella which, when it got wet, would close and crush the person using it with steel claws. Mary Poppins, as we all know, had one which enabled her to fly.