9th May: Hooray for Buttons Day

Today is Hooray for Buttons Day. Here are ten facts about buttons which you probably never knew.

1. The word button is from the French word bouton, meaning bud or knob.
2. The earliest button ever found was discovered in the Indus Valley Civilization (modern day Pakistan). It was about 5,000 years old and made of shell. In those days, button weren't used as fasteners, but as ornaments.
3. Before they could be used as fastenings, someone had to invent the buttonhole. We don't know who this was, except it was someone in Germany in the 13th century. Possibly someone who got so sick of being pricked by the sharp pins that were used before that they gave a lot of thought to coming up with a solution.
4. According to rumour, King Louis XIV of France spent over $5 million on buttons in his lifetime. Button collecting is still a popular hobby today. There doesn't seem to be a posh name for someone who collects buttons, but their is a society you can join - the National Button Society, founded in 1938. Its website is at http://nationalbuttonsociety.org/Home.html
5. There is a word for people with an irrational fear of buttons, an affliction that affects one in 75,000 people and can range from a mild aversion to full blown panic attacks when there is a button in the room. The word is Koumpounophobia and it's derived from the Latin Koumpouno meaning buttons and Greek phobos meaning fear. Steve Jobs had it, which is why he always wore turtlenecks. There's even a horror novel about buttons - Coraline by Neil Gaiman, in which the lead character finds herself in a world where people have buttons instead of eyes.
6. There's a tradition that men's clothing buttonholes are on the left side, and women's clothing buttonholes are on the right. Nobody is quite sure why, although one theory is that it was so a man driving his carriage or car could see inside his female companion's blouse, and she could see inside his shirt although this only applies if the driver is on the left - and the driver should be looking at the road, anyway. A more plausible theory is that it started with rich women who were dressed by their maids. The maids apparently found this easier, since they themselves would wear clothes buttoned on the male side. There's also a theory as to why men's suits have buttons on the sleeves which don't do anything. King Frederick the Great of Prussia started the practice in the 18th century. It's said that after an inspection of his troops, he ordered that buttons be sewn on the sleeves of the coats of his men to stop them wiping their noses with their sleeves.
7. In both world wars, British and U.S. military had buttons like lockets with little Compasses hidden in them. Buttons have also been used to smuggle drugs.
8. Buttons aren't measured in inches or centimetres but in lignes. 40 lignes is equivalent to one inch or 2.54 centimetres.
9. Charles Dickens wrote an article on button making in 1852. It appeared in Household Words, a weekly journal, and was called What There is in a Button. You can read it online at http://hammond-turner.com/index.php/history/charles-dickens.
10. The phrase, "cute as a button" has nothing to do with buttons at all. It's actually referring to a button Quail, a type of small bird.

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