31 March: Crayons

Today is Crayola Crayons Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about crayons.

1. The name Crayola was coined by Alice Binney, the wife of one of the company founders. It combines the words "craie," which is French for chalk, and "ola," for oleaginous, because crayons are made from petroleum based paraffin.
2. The smell of Crayola crayons is distinctive enough to reach to the top 20 most recognisable smells, according to a Yale University study. The stuff that makes the smell is stearic acid, a derivative of beef fat. So crayons aren’t suitable for vegans.
3. In 1994 Crayola produced a range of sweeter smelling crayons including cherry, coconut, Chocolate and Liquorice. The problem with that was that children would eat them, so the range was discontinued. It was followed in 2006 by a range of silly scents with names like "Booger Buster" and "Alien Armpit".
4. Grant Wood, the artist who painted the famous American Gothic painting, said he was inspired to choose art as a career thanks to Crayola crayons. He entered a Crayola drawing contest at the age of 14. He came third.
5. There’s a word for the tiny nubs of crayons left at the end which are too small to use – “leftolas”. There is a product called the Crayola Crayon Maker which allows children to melt them down to create new crayons.
6. In 2003, Binney and Smith, the company which makes Crayola Crayons, asked people to send in their blue leftolas so they could make the world’s biggest crayon. Called Big Blue, it was made from the equivalent of 123,000 crayons, is 15 feet long, 16 inches in diameter and weighs 1,500lb.
7. The reason they asked for blue was because the most popular crayon colour is Blue. One shade of blue, marketed as “Bluetiful” by the company is a new shade of blue which was only discovered in 2009 by scientists at Oregon State University, and then completely by accident. The scientists named in YinMn blue because it contains the elements yttrium, indium, manganese, and Oxygen.
8. Crayola makes 3 billion crayons a year, enough to circle the Earth six times. They need to, because the average child will have used up 720 of them by the time they are 10 years old.
9. One of Crayola’s top executives was colourblind – not severely so but he did have trouble discerning slight differences in colours. Nevertheless, he worked for the company for over 35 years.
10. When Sally Putnam Chapman, a relative of the Crayola company founder, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, she brought with her a box of an exclusive crayon just for Oprah, called “The Color Purple”.

My Books 

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The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny.