4 June: Magenta

The Battle of Magenta was fought on 4 June 1859. The colour was named for the battle (see fact 2) so here are ten things you might not know about the colour magenta.

1. The colour magenta doesn’t actually exist. It doesn’t have a wavelength associated with it on the spectrum. Your Brain makes it up when the right combination of Blue and Red receptors in your eyes are stimulated.
2. A magenta dye was created by a French chemist called François-Emmanuel Verguin in 1859. Originally, he named it fuchsine after fuchsia flowers. (Fuchsia and magenta are essentially the same colour.) At the same time, two British chemists, Chambers Nicolson and George Maule, were working on a similar dye which they called roseine. Then the Battle of Magenta happened, in which the French beat the Austrians at a place called Magenta in Italy. The dye was re-named Magenta to honour the battle and became an immediate commercial success.
3. Despite not existing, magenta is nevertheless one of the three primary colours in printing, along with Yellow and cyan.
4. Magenta pigments absorb Green light, and so the complementary colour of magenta is green. On a colour wheel, it is positioned halfway between red and blue.
5. Magenta is a common colour for flowers. This may be because its opposite is green – so the flowers stand out among the foliage to attract pollinating animals.
6. Stars classed as brown dwarfs are actually magenta in colour.
7. It is extremely rare in flags, but there are a couple of examples – Cantabria in Spain and Cartago in Colombia include it on their flags. It doesn’t appear on coats of arms very much either, although there is a magenta stripe on the arms of the commune of Magenta in France.
8. Magenta is the name of a DC comics character who is an enemy of the Flash; it’s also the name of a character in The Rocky Horror Show. There are three bands called Magenta, too – in England, Wales and Norway.
9. The Indonesian Marine Corps uniform includes a magenta beret.
10. If magenta is your favourite colour, you are creative and spiritual with a vivid imagination and a free spirit who hates to be constrained. You are kind and compassionate with a wacky sense of humour. On the negative side, people who like this colour can become obsessive about details and possibly selfish – but it does mean you appreciate the small things in life and strive for balance and harmony.

MY LATEST BOOK!

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book