Thursday Thirteen #19

World's Largest Crayon!
Originally uploaded by peachicken.

Thirteen Interesting Crayola Facts:
(the last Crayola post, I promise!)

1. Crayons are made from paraffin wax and color pigment, and come in over 100 different colors.
2. The most popular crayon color is blue and the second most popular color is red (Really! They told us that at the factory!).
3. Although Crayola crayons come in more than 100 colors, the labels are made in only 18 different colors.
4. In the last 95 years, more than 100 billion Crayola crayons have been made. (In 1996, the 100 billionth crayon was made by Mr. Rogers.)
5. The makers of Crayola were Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith back in 1885.
6. Alice Binney (Edwin’s wife) came up with the name Crayola. It comes from the combination of the French word “craie,” for chalk, and “ola” from “oleaginous,” meaning oily.
7. In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated a stamp in honor of the original box of eight crayons.
8. The average kid wears down about 730 crayons by his/her 10th birthday.
9. The largest crayon in the world is in Easton, PA at the Crayola Factory. It’s blue and weighs about 1,500 pounds. (And I’ve seen it.)
10. Crayola crayons are sold in more than 80 countries and packaged in 12 different laguages – English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Japanese, Swedish, and Norwegian.
11. Some of the newest color names are: Purple Mt. Majesty, Asparagus, Timber Wolf, Tickle Me Pink, and Tumbleweed.
12. If you put all the Crayola crayons made in one year together, you’d have a crayon that was about 37 feet wide and 120 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. Crazy.
13. And my favorite – if your Crayola marker dries out, you can rehydrate it by soaking it, for about a minute, in water. And it won’t lose its color, either!