There are several untold facts about Valentine’s Days, let’s count how many things you have missed.
1. In 2010, 25% of adults bought flowers or plants as a Valentine’s gift. Of these, 60% were men and 40% were women. Men mainly bought flowers for romantic reasons, while women bought flowers for their mothers and friends as well as their sweethearts.
2. Traditionally, young girls in the U.S. and the U.K. believed they could tell what type of man they would marry depending on the type of bird they saw first on Valentine’s Day. If they saw a blackbird, they would marry a clergyman, a robin redbreast indicated a sailor, and a goldfinch indicated a rich man. A sparrow meant they would marry a farmer, a bluebird indicated a happy man, and a crossbill meant an argumentative man. If they saw a dove, they would marry a good man, but seeing a woodpecker meant they would not marry at all.
3. The most popular flower on Valentine’s Day is a single red rose surrounded with baby’s breath. The red rose was the flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
4. A kiss on Valentine’s Day is considered to bring good luck all year.
5. According to Welsh tradition, a child born on Valentine’s Day would have many lovers. A calf born on Valentine’s Day, however, would be of no use for breeding purposes. If hens were to hatch eggs on Valentine’s Day, they would all turn out rotten.
6. Americans spend around $277 million on Valentine cards every year, second only to Christmas.
7. Lace is often used on Valentine decorations. The word “lace” comes from the Latin laques, meaning “to snare or net,” as in to catch a person’s heart.
8. Teachers receive the most Valentine’s cards, followed by children, mothers, and wives. Children between the ages of 6-10 exchange more than 650 million Valentine cards a year.
9. Commercially, Valentine cards didn’t appear in England until almost the 1800s, though handmade cards had been popular for some time.
10. There is a town in Texas called Valentine, but for not for a romantic reason. The first train to arrive there happened to do so on February 14.
11. In Germany, girls would plant onions in a pot on Valentine’s Day, and next to the onions, they placed the name of a boy. They believed they would marry the boy whose name was nearest the first onion to grow.
12. Richard Cadbury produced the first box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day in the late 1800s.
13. On Valentine’s Day 2010, 39,897 people in Mexico City broke the record for the world’s largest group kiss.
14. Madame Royale, daughter of Henry the IV of France, loved Valentine’s Day so much that she named her palace “The Valentine.”
