109 Fun Facts About Rainbow

A rainbow caused by sunlight always appears in which part of the sky?

Directly opposite the Sun: the arc is centred on the point where the shadow of your own head falls, so you only ever see one with the Sun at your back.

In a primary rainbow, which colour is on the outer edge of the arc?

Red light leaves the raindrop at the widest angle, so it forms the outside of the bow.

From flat ground, no rainbow can appear when the Sun is where?

High overhead: once the Sun climbs more than about 42° above the horizon the whole arc drops out of sight, which is why early morning and late afternoon are the best times to spot a rainbow.

Which three things happen to sunlight inside a raindrop to make a rainbow?

Refraction, internal reflection and dispersion: light bends as it enters the drop, bounces off the back and bends again on leaving, and because each colour bends by a different amount the white light fans out.

What happens to a rainbow when someone walks towards it?

It moves away: the bow is made by whichever drops sit at the right angle from the viewer's eye, so it shifts with every step, and no two people see quite the same one.

From where can a rainbow sometimes be seen as a complete circle?

An aeroplane: every rainbow is really a full circle, and the ground simply hides the lower half from anyone standing on it.

How does a double rainbow's outer bow differ from the inner one?

Its colours are reversed: the outer bow is an inside-out copy of the main one, brightening the sky beyond it instead of within, which leaves a darker strip between the two.

What is the name for the strip of darker sky between a primary and a secondary rainbow?

Alexander's band is dark because raindrops there send their light either inside the main bow or outside the second one, never toward your eye. Alexander of Aphrodisias described it around AD 200.

Why is a double rainbow's outer bow always fainter?

Its light bounces twice inside each drop, leaking a little more each time, and what survives is spread across a wider arc of sky than the main bow's.

Which colour did Isaac Newton add to his list of rainbow colours to bring the total to seven?

Indigo sits so close to blue that scientists have doubted the eye can tell the two apart, and Isaac Asimov argued it was merely a deep blue, not a colour in its own right.

Newton settled on seven rainbow colours by analogy with what?

The notes of a musical scale: Newton suspected colours were proportioned like musical tones, and the unequal slices of his colour circle follow the intervals of a scale.

Which name do American schoolchildren use to remember the order of a rainbow's colours?

Roy G. Biv: British pupils learn the same initials as 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain', a line said to recall a Yorkist defeat in the Wars of the Roses.

What name is given to a rainbow that appears at night?

A moonbow usually looks white to the naked eye, because its light is too faint to trigger our colour vision, yet long-exposure photographs bring the colours out.

Which waterfall is famous for night-time rainbows in its spray?

Victoria Falls throws up so much spray that on clear nights around full moon the mist catches enough light to form a pale arc.

Why does a fog bow look almost white?

Its water droplets are too small: far finer than raindrops, they smear the light by diffraction, so the colours overlap and blur into a broad, ghostly white arc.

Sun dogs, the bright spots that flank the Sun, are caused by light passing through what?

Hexagonal ice crystals drifting with their flat faces level act as tiny prisms, bending sunlight by at least 22 degrees, which is why the spots sit that far either side of the Sun.

Why would a rainbow on Titan be larger than one on Earth?

Its rain is liquid methane, not water: methane bends light less, so a bow on Saturn's largest moon would be several degrees wider, and in Titan's haze it might show up best in infrared.

What hid third-order rainbows from cameras until 2011?

The Sun's glare: the third bow rings the Sun itself, and it is far fainter and broader than the first two, which is why sightings had been so rare.

Which classical Greek scholar was the first to devote serious attention to explaining the rainbow?

His qualitative account was flawed but went unmatched for centuries; much later rainbow theory was a reaction to it.

Which medieval English friar measured the greatest height a rainbow can reach in the sky?

Roger Bacon made the rainbow his showcase for 'experimental science' in the Opus Majus, fixing its greatest height with a measurement probably taken by astrolabe.

Which Muppet sings 'Rainbow Connection' at the start of The Muppet Movie?

Kermit the Frog strums it on a banjo in his swamp; the song became a real Top 40 hit and an Oscar nominee, though it lost to 'It Goes Like It Goes' from Norma Rae.

Which Frenchman explained the rainbow in 1637 after experiments with a large water-filled glass sphere?

René Descartes tucked it into an essay published with his Discourse on Method, using the sphere as one giant raindrop because he had noticed that drop size made no difference to the bow.

In Greek mythology, which goddess personifies the rainbow and serves as messenger to the Olympians?

Iris is also the Greek word for rainbow, and it went on to name the coloured part of the eye, the iris flower and 'iridescent', which literally means rainbow-coloured.

In Norse mythology, the burning rainbow bridge Bifrost connects Midgard to which realm?

Asgard, home of the gods: the red in the bridge is said to be burning fire, there to stop the frost giants from simply walking up into heaven.

Which Norse god lives at Himinbjörg and guards Bifrost from the giants?

Heimdall needs less sleep than a bird and can hear grass growing, and at the onset of Ragnarök, when the bridge is fated to break, he sounds his horn to warn the gods.

The Rainbow Serpent, a creator deity linked to water, comes from the mythology of which people?

Aboriginal Australians: in many of their traditions the serpent lives in deep, permanent waterholes, and a rainbow in the sky is the serpent travelling from one waterhole to the next.

In the Book of Genesis, the rainbow is set as a token of God's promise after which event?

The great flood: in Genesis the bow is a reminder for God himself, who tells Noah, 'I will look upon it, that I may remember' never again to let the waters destroy all life.

Which rock group let fans pay whatever they liked, even nothing, to download its 2007 album In Rainbows?

Radiohead's contract with EMI had ended, so the group sold In Rainbows straight from its own website, a landmark move for a major act that made headlines around the world.

Which two-headed creature represents the rainbow in Chinese mythology?

A dragon called Hong: the oldest Chinese character for 'rainbow', carved on Shang oracle bones, shows an arched dragon or serpent with a head at each end.

In Irish folklore, which creature is said to keep a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

The leprechaun of older folklore is a solitary fairy shoemaker who, W. B. Yeats wrote, grew rich on treasure buried in old wars, and he was generally dressed in red, not green.

Which artist is credited with designing the rainbow pride flag, first flown in San Francisco in June 1978?

Gilbert Baker marked the flag's 25th birthday by making one that stretched across Key West from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, then sent pieces of it to more than 100 cities.

What does the green stripe of the rainbow pride flag stand for?

Nature: each stripe was given a meaning, and the flag itself was made to replace the triangle badge the Nazis had forced on gay prisoners with a symbol the community had created for itself.

Which colour was dropped from the pride flag first because its fabric was hard to obtain?

Hot pink went first because no flag fabric came in that colour; turquoise followed so the remaining six stripes could be split evenly down both sides of Market Street's lamp posts.

Which archbishop coined the term 'rainbow nation' for post-apartheid South Africa?

Desmond Tutu first called a multiracial protest crowd 'the rainbow people of God' in 1989, and Nelson Mandela took the image up at his 1994 inauguration, promising 'a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world'.

Which country's intelligence service bombed Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985?

France: its agents sank the ship before it could lead a protest flotilla to the nuclear test site at Mururoa, photographer Fernando Pereira drowned, and the scandal cost the French defence minister his job.

Rainbow Row, a run of pastel-painted historic houses, is a landmark of which US city?

Charleston, South Carolina: the row was run-down until Dorothy Legge and her husband bought a house there in 1931 and painted it pastel pink, and neighbouring owners followed their lead.

Rainbow Bridge National Monument, one of the world's largest natural arches, is in which US state?

Utah: tucked among canyons at the foot of Navajo Mountain, the bridge took early visitors such as Theodore Roosevelt an arduous pack trip to reach, until the rising waters of Lake Powell let boats get close.

What destroyed the Niagara Falls bridge that collapsed in 1938 and was replaced by the Rainbow Bridge?

An ice jam in the gorge: in January 1938 a windstorm on Lake Erie sent ice over the falls, it piled up against the old Honeymoon Bridge's supports, and crowds gathered to watch the span fall.

Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge links Shibaura Pier with which waterfront district?

Odaiba takes its name from the 'daiba', cannon forts built on small man-made islands in the bay in the 1850s to keep Commodore Perry's warships away from the city.

In the 'Rainbow Bridge' prose poem, who waits to rejoin loved ones?

Departed pets: Edna Clyne wrote it in Scotland in 1959, aged nineteen, the day after her Labrador Major died, and unsigned copies spread for decades before she was identified as its author in 2023.

Why did MGM bosses nearly cut 'Over the Rainbow' from The Wizard of Oz?

It slowed the film down, MGM's producers felt, and they ordered it out; associate producer Arthur Freed talked the studio into restoring it, and it went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Which composer of 'Stormy Weather' also wrote the music for 'Over the Rainbow'?

Harold Arlen jotted the melody down in a parked car outside Schwab's Drug Store on Sunset Boulevard, after asking his wife to pull over on their way to a film; Yip Harburg then wrote the words.

The hard rock band Rainbow was formed in 1975 by which guitarist after he left Deep Purple?

Ritchie Blackmore filled the first line-up with four members of Elf, an American band that had opened for Deep Purple, then replaced all of them except singer Ronnie James Dio after one album.

Who hosted the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow from 1983 to 2006?

LeVar Burton licensed the brand after the show ended, and when he asked fans to help revive it in 2014 his Kickstarter campaign hit its $1 million goal in under twelve hours.

Zippy, George and Bungle starred in Rainbow, a long-running children's show on which country's TV?

United Kingdom: Thames Television conceived it as a home-grown equivalent of Sesame Street, and it ran for twenty years until Thames lost its ITV franchise.

Rainbow Brite, the 1984 cartoon and doll franchise, was created by which company from outside the toy business?

Hallmark Cards licensed the dolls to Mattel and moved fast: a television special aired in June 1984, and a cinema film, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, followed from Warner Bros. in 1985.

Rainbow Road is a notoriously difficult track that usually closes out which video game series?

Mario Kart saves Rainbow Road for the last race of its Special Cup, and with few or no railings the real opponent is the drop; Nintendo's F-Zero X even borrowed the Mario Kart 64 version as one of its own tracks.

Which candy's advertising slogan is 'Taste the Rainbow'?

Skittles were an import at first, made by a company in England, and only began to be manufactured in the United States in 1982.

What is a rainbow trout called when it migrates to the ocean and returns to rivers to spawn?

A steelhead: the sea-run fish are the same species, and rainbow trout released around the world for anglers sit on a list of the world's 100 worst invasive species.

Vinicunca, Peru's 'Rainbow Mountain', gets its coloured stripes from what?

Its mineral composition: iron-rich claystone gives the reds, sandstone laced with sulphur minerals the mustard yellows and clays rich in iron and magnesium the greens.

Most eucalypts are Australian, but the rainbow eucalyptus grows wild in which region?

The Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea: it is the only eucalyptus that normally lives in rainforest, and the only one whose natural range crosses into the Northern Hemisphere.

In which city did Fred Hampton's Black Panthers form the original 1969 Rainbow Coalition with the Young Lords?

Chicago: the alliance also took in the Young Patriots, poor white Southern migrants who used a Confederate flag as their emblem, years before Jesse Jackson borrowed the coalition's name.

What are the faint pastel fringes sometimes seen just inside a bright primary rainbow called?

Supernumerary bows appear where light waves leaving the drops fall in step and reinforce one another, with gaps where they cancel, an effect that treating light as simple rays cannot explain.

What is thought to cause a rare twinned rainbow, whose arcs split from a single base?

Raindrops of two different sizes: the air squashes big drops flatter than small ones as they fall, so each size bends the light into its own, slightly different bow.

A reflection rainbow forms when sunlight first bounces off what?

Calm water: sunlight glancing off a large, still lake or sea lights the rain from below, making a second bow that arcs higher than the first and meets it at the horizon.

Why is a rainbow at sunrise or sunset sometimes entirely red?

Shorter wavelengths have been scattered away: low sunlight crosses so much air that its blues and greens are lost on the way, which is also why the setting Sun itself looks red.

Which Roman philosopher's Naturales Quaestiones, around AD 65, noted rainbows in spray from oars and burst pipes?

Seneca the Younger, tutor to the emperor Nero, also described the rainbow colours thrown by a ribbed glass rod held across sunlight, some sixteen centuries before Newton's prism.

Which author's 1998 thriller Rainbow Six gave its name to a long-running series of tactical shooter games?

Tom Clancy's title is a call sign: Rainbow is the secret multinational counter-terrorist unit in the book, and 'Rainbow Six' the code name of its commander, John Clark.

Which rock group's 1973 album cover shows a prism turning a beam of white light into a rainbow?

Pink Floyd's keyboardist Richard Wright had asked for something simple and bold; shown several designs for The Dark Side of the Moon, the four members chose the prism at once, without an argument.

Which colour is absent from the spectrum of a rainbow because no single kind of light produces it?

Magenta exists only in the mind: the eye reports it when light arrives from both ends of the spectrum at once with the middle missing. No part of a rainbow can do that alone.

Why can two people standing side by side never see exactly the same rainbow?

Each sees light from different drops, because a rainbow is not an object in the sky but rays reaching one eye from one angle. Every viewer gets a private bow built from a private set of rain.

Which US state, sometimes called the Rainbow State, has shown a rainbow on its standard licence plate since 1991?

Hawaii was about to run out of numbers for the design, so in 2023 it added new letter codes to keep the rainbow plate in production for years to come.

Which actress sang 'Over the Rainbow' as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz?

Judy Garland recorded it on an MGM soundstage in October 1938, aged 16, and it stayed her signature song for the rest of her career.

Which technology company used a rainbow-striped logo on its computers from 1977 until the late 1990s?

Apple began with a detailed drawing of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, drawn by co-founder Ron Wayne, before Rob Janoff's striped fruit replaced it.

The viral 2010 'Double Rainbow' video was filmed by Paul Vasquez from his front yard near which national park?

Yosemite was on the doorstep of Paul 'Bear' Vasquez, a former firefighter whose ecstatic reaction to the sky has been watched more than 50 million times.

In Marcus Pfister's picture book The Rainbow Fish, what does the proud fish share to win friends?

His shiny scales are real foil on the page of the 1992 Swiss original, and it is a wise octopus who advises the fish to hand them out.

The Rainbow Loom, invented in 2010 by Cheong Choon Ng, is a plastic pegboard for weaving what into bracelets?

Rubber bands by the packet turned the toy into a craze: by September 2014 its inventor's company had sold 40 million packets alongside 8 million looms.

Which invisible rays did William Herschel find in 1800 with a thermometer placed just past a prism's rainbow?

Infrared carries slightly more than half of the Sun's energy that reaches Earth, yet nobody noticed it until that thermometer warmed up in what looked like empty shadow.

In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the boastful athlete Rainbow Dash belongs to which kind of pony?

Pegasus ponies run the weather in the series, so Rainbow Dash spends her days clearing the skies over Ponyville while dreaming of joining the Wonderbolts.

Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's ukulele medley pairs 'Over the Rainbow' with which song made famous by Louis Armstrong?

What a Wonderful World followed in one unplanned take: the singer phoned a studio at 3 am in 1988 and was given 15 minutes to get there.

Which band released the single 'She's a Rainbow' from the 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request?

The Rolling Stones had the song's strings arranged by a session man named John Paul Jones, who went on to play bass in Led Zeppelin.

Which singer's 1999 album Rainbow produced the number-one single 'Heartbreaker', featuring rapper Jay-Z?

Mariah Carey had never before shared a lead single with another artist, and the gamble gave her a fourteenth chart-topper on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which pop star's 2017 album Rainbow, led by the ballad 'Praying', earned her a first Grammy nomination?

Kesha was up for Best Pop Vocal Album with the record, then toured it for two years, partly on a joint run with the rapper Macklemore.

Which Hollywood dancer made his last film musical with 1968's Finian's Rainbow, alongside Petula Clark?

Fred Astaire took direction on it from a man less than half his age: Francis Ford Coppola, four years before The Godfather.

Which lyricist wrote the words to 'Over the Rainbow' and to the 1947 Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow?

Yip Harburg had already put the Depression into song with 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?', set to a lullaby his composer had learned as a child in Russia.

Which American novelist wrote Gravity's Rainbow, a 1973 epic built around the V-2 rockets of the Second World War?

Thomas Pynchon was the Pulitzer jury's choice for it, but the prize board found the book unreadable and obscene and gave no fiction award at all that year.

Which English novelist's 1915 book The Rainbow was prosecuted for obscenity, with over 1,000 copies burnt?

D. H. Lawrence carried the same family's story on into a sequel, Women in Love, which he had first conceived as part of one long novel.

Which Romantic poet wrote 'My Heart Leaps Up', a short 1802 poem about the joy of seeing a rainbow?

William Wordsworth started his far grander Immortality ode the very next day, and later set the little poem's last three lines at its head as an epigraph.

Which evolutionary biologist answered a complaint by the poet Keats in his 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow?

Richard Dawkins took on the charge that Isaac Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by explaining it, and argued that understanding only adds to the wonder.

Which civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate founded the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984?

Jesse Jackson later merged it with Operation PUSH, the group he had founded in 1971, to form the organisation known as Rainbow/PUSH.

The rainbow peace flag bearing the word PACE was first carried on a 1961 peace march in which country?

Italy made the flag famous again in 2002, when a campaign against the coming invasion of Iraq asked citizens to hang it from every balcony.

The Wiphala, a square rainbow-chequered Andean emblem, became the second national flag of which country in 2009?

Bolivia wrote it into its 2009 constitution, though experts still argue over whether the flag is truly pre-Columbian or a modern invention.

A rainbow symbolising sovereignty arches over the main design on the flag of which Native American people?

Navajo tradition treats the rainbow as the path of the holy spirits, which is why it is also drawn in sacred sandpaintings.

In Hindu tradition the rainbow is the bow of which thunder god, who uses it to shoot arrows of lightning?

Indra is named in the Sanskrit word for rainbow itself: indradhanus means his bow, the weapon of the god of thunder and war.

The rainbow-striped sandstone hills of Zhangye National Geopark are a celebrated landscape of which country?

China has its own media to thank for the fame: outlets there voted the hills, built from sandstone laid down over 24 million years, among the country's most beautiful landforms.

Caño Cristales, a river nicknamed the Liquid Rainbow for its vivid colours, flows through which South American country?

Colombia's river is also called the River of Five Colors, and it owes its best-known shade to a plant carpeting the riverbed, not to the rock or the water.

The Seven Coloured Earths, striped dunes of sand in seven distinct shades, are a sight of which Indian Ocean nation?

Mauritius can thank volcanic basalt: it broke down into sands of different shades that settle into separate layers on their own, striping the dunes.

The Rainbow Room, a 65th-floor venue with a revolving dance floor, tops a skyscraper in which New York complex?

Rockefeller Center had planned the space above the 64th floor of its tallest tower as a public 'amusement center' when the building opened in 1933.

The Brocken spectre, a giant shadow ringed by a rainbow-coloured glory, is named after a peak in which country?

Germany's Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz, is so often wrapped in fog that walkers kept meeting their own enormous shadows, and a local legend grew up around them.

Nyan Cat, the 2011 internet meme that flies through space trailing a rainbow, has a body made of what?

A Pop-Tart was a viewer's idea: the artist was drawing live for a charity drive when one person asked for the pastry and another for a cat, so he drew both in one.

In which sport does the reigning world champion wear a white 'rainbow jersey' ringed by five coloured stripes?

Cycling borrows the five colours from the Olympic rings, and a superstition called the curse of the rainbow jersey says its wearer is due a year of bad luck.

Rainbow sherbet, born at a Pennsylvania dairy in the 1950s, traditionally mixes orange and lime with which berry?

Raspberry completes a trio that only became possible when a dairy worker invented a nozzle that could release three flavours at the same time.

In the Rainbow Magic children's books, friends Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker have adventures with which creatures?

Fairies fill the whole series, and so does a fiction about its author: 'Daisy Meadows' is a pen name shared by a team of ghostwriters.

A rainbow that lasted almost nine hours over Yangmingshan in 2017 set a Guinness World Record on which island?

Taiwan's bow shone above Taipei for 8 hours 58 minutes, longer than a full working day.

The rainbow trout, now stocked in rivers on six continents, is native only to streams draining into which ocean?

Pacific rivers of North America and Asia are its only natural home, yet it has been released in at least 45 countries and now ranks among the world's 100 worst invasive species.

The Rainbow Portrait, painted around 1600 and kept at Hatfield House, shows which English queen grasping a rainbow?

Elizabeth I grasps it beside a Latin motto meaning 'no rainbow without the sun', and wears a cloak embroidered with eyes and ears.

Which future five-star general nicknamed the US Army's 42nd Division by saying it would span the country like a rainbow?

Douglas MacArthur meant it literally: the division was pieced together in 1917 from National Guard units of 26 states and the District of Columbia.

Rainbow Islands, a 1987 Taito arcade game in which players sling rainbows at enemies, is the sequel to which game?

Bubble Bobble is even named in the full title, The Story of Bubble Bobble 2, and the rainbows work both as weapons and as platforms to climb.

Which General Mills cereal, known for its marshmallow hearts and clovers, added rainbow-shaped pieces in 1992?

Lucky Charms began as an experiment: a product developer chopped circus peanut sweets into a bowl of Cheerios to see what would happen.

Sunlight bends on its way into a raindrop because crossing from air to water changes what about it?

Its speed drops in water, and each colour loses a slightly different amount, which is why white light entering a drop fans out into separate colours.

Why does a rainbow form a curved arc instead of a straight band across the sky?

Drops return colour at one angle, so the only ones that light up for you lie on a circle centred on the shadow of your own head, and the ground hides the lower part.

Which element was first detected in 1868 as an unknown yellow line in the rainbow spectrum of sunlight?

Helium takes its name from the Greek word for the Sun, the only place it was known to exist when the astronomer Norman Lockyer named it.

Which gemstone is famed for its 'fire', the rainbow flashes thrown out as its facets split white light?

Diamond owes its fire to the cutter too: a princess cut plays the flashes up, while the baguette cut of the Art Deco years played them down.

The rainbow shimmer on the back of a CD comes from which effect, as light spreads off its closely spaced tracks?

Diffraction turns the disc into a grating: its tracks are so finely spaced that each colour of light leaves the surface in its own direction.

Which law of optics, named for a Dutch astronomer, gives the angle at which light bends on entering a raindrop?

Snell's law was in fact worked out in Baghdad in 984 by the Persian scholar Ibn Sahl, more than six centuries before the Dutchman whose name it carries.

Which property of a rainbow's light lets some sunglasses make the bow fade or vanish?

It is polarised: about 96% of a primary bow's light vibrates along the line of the arc, so a polarising lens turned the right way blocks nearly all of it.

Why does a rainbow in sea spray have a slightly smaller radius than a rainbow in rain?

Salt water bends light more than fresh, so where spray and rain share the sky the two bows do not quite line up.

Which polymath, who helped decipher the Rosetta Stone, explained a rainbow's faint inner fringes with light waves?

Thomas Young showed in 1804 that the fringes come from light waves reinforcing and cancelling one another, making them an early sign that light is a wave at all.

Which country singer closed her Grammy-winning 2018 album Golden Hour with the piano ballad 'Rainbow'?

Kacey Musgraves had written the song six years earlier, and released it as a single to coincide with her performance at the Grammy Awards.