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Tumpline Betcha Didn’t Know… About Rainbows


n Rainbows form when sunlight bounces off airborne water droplets. When the light enters the droplet it is refracted—or deflected—slightly before reflect- ing off the back of the droplet. The refraction causes the light to disperse into groups of different wavelengths, which form the spectrum of colour you see.


n If sunlight reflects three times inside the raindrops, a double rainbow forms. The second rain- bow is dimmer than the first, and its colours are reversed.


n Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Mariah Carey and Dolly Parton have all recorded albums entitled Rainbow.


n Rainbows are only visible when the sun is low in the sky and behind the viewer.


WHAT DO JOHNNY CASH AND


MARIAH CAREY HAVE IN COMMON? PHOTO: VASILIY YAKOBCHUK/ISTOCK.COM


n The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was named after the Cree prophecy “When the world is sick and dying, the people will rise up like warriors of the rainbow.”


n The rainbow flag first flew in 16th century Germany as a symbol of hope and social change. The gay pride flag flew for the first time in 1978 at San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Celebration.


n A rainbow can be seen best with polarized sunglasses.


n René Descartes injected some empirical rigour into the study of rainbows in 1637. Previously, they had been explained by mythol- ogy. In Greece, they were a path- way from heaven to earth for Iris the messenger. In India, rainbows were the bow of Indra, the god of lightning and thunder.


n The first ship of the Royal Canadi- an Navy was the HMCS Rainbow.


n According to Christianity and Ju- daism, the rainbow is a symbol of God’s promise to Noah that there would be no more floods on earth. Hydro-Québec considers this a non-binding agreement.


—Conor Mihell


THE FINEST KEVLAR CANOES ANYWHERE.


www.sourisriver.com 807-597-1292


18 n C ANOE ROOT S summer 2007


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