Paints from the past

The color that killed Napoleon Bonaparte and 9 other risky pigments

We often assume that the past was a dull, washed-out world. But history has always been bursting with vibrant color, even if humanity had to take extreme measures to capture it. From crushing millions of tiny bugs to robbing ancient tombs and playing with dangerous substances, artists and chemists spent centuries inventing brilliant hues. Here are 10 pigments with surprising, strange, and sometimes terrifying origins.

The word carmine refers to a family of deep reds. Its origins trace back to tiny scale insects, Dactylopius coccus (cochineal scale), that feed on cactus berries. When European explorers reached Mexico in the 16th century, they discovered native populations producing reds far more vibrant than anything in Europe.

Harvesters collected the female insects, killed them, and dried them in the sun to extract carminic acid. It took roughly 70,000 insects to make a single pound of pigment. Today, synthetics have replaced it in textiles, but carmine is still used under names like "natural red 4" to color candles and cosmetics.

Dating back to the 3rd millennium BCE, Egyptian blue is the first known synthetic pigment in human history. Ancient craftsmen created this vibrant azure by heating quartz, copper, alkali, and lime to extreme temperatures.

This recipe was lost for over a thousand years before it was reverse-engineered in the 19th century. Interestingly, under modern infrared light, Egyptian blue glows with intense fluorescence, helping researchers scan archeological sites.

In ancient China, color was regulated by law to determine social status. Starting with the Zhou dynasty, yellow became linked with the throne.

By the Tang dynasty, laws strictly forbade anyone outside the imperial family from wearing garments dyed in reddish-yellow shades. Also, creating this prestigious color wasn’t easy. It was an arduous process that required harvesting massive amounts of Chinese foxglove tubers, grinding them into a paste, and finally staining fabrics.

Many great breakthroughs are born from accidents, and mauveine is no exception. In 1856, an 18-year-old English chemist named William Henry Perkin was trying to synthesize a cure for malaria using aniline.

His experiment failed, leaving behind a sticky black residue with bright purple remnants. Perkin recognized the beauty of his accident and launched the world’s first mass-produced synthetic dye, sparking a global industry that changed fashion and art forever.

Over the years, people have made plenty of weird choices in the name of beauty, but mummy brown is probably the creepiest. Popular among 18th- and 19th-century European painters for its rich, translucent shading, this yellowish-brown pigment was literally made by looting Egyptian tombs and grinding down mummified human remains and animals.

When artists discovered what their paint was actually made of, they were horrified. The practice finally ended in 1964 when the supply of preserved bodies ran dry.

Alchemists and artists have always been fascinated by hues that resemble gold, but orpiment came with lethal consequences. This naturally occurring mineral features a fiery orange-yellow brilliance, yet it contains toxic arsenic sulfide.

Alchemists working in hot, unventilated labs would hang over furnaces heating orpiment to manufacture this golden pigment, poisoning themselves in the process. Despite the danger, master painters relied on its vibrant punch until safer cadmium and chromium alternatives arrived.

When archaeologists uncovered the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, they found stunning villas adorned with deep red frescoes. For generations, experts believed the color came from local iron-rich clay.

However, modern scientific analysis suggests that those red walls may have originally been yellow ochre. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the intense volcanic heat cooked the mineral, transforming the yellow walls into the unique red we see today.

Prussian blue was born in 1706 through a lab mishap. Johann Jacob Diesbach, a German paint maker, was trying to create red carmine, but a contaminated batch of ingredients caused an unexpected chemical reaction, producing a deep blue instead.

This accidental pigment later replaced expensive ultramarine for painters, and it also became the basis for the chemical process behind architectural blueprints.

Fun fact: Purified forms of Prussian blue are still used today as a medical antidote for heavy metal poisoning.

Invented in 1775 by Swedish-German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, this brilliant green is obtained by mixing copper, oxygen, and arsenic. Scheele’s green became a Victorian obsession, used in everything from children’s toys and dresses to patterned wallpaper.

Tragically, factory workers suffered horrific chronic arsenic poisoning making it. Even worse, when wallpaper made with Scheele’s green got damp, mould could release poisonous arsenic gas into the air (a phenomenon believed to have contributed to Napoleon Bonaparte’s mysterious illness and death in exile).

In the ancient world, purple was the ultimate symbol of wealth and power, often costing its weight in silver. Tyrian purple was especially prized because it resisted fading, but producing it required hard labor and cost marine life.

Derived from the mucus secretions of Murex sea snails, it took roughly 10,000 crushed snails to produce just a single gram of dye. The process left a foul stench along the Mediterranean coasts, so it was a color exclusively worn by emperors until modern technology finally figured out how to synthesize the exact same molecule using engineered bacteria.

If it rhymes, it must be true

"Because it's there": The 10 most poetic answers to concrete questions

History is full of memorable questions, but every so often, someone answers in a way that outlives the question itself. Whether spoken on a mountain, a battlefield, in a prison, or in the halls of government, these replies became famous because they condensed courage, wit, conviction, or wisdom into just a few unforgettable words. Discover 10 real exchanges in which a simple answer became part of history because of the beautiful way in which it was expressed.

British mountaineer George Mallory offered this famously concise reply during a 1923 interview before another attempt on Mount Everest, then the only major summit that had never been conquered, to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" His three words expressed the human desire to explore simply because something remains unexplored.

Mallory disappeared on Everest with fellow climber Andrew "Sandy" Irvine in June 1924, and historians still debate whether they reached the summit before dying. His answer became one of the defining quotations of exploration and later inspired John F. Kennedy's case for going to the Moon.

In 1897, newspapers mistakenly reported that Mark Twain had died while he was living in London. When a reporter contacted him to verify the rumor, the celebrated author responded with the dry wit that had made him America's best-known humorist.

Although the exact wording varies slightly among contemporary accounts, the sentence quickly became one of the most quoted lines in English. More than a century later, it remains the perfect comeback whenever rumors spread faster than the truth.

President John F. Kennedy answered the question "Why go to the Moon?" during his celebrated speech at Rice University in Houston on September 12, 1962. Rather than emphasizing technology or national prestige, he argued that difficult goals reveal the best qualities of a nation.

In the same address, Kennedy even referenced George Mallory's explanation for climbing Everest, linking mountaineering with space exploration. Seven years later, Apollo 11 fulfilled the challenge by landing the first humans on the Moon.

Abraham Lincoln was frequently criticized during the Civil War for showing compassion toward former enemies instead of seeking revenge. Rather than defending himself with a lengthy argument, he replied with a rhetorical question that completely reframed the criticism.

The answer reflected Lincoln's belief that reconciliation could achieve what military victory alone never could. It has endured as one of history's most elegant expressions of forgiveness, leadership, and political wisdom.

After becoming, with Tenzing Norgay, the first confirmed climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, Edmund Hillary continued exploring some of the world's most remote places. His curiosity never disappeared simply because one great goal had been achieved.

When asked why he kept climbing, Hillary's understated reply reflected the modest personality that made him admired far beyond mountaineering. Like George Mallory before him, he suggested that true explorers climb because exploration itself is the reward.

During the Battle of Flamborough Head in 1779, Captain John Paul Jones commanded the badly damaged Bonhomme Richard against the British warship Serapis. With his vessel burning and close to sinking, the British demanded that he surrender.

Jones's refusal instantly rallied his crew, who fought on and eventually captured the enemy ship. Whether recorded word for word or slightly embellished over time, the reply became one of the most celebrated declarations of courage in naval history.

Ancient writers tell that Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes in Corinth and generously offered to grant him any wish. Instead of requesting wealth, power, or honors, Diogenes simply asked the conqueror to stop blocking the sunshine.

The exchange became one of antiquity's most enduring philosophical anecdotes. In a single sentence, Diogenes demonstrated that a person who desires almost nothing cannot easily be controlled, even by the most powerful ruler on Earth.

According to one ancient tradition, Alexander the Great was asked the question "To whom do you leave your kingdom?" as he lay dying in Babylon in 323 BC. Rather than naming a specific heir, he reportedly answered with two words that left the future of his empire completely uncertain.

Whether historically exact or not, the reply became inseparable from Alexander's legend. Without an undisputed successor, his generals fought for decades in the Wars of the Diadochi, dividing one of history's greatest empires into rival kingdoms.

These words close Invictus, the 1875 poem by English writer William Ernest Henley. Nelson Mandela often drew strength from the poem during his imprisonment under South Africa's apartheid regime, where he spent 27 years behind bars, and used it to reply to a reporter who asked: "How do you survive 27 years in prison without losing your dignity?"

By embracing Henley's verse, Mandela transformed it into a universal symbol of resilience and inner freedom. The quotation came to embody his belief that while others may control your circumstances, they cannot govern your spirit.

Louis Armstrong was asked countless times by journalists to explain jazz, a genre that transformed American music during the twentieth century. Rather than describing technical aspects or blues traditions, he dismissed the very idea that jazz could be reduced to a definition.

His poetic and somewhat annoyed answer suggests that some experiences can only be understood by living them. More than a clever reply, it became one of the most quoted observations in music history.