What Well Known TV Personality Got To Mold The 100th Billion Crayola Crayon?

Each year, on March 31st children and adults alike, pick up their favorite colors for National Crayon Day. Opening up a box of crayons opens up a world of imagination and hours of fun.

• 50 AD – Wax paintings first appeared in Ancient Rome.
• Mid 17th Century – The word “crayon” is first used in French and Latin meaning a colorful stick of chalk or wax.
• 1813 – The first time the term “crayon” was used in a literary sense, was in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• 19th Century – With Paris considered the world’s artistic hub, crayons of pure wax are produced for the first time here.
• 1903 – Binney & Smith created the Crayola Division and produced colored wax crayons for children for the first time.
  • The first Crayola crayon box sold for a nickel. It included the same colors available in the eight-count box today: red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange, black and brown.
  • This color mix, along with their names, remained unchanged for 45 years.
• 1904 – Binney & Smith presented their An-Du-Septic chalk at the Colombian Exposition in St. Louis winning a gold medal.  The chalk was designed to be dustless at many teachers’ requests and was an immediate success.
• 1962 – Crayola changed the name of their “Flesh” crayon to “Peach”
• 1996 – Even Mr. Fred Rogers has had his hand in the history of crayons by molding the official 100 billionth crayon in February 1996 at the Crayola plant in Easton.
• 1998 – The 64 pack of Crayola crayons was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
• 2003 – To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Crayola unveiled the world’s largest crayon – over 15 feet long, 1300 pounds, color blue.
• Wax and chalk-based crayons have been used by artists around the world for centuries. Edwin Binney created the brightly colored crayons we are familiar with today.  He was part owner of Binney & Smith, a company that produced products such as paint, pigments and slate pencils for schools.
• There are more than 100 Crayola crayon colors. There are 120 shades available now, to be exact.
• Crayons have one of the most recognized scents in the nation. The odor is a result of stearic acid — a derivative of beef fat — added to the batch to give the coloring tool it’s waxy consistency.
• The scent of Crayola crayons is among the twenty most recognizable to American adults
• America’s favorite crayon color is blue.
• Crayon stubs are informally known as “leftolas.”
• that the average child wears down 730 crayons by their 10th birthday.
• Alice Binney, the wife of Edwin Binney, came up with Crayola by combining the words “craie,” which is French for chalk, and “ola,” for oleaginous, because crayons are made from petroleum-based paraffin.
• One of the few independent buyers of Crayola crayons is artist Herb Williams. He’s known for creating sculptures made up of hundreds of thousands of crayons, which he buys from Crayola in packs of 3000.  
• Crayola makes 3 billion crayons a year…or 12 million per day. That’s enough crayons to circle the world six times!
• Emerson Moser, who worked for Crayola for 35 years was color blind.
• On average, children between the ages of two and seven color
  28 minutes every day.
• 50 – the number of crayon colors retired by Crayola.
• 18th – the ranking in terms of how familiar the crayon scent is to adults.
• 15 feet – the length of the world’s biggest crayon.
• 223 billion – the number of Crayola crayons produced to date.
• Red barns and black tires got their colors thanks in part to two of Binney & Smith’s earliest products: red pigment and carbon black. Red and black are also the most popular crayon colors, mostly because children tend to use them for outlining.
• Over time, the colors have changed, and the names have become more creative. Some of the most interesting Crayola crayon names include:
  • Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown
  • Robin’s Egg Blue
  • Tropical Rain Forest (blue-green)
  • Macaroni and Cheese (yellow-orange)
  • Razzle Dazzle Rose
  • Purple Mountains Majesty
  • Tickle Me Pink
  • Granny Smith Apple (medium green)

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Good Housekeeping

Wacky Uses

Days of the Year

National Today