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Fancy

As 2013 has just begun anew, we’re pumped to admit we’re feeling blue.

Sky, Cerulean, robin’s egg, baby, cobalt, royal, Prussian, Parisien, midnight. Blue. How has this color managed to wedge itself so firmly into our human existence that it characterizes — in American English alone — depression (“feeling blue”) and temperance (“blue laws”)?

From Egyptian sarcophagi, to Elvis’ shoes, to UN military helmets, blue has an inextricable place in the human catalog, but in a geological sense, the color (450–495 nanometers on the visible spectrum) was important long before we got here. To every not-blind person, both the sky and the ocean — the two geological features that shape & inspire our existence on this planet more than any other — are blue.