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05-26-2019 04:13 PM - edited 05-26-2019 04:35 PM
This is a fun story! Do you know how or why polka dots came to be?
While on one of a cruise's caribbean island excursion offering, our tour group was taken to a prior governor's mansion turned museum. Before we were taken into the kitchen with the walls painted white with huge black polka dots, the guide asked us if we knew why it was painted that way. The huge polka dots deter flies from entering the kitchen because flies have multi sectioned eyes and the polka dots confuses them. Therefore, supposedly, they stay out! My husband wanted to know if I wanted to do that to our kitchen too, LOL!
Also, because of the black and white patterns on zebras, they are not pestered by flies either.
Who knew?
05-26-2019 05:01 PM
@Villagesbabe That's interesting and makes sense. As I was reading your post I remember the first movie staring Jeff Goldblum "THE FLY".
Over and over we had to see on the big screen what Jeff Goldblum was seeing when he turned into a Fly. It was weird and gross but remembering back, I can see where it would be confusing.
05-26-2019 06:59 PM
I thought Susan Graver invented them! LOL
05-26-2019 07:41 PM
What an interesting and memorable little story.
And it did it's job!
But everything on the internet about the origin of polka dots leaves your version out of the story.
"Polka" means "Polish woman" in Polish, while the Polka dance is Bohemian.
Dots are dots, while Polka Dots are dots that repeat in a specific pattern.
Nothing there about kitchens or flies.
But who knows, maybe that's another practical reason for hanging up pots and pans when they're not in use.
I suppose they could appear as huge dark 'dots' suspended in the air.
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