Valentine's Day

♥ The association of middle of February with love and fertility goes back to ancient times.

♥ Women purchase 85% of all valentines.

♥ In order of popularity, Valentine's Day cards are given to teachers, children, mothers, wives, sweethearts and pets.

♥ Parents receive 1 out of every 5 valentines.

♥ About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine's Day gifts to their pets.

♥ Valentine's Day and Mother's Day are the biggest holidays for giving flowers.

♥ California produces 60 percent of American roses, but the vast number sold on Valentine's Day in the United States are imported, mostly from South America. Approximately 110 million roses, the majority red, will be sold and delivered within a three-day time period.

♥ 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine's Day are men, while only 27 percent are women.

♥ Men buy most of the millions of boxes of candy and bouquets of flowers given on Valentine's Day.

♥ In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

♥ The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare's lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine's Day.

♥ Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentines Day candy box in the late 1800s.

♥ Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on the telephone, an "Improvement in Telegraphy", on Valentine's Day, 1876.

♥ The oldest surviving love poem to date is written in a clay tablet from the times of the Sumerians, inventors of writing, around 3500 B.C

♥ Amongst the earliest Valentine's Day gifts were candies. The most common were chocolates in heart shaped boxes.

♥ In some countries, a young woman may receive a gift of clothing from a prospective suitor. If the gift is kept, then it means she has accepted his proposal of marriage.

♥ In Medieval times, girls ate unusual foods on St. Valentine's Day to make them dream of their future husband.

♥ In Ancient Rome during the evening, all the young marriageable girls used to place a note with their name on it into a big urn. Each young man used to draw out a name of a girl from the urn and became paired with that girl for the rest of the year. Quite often, the paired couple would fall in love and marry. Later, when Christianity spread through Rome, the custom of finding a mate through lottery was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. People felt that mates should be chosen by sight and not luck.

♥ Around 498 AD, Pope Gelasius declared 14th February as Valentine's Day to honor saint Valentine of Rome - the patron saint of love and lovers.