Curious Facts About Eyes and Glasses

Most people agree that eyes are the body’s most important sensory organ. We perceive almost our entire environment through our eyes and they often do amazing things! We have collected some curious facts about eyes and glasses.

The eye and glasses

• In Germany, 40.1 million people aged 16 and over wear glasses, which accounts for two-thirds of the population
• Recycled glasses? They actually exist. At the Silmo Eyewear Fair in Paris, visitors were able to examine eyewear made from all sorts of everyday objects such as skateboards or even jeans. Could this be the trend for the coming year?
• Italian monks were the first to make semi-circular grinded lenses in the 13th century. The material used for this was the rock crystal beryl, which when grinded looked like a kind of magnifying glass. The pioneer of glasses was thus created.
• The human eye weighs only about 7.5 grams and has the diameter of a 50-cent coin.
• Six muscles per eye enable us to turn and move the eye. One of these muscles is even the most active muscle in the body.
• Approximately 5 percent of Germans suffer from red-green blindness. The colours red and green appear to the affected persons as shades of grey. Ten times more men than women are affected by this affliction.
• A human being blinks an average of 10,000 times on one single day.

Crazy wildlife 

• The eyes of an octopus are about as big as a watermelon. The average size is about 25 cm. Squid have, therefore, the biggest eyes in the animal world. Now imagine that fish generally cannot close their eyes.
• The eyes of an ostrich are larger than its brain.
• Butterflies can see ultraviolet light.
• With a third eye one can see better: a lizard species from New Zealand has a third eye! The so-called parietal eye is an upward-directed light-sense organ in the middle of the skull of the lizard, which, above all, serves to perceive differences in brightness.

Curious facts about sunglasses

• In ancient Rome, Emperor Nero had a pair of deluxe sunglasses made. To protect himself from the sun, he had green emerald grinded and watched the gladiator fights with the aid of them, something not everyone could afford.
• At a very early time, the Inuits were also very inventive: they made snow goggles to protect themselves against the glare of the sunlight that was strongly reflected in the snow. They carved slits in the bones of seals and tied them in front of their eyes with leather straps. Pretty clever.
• For a long time, sunglasses were regarded as annoying and were by no means a fashion accessory. During the Second World War, however, American pilots wore a particularly cool model, which is still one of the most popular. The RayBan Aviator was thus the first sunglasses to become a fashion accessory.
• Not only people should protect their eyes from the sun, even dogs need a sunscreen on their snouts under certain conditions. Avalanche dogs, for example, often walk for hours through the highly reflective snow and therefore wear special sunglasses for dogs.