My Favorite Color is Killer

I’ve been big on the color green since middle school, but there I’ve been to Home Depot, so I know there are about a million-billion shades of green. For a while, I was partial to forest green, but then… Well, then I read At Home by Bill Bryson, and found out about the wickedest shade of green ever (apologies to Elphaba from Wicked).

Paris green was invented in 1814 as a minor improvement on Scheele’s green, a yellow-tinged pigment invented about 30 years earlier. The new color was lush, emerald, and lovely… so much so that it quickly caught on in wallpaper and even among some famous impressionist painters. It really is striking.

Paris green did have one notable drawback that it shared with its predecessors: it killed people. As it turns out, the secret ingredient was arsenic. Oops.

Yeah. Next time you think black is the most metal color you can think of, remember the shade of green that literally killed people.