You got your hair slicked back and those Wayfarers on and I wear my sunglasses at night, just don’t get caught without a pair of cheap sunglasses. To protect eyes from the sun, spray or a wayward hook, high-quality shades are standard equipment on a fishing kayak. For landlubbers, sunglasses are a fashion statement and cultural symbol. Here are some interesting facts to help you view sunglasses more clearly.
8 Things You Didn’t Know About Sunglasses
Inuit were the first kayak anglers to wear sunglasses. To prevent snow blindness, the polar natives cut slits in walrus ivory and covered their eyes.
ZZ Top likes cheap sunglasses and Corey Hart wears sunglasses at night, but Sir Elton John is music’s king of tinted eyewear. His collection numbers in the thousands and includes outrageous diamond-studded, star-shaped, feather-framed, striped and polka dot shades.
Next time you lose or break your sunglasses, take comfort: you are not alone. In North America, someone misplaces or sits on their sunglasses every 14 minutes. That adds up to 37,500 pairs of broken and lost sunglasses each year.
June 27 is National Sunglasses Day. The cool holiday highlights the importance of protecting your eyes from UV rays. Prolonged exposure can cause eye cancer, cataracts and macular degeneration.
The most popular sunglass frame of all time, the Wayfarer, was introduced by Ray-Ban in the early 1950s. The heavy black frames and dark lenses were popularized in movies including The Blues Brothers and Risky Business and by celebrities Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, James Dean and President John F. Kennedy.
Roman Emperor Nero sported the first sunglasses. To cut the sun’s glare while watching gladiators battle, Nero wore enormous polished emeralds over his eyes.
If the price of premium sunglasses makes you wince, Chopard ’s 24-carat gold and four-carat diamond shades retail for $408,000.
Bausch & Lomb invented Aviator sunglasses for World War II pilots. The legendary design was the first to feature polarized lenses, developed by Edwin H. Land, the cofounder of Polaroid.
Feature photo: Vijesh Datt/Unsplash
