Interesting Valentine’s Day Facts

• It is estimated that one billion Valentine cards are sent each year.

• Definitely it wasn’t just a day invented by the greeting cards industry. Valentine’s  Day has its roots in Roman times.

• The association of romance with St Valentines day dates from around the 14th century. The first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer.

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• The oldest known Valentine poem was sent in 1415 AD. by the Duke of Orleans to his French wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. It is still on display in a museum in England.

• The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.

• The most expensive Valentine card ever sent was by an Indian Prince to a woman in London in 1891. It was set in carved ivory surrounded by diamonds and cost 2,50,000 pounds.

• The oldest surviving love poem is written in a clay tablet from the times of the Sumerians, inventors of writing, around 3500 BC. It was unromantically named Istanbul #2461 by the archaeologists who unearthed it.

• Teachers receive the most Valentine’s Day cards.