Royal blue

Royal blue describes both a bright shade and a dark shade of azure blue. It is said to have been invented by millers in Rode, Somerset, a consortium of which won a competition to make a dress for the British queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Traditionally, dictionaries define royal blue as a deep to dark blue, often with a purple or faint reddish tinge.

By the 1950s, many people began to think of royal blue as a brighter color, and it is this brighter color that was chosen as the web color "royal blue" (the web colors when they were formulated in 1987 were originally known as the X11 colors). The World Wide Web Consortium designated the keyword "royalblue" to be this much brighter color, rather than the traditional darker version of royal blue.

Variations of royal blue

Queen blue

At right is displayed the color queen blue.

Queen blue is a medium tone of royal blue.

The first recorded use of queen blue as a color name in English was in 1926. Before that, since 1661, this color had been called queen’s blue.

Royal Blue (train)

The Royal Blue was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O)'s flagship passenger train between New York City and Washington, D.C., in the United States, beginning in 1890. The Baltimore-based B&O also used the name between 1890 and 1917 for its improved passenger service between New York and Washington launched in the 1890s, collectively dubbed the Royal Blue Line. Using variants such as the Royal Limited and Royal Special for individual Royal Blue trains, the B&O operated the service in partnership with the Reading Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Principal intermediate cities served were Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. Later, as Europe reeled from the carnage of World War I and connotations of European royalty fell into disfavor, the B&O discreetly omitted the sobriquet Royal Blue Line from its New York passenger service and the Royal Blue disappeared from B&O timetables. Beginning in 1917, former Royal Blue Line trains were renamed: the Royal Limited (inaugurated on May 15, 1898), for example, became the National Limited, continuing west from Washington to St. Louis via Cincinnati. During the Depression, the B&O hearkened back to the halcyon pre-World War I era when it launched a re-christened Royal Blue train between New York and Washington in 1935. The B&O finally discontinued passenger service north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958, and the Royal Blue faded into history.

Nicorette (1989 yacht)

Nicorette (also known as Charles Jourdan, Royal Blue) is a maxi yacht designed by Guy Ribadeau-Dumas and built by MAG-Nordhal Mabire.

Career

Charles Jourdan participated in the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race.Nicorette won the 1995 Fastnet Race helmed by Ludde Ingvall.Royal Blue won the 1997 Fastnet Race, helmed by Gunnar Ekdahl.

See also

References