Driving Notes

• About 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged in US each year. That’s the largest seasonal card-sending occasion of the year, next to Christmas.
• Women purchase 85% of all valentines.
• In order of popularity, Valentine’s Day cards are given to teachers, children, mothers, wives, sweethearts and pets.
• Parents receive 1 out of every 5 valentines.
• About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.
• Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are the biggest holidays for giving flowers.
• Worldwide, over 50 million roses are given for Valentine’s Day each year.
• California produces 60 percent of American roses, but the vast number sold on Valentine’s Day in the United States are imported, mostly from South America. Approximately 110 million roses, the majority red, will be sold and delivered within a three-day time period.
• 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine’s Day are men, while only 27 percent are women.
• Men buy most of the millions of boxes of candy and bouquets of flowers given on Valentine’s Day.
• In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
• The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.
• Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentines Day candy box in the late 1800s.
• Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on the telephone, an “Improvement in Telegraphy”, on Valentine’s Day, 1876.
• Amongst the earliest Valentine’s Day gifts were candies. The most common were chocolates in heart shaped boxes.c

AS PROMISED, here are the “clean” Winter Olympics-themed Valentine’s love lines you can try out on your significant other (my daughter would call these ‘Dad’ jokes):

• Are you an ice skater? You’ve got a great figure.
• I’m no curler, but I think I could sweep you off your feet!
• Hey, are you a skiing event, ‘cause I would travel cross-country for you!
• My gold medal might be shiny, but it looks like a dull penny compared to that sparkle in your eyes.
• Your legs must be tired because you’ve been speed skating through my mind all night.

Thanks for listening!
– Joe