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维多利亚瀑布上的彩虹，赞比亚 Rainbow at Victoria Falls in Zambia (© Dietmar Temps/Shutterstock)

The rainbow connection

April showers bring rainbows, and on April 3, the celebration of Find a Rainbow Day. The rainbow shown here is at Victoria Falls in southern Africa on the Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Scottish explorer David Livingstone named the falls in honor of Britain's Queen Victoria, though it's also still called by its indigenous Lozi language name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means 'the smoke that thunders.' According to some historical records, local villagers described the falls to Livingstone as 'Seongo' or 'Chongwe,' which means 'The Place of the Rainbow,' since rainbows usually appear in the fall's constant spray. Under a bright moon, the falls will produce a 'moonbow.'

French philosopher and scientist René Descartes did some of the first studies of optics and rainbows around 1637--but no one at the time understood where the colors came from. In 1666, Isaac Newton explained that sunlight is really a mixture of the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.