Valentine's Day Fun Facts and Messages from Kaplan Students

In the run up to Valentine's Day, we asked our students around the world to share their messages to friends, family and to the world in general! We've also found some bonus fun facts about Valentine's Day. Practice your reading, share them with friends, or feel smug in knowing more about this old holiday.

Check out some of our favorite messages from students around the globe:

What is a holiday without fun facts? Here are some of the best about the day of chocolate and hearts.

• Whether or not you're with someone, you can always treat yourself, or someone you love on Valentine's Day. You might, for example, get your pet a Valentine's Day gift, like 3% of American pet owners who do just that.
• It may seem like a holiday created for greeting card makers but... the first declaration of Valentine's Day as a holiday was actually in 1537, and the first greeting card for Valetine's Day was only produced in 1913.
• Did you know that the idiom "to wear your heart on your sleeve" is actually related to this weekend's holiday? The idiom, which means to let everyone know your feelings, comes from a practice from the Middle Ages. Young men and women would draw names from a bowl to find out who their valentines would be, and wear those names on their sleeves.
• Love poetry has been around even longer than Valentine's Day. The oldest surviving love poem was written on a clay tablet around 3500 BC...
• ...but the chocolate to go with it came along much later. Richard Cadbury, son of the founder of Cadbury chocolate, invented the first Valentine's Day candy box in the late 1800s.