These facts are a mix of different emotions. Some may shock you, some will have you utter "Oooh, I did not know that". Others will have you slapping your knees, but no matter the surprise, you'll surely learn something new: 

1. In Japan, Valentine’s Day was first introduced in 1936 and has become widely popular. Only women buy Valentine chocolates for their spouses, boyfriends, or friends because of a translation error made by a chocolate company executive in the initial campaign to popularize Valentine's Day.

In fact, it is one of few days of the year many single women will reveal their crush on a man by giving him chocolate. In the 1980s the Japanese National Confectionery Industry Association launched a successful campaign to make March 14 a "reply day", where men are expected to return the favour to those who gave them chocolates on Valentine's Day, calling it White Day for the color of the chocolates being offered. 

The men are expected to give back gifts two to three times more expensive than what they received. Not returning the gift is perceived as the man placing himself in a position of superiority, even if excuses are given. Returning a present of equal value is considered as a way to say that the relationship is being cut.

2. In Brazil, the Dia dos Namorados ("Lovers' Day", or "Boyfriends'/Girlfriends' Day") is celebrated on June 12, probably because that is the day before Saint Anthony's day, known there as the marriage saint, when traditionally many single women perform popular rituals, called simpatias, in order to find a good husband or boyfriend. 

Couples exchange gifts, chocolates, cards and flower bouquets. The February 14 Valentine's Day is not celebrated at all because it usually falls too little before or too little after the Brazilian Carnival, which can fall anywhere from early February to early March and lasts almost a week.

Because of the absence of Valentine's Day and due to the celebrations of the Carnivals, Brazil is a popular tourist spot during February for Western singles who want to get away from the holiday and meet someone.

3. In the United States, about 190 million Valentine's Day cards are sent each year, not including the hundreds of millions of cards school children exchange. Additionally, in recent decades Valentine's Day has become increasingly commercialized and a popular gift-giving event, with Valentine’s Day themed advertisements encouraging spending on loved ones. 

In fact, in the United States alone, the average Valentine’s spending has increased every year, from $108 a person in 2010 to $131 in 2013.

4. In China, Valentine's Day is called lovers' festival (情人节). The "Chinese Valentine's Day" is the Qixi Festival, celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. It commemorates a day on which a legendary cowherder and weaving maid are allowed to be together. For those who have seen the movie Karate Kid, starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, this legend was shown in the movie. 

In Chinese culture, there is an older observance related to lovers, called "The Night of Sevens". According to the legend, the Cowherd star and the Weaver Maid star are normally separated by the Milky Way (silvery river) but are allowed to meet by crossing it on the 7th day of the 7th month of the Chinese calendar.

5. Alban Butler in his Lifes of the Principal Saints (1756–1759) claimed without proof that men and women in Lupercalia drew names from a jar to make couples, and that modern Valentine's letters originated from this custom. 

In reality, this practice originated in the Middle Ages, with no link to Lupercalia, with men drawing the names of girls at random to couple with them. This custom was combated by priests, for example by Frances de Sales around 1600, apparently by replacing it with a religious custom of girls drawing the names of apostles from the altar. 

However, this religious custom is recorded as soon as the 13th century in the life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, so it could have a different origin.

6. YouTube was launched on Valentine's Day, 2005 by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.

7. In Saudi Arabia, in 2002 and 2008, religious police banned the sale of all Valentine's Day items, telling shop workers to remove any red items, because the day is considered a Christian holiday. This ban has created a black market for roses and wrapping paper. 

In 2012 the religious police arrested more than 140 Muslims for celebrating the holiday, and confiscated all red roses from flower shops. Muslims are not allowed to celebrate the holiday, and non-Muslims can celebrate only behind closed doors.

In 2014, religious police in Saudi Arabia arrested five men for celebrating St. Valentine's Day "in the company" of six women. The Buraidah criminal court pronounced sentences totaling 32 years of imprisonment and 4,500 lashes to the men.

8. Singles Awareness (or Appreciation) Day" (S.A.D.) is a facetious holiday, celebrated for single people (although some prefer to celebrate it for couples). It serves as an alternative to Valentine's Day for people who are single or not involved in a romantic relationship. Some people who observe S.A.D. do so out of spite for Valentine's Day, as a Hallmark holiday, or for other reasons.

On Singles Awareness Day, single people gather to celebrate or to commiserate in their single status. Some want to remind romantic couples that they don't need to be in a relationship to celebrate life.

9. On Valentine’s Day, many people buy flowers. Different colored roses have different meanings. Red means love, yellow means friendship, and pink means friendship or sweetheart. 

Red carnations mean admiration, white carnations mean pure love, red chrysanthemums mean love, forget-me-nots mean true love, primrose means young love, and larkspur means an open heart.

10. In 2015 three teenagers (Gamble, Souvannarat & Shepherd) planned to have a mass murder-suicide. The trio met on the website Tumblr, where they shared an obsession with death, true crime, heavy metal music, and Nazi imagery. Gamble's blog included imagery of Nazis and the Columbine High School massacre.

On February 5, 2015, Gamble reblogged a photo Souvannarath posted on Tumblr saying "Valentine's Day, it's going down", hinting to the would-be shooting. In the early hours of February 13, while police surrounded Gamble's home and found him already dead by way of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Souvannarath and Shepherd were apprehended at Halifax Airport shortly after 2AM and taken into custody.

11. Cupid the God of erotic love, attraction and affection is a common symbol for Valentine's Day. Cupid is winged, allegedly, because lovers are flighty and likely to change their minds, and boyish because love is irrational. His symbols are the arrow and torch, "because love wounds and inflames the heart." These attributes and their interpretation were established by late antiquity, as summarized by Isidore of Seville (636 AD) in his Etymologies. 

Cupid is also sometimes depicted blindfolded and described as blind, not so much in the sense of sightless—since the sight of the beloved can be a spur to love—as blinkered and arbitrary. As described by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1590s):

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love's mind of any judgement taste;

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is love said to be a child

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled."

12. Vinegar valentines are greeting cards, or rather insult cards. They are decorated with a caricature, and below an insulting poem. Apparently given on Valentine's Day, the caricature and poem is about the "type" that the recipient belongs to (spinster, floozy, dude, scholar, etc).

These cynical, sarcastic, often mean-spirited greeting cards were first produced in America as early as the 1840s by a variety of printing companies. Cheaply made, vinegar valentines were usually printed on one side of a single sheet of paper and cost only a penny. 

The unflattering cards reportedly created a stir throughout all social levels, sometimes provoking fistfights and arguments. Ironically, the receiver, not the sender, was responsible for the cost of postage up until the 1840s. Therefore a person in those days paid for the privilege of being insulted by an often anonymous "admirer".

13. The modern cliché Valentine's Day poem, 'Roses are Red', has had numerous satirical versions, which have long circulated in children's lore. Such as:

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

Onions stink.

And so do you

The Marx Brothers' film Horse Feathers has Chico Marx describing the symptoms of cirrhosis as:

Cirrhosis are red,

so violets are blue,

so sugar is sweet,

so so are you.

Benny Hill version:

Roses are reddish

Violets are bluish

If it weren't for Christmas

We'd all be Jewish.

14. In Europe, Saint Valentine's Keys are given to lovers "as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver’s heart", as well as to children, in order to ward off epilepsy (called Saint Valentine's Malady).

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