Almost 50 percent of Americans born at the turn of the 20th century had blue eyes. But immigration, intermarriage and genetics have all come together to stamp out that recessive trait. Today only about 1 of every 6 Americans has blue eyes.

An article by Douglas Belkin in the Boston Globe goes further into research studies on the subject, and also discusses one other thing I found interesting. Eugenicists in the 1930s were already noting the decline of blue-eyed people, and used it "as a rallying cry to support immigration restrictions." They even went so far as to create maps of the country, highlighting the regions with the largest and smallest percentages of blue-eyed individuals.

Blue eyes are a recessive trait, but our family must have a particularly hardy variation. Despite my father's beautiful brown eyes, my siblings and I all have blue or green eyes, and my three children all have blue eyes as well. Guess we're doing our part to make sure blue eyes don't disappear forever...