Bob Dylan Donning dots for more than four decades, Bob Dylan has become one of the polka dot's greatest abassadors. Dylan first integrated the polka dot into his wardrobe for the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. After sporting dots throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan wore a polka-dot shirt at The Band's farewell concert. Dots were a regular part of Dylan's concert attire in the 1980s, and in 1994, the god of rock wore a polka dot shirt for his MTV Unplugged concert. Dylan introduced the dot to rock and roll.

Polka Dot Jersey Every year the Tour de France awards a polka dot jersey to the King of the Mountains, the race's most agressive, most successful climber. In July 2003, the tour awarded the jersey to Richard Virenque, a Frenchman had won the polka dot jersey five times before. Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes and Belgian climber Lucien Van Impe have also won the jersey six times.

Artsy Polka Dots Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is most famous for his use of comic book lettering, speech ballons, and the Ben-Day dot (just a fancy word for the polka dot, of course). Known by art aficionados as the "master of the stereotype," Lichtenstein first depicted comic strip frames with Ben-Day dots in 1961. Although he experimented with Futurism and Surrealism in the 1970s and the 1980s. Lichtenstein returned to his signature dotted style in the early 1990s.

Polka Dot Politics Unbeknownst to many in the public, politicians have been tying polka dot ties since WWII. Inspired by Churchill's signature polka dot bow ties, former British Prime Minister John Major and current British Prime Minister Tony Blair have both been photographed with polka dots around their necks. In his first year in office, former Prime Minister of Japan Toshiki Kaifu (1989 to 1991) won over the Diet and the Japanese citizenry with eye-catching polka dot neckwear.

Polka Dot Plant Beyond the fashion runways, polka dots have made their mark on plant world. The polka dot plant, a Madagascar native sometimes called the freckle-face, is a small annual that flowers in both the summer and the fall. Although it grows only six to ten inches tall, the plant produces big color. Patches of white, pink, and rose dots can be found on the plant's green foliage, and plant breeders are working to widen the range of colored dots produced by the tropical plant.