Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tyrian purple required the secretions of the spiny dye-murex sea snail, and thousands of snails were needed to produce even a small quantity of dye. In the year 2000, a gram of Tyrian purple made from ten thousand mollusks according to the original formula cost two thousand euros. The labor-intensive extraction process and the enormous number of mollusks required made it one of the most costly materials in the ancient world.
William Henry Perkin, an eighteen-year-old British chemistry student, accidentally created the first synthetic aniline dye, called mauveine or mauve, in 1856. He was attempting to synthesize quinine when the experiment produced the purple compound instead. Perkin went on to build a factory and produce the dye industrially, making the color affordable for the first time.
The Purple Rain Protest took place on the 2nd of September 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa. Police used a water cannon loaded with purple dye to spray thousands of demonstrators protesting apartheid. The event gave rise to the slogan The Purple Shall Govern.
Born to the purple means someone born into a life of wealth and privilege. The phrase originated in the Byzantine Empire, where empresses gave birth in a chamber called the Purple Chamber, and children born there were described as born to the purple to distinguish them as legitimate heirs from rulers who seized power through political intrigue or military force.
Pope Paul II issued the decree in 1464 because the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 had destroyed the great dye works of the city and cut off the supply of Tyrian purple to Roman Catholic Europe. Cardinals were assigned scarlet dyed with kermes instead, while bishops received a less expensive purple made from indigo and kermes.
Purple was one of the three official colors of the Women's Suffrage movement in Britain and Ireland, standing for loyalty and dignity alongside white for purity and green for hope. The movement's campaign in the United States ultimately succeeded with the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. In the 1970s, the color was adopted again by the women's liberation movement as a tribute to the Suffragettes.