Carrots were originally purple or yellow.
Why it is true
The orange variety we know today was cultivated by Dutch farmers in the seventeenth century, possibly as a tribute to the House of Orange and its political status.
Source: Botanical History
Would you rather be asked first?
This is the reading side of the site, so the answer is in the sentence above — that is the whole point of it. Test yourself works the other way round: the question comes on its own, and the fact and the explanation only appear once you have answered.