SCOTLAND — The man who helped spark a viral global debate in 2015 about the color of a dress, is being accused of the attempted murder of his wife in the United Kingdom.
Keir Johnston, 38, who lives in Scotland, has been accused of 11 years of domestic violence and coercive control which led to an alleged attempt on his wife’s life, according to the United Kingdom’s news outlet, The Times.
Johnston appeared at Glasgow high court last week where he denied all charges against him, the Guardian reported. A further preliminary hearing is expected before a 2024 trial.
Johnston is accused of assaulting his wife repeatedly in their house in the Inner Hebrides and attempting to strangle her, according to the Guardian. The charges include pushing his wife against a wall, shouting at her, throttling her, threatening to kill her, and pointing a knife toward her between April 2019 and March 2022.
The dress at the center of the viral 2015 debate belonged to Johnston’s mother-in-law. The internet could not decide if the dress was black and blue or white and gold, The Washington Post reported. The outfit was nicknamed “the dress that broke the internet.”
Experts say that there is some science behind why people saw different colors.
“Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance,” Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington told Wired of the phenomenon of color perception, according to The Washington Post. “But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.”