Weird Japanese: ゐ and ゑ

Being the huge Japanese language nerd I am, I was shocked to find out that there are two hiragana / katakana I didn't know! 

I was looking for lists of the kanji that hiragana and katakana were derived from, then found these images on Wikipedia - there used to be symbols for wi and we as well!

On the left, you can see the column for わゐゑを！

My husband said they learn this in 'Japanese' class in school and even when he was young, sometimes he'd see older women's names written using these hiragana.

They are pronounced イ and エ, but were probably slightly different sounds from the sounds in アイウエオ. (If you know the kanji that these hiragana / katakana came from, those are pronounced イ （為 or 井）and エ（恵）.)

This chart has ワヰヱヲ at the bottom.

Anyway, if any of you are also nerds about kanji, you might enjoy these charts showing the kanji that the phonetic systems came from. If you have Japanese input on your computer, you can write those hiragana and katakana by typing wi and we.