- A cucumber is 95% Water. It also contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc. There are just 16 calories in an average sized cucumber.
- It is the high percentage of water in them which makes cucumbers cool. The inside of a cucumber is about 10 degrees cooler than the air outside. This property means they can be used to cool the blood and ease swelling, which is why people having spa treatments and facials often have cucumber slices over their eyes and is also the origin of the phrase, "cool as a cucumber".
- While usually perceived as vegetables, like Tomatoes, they are actually the fruit of a creeping vine plant, Cucumis sativus, which belongs to the gourd family.
- Cucumbers originated in India over 3000 years ago. They are mentioned in the Bible and the legend of Gilgamesh and were grown by the Greeks and Romans. The Roman emperor Tiberius was especially fond of them. His gardeners made sure they were on his table every day of the year by planting them in moveable frames so they could be always in the sun, and covered with frames in winter.
- Cucumbers fell out of favour in the 17th century, along with uncooked vegetables and fruits in general. In 1663, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that he'd been told an acquaintance had died from eating cucumbers. They were thought to bring on "summer diseases" and be unfit for human consumption. Some believe that is how cucumbers got their common name, because they were fit only for Cows to eat and were referred to as "cowcumbers".
- The Romans used cucumbers to treat Scorpion bites, bad eyesight, and to scare away Mice. Although if The Internet is to be believed, they are far more likely to scare away the Cat. There are any number of videos showing cats being scared out of their wits when they spot a cucumber their owners have placed behind them. There are some cats, however, who'll just sniff at it and go "meh", or even try to eat it. Science hasn't figured out why so many cats are frightened of cucumbers. One theory is that it's not so much that it's a cucumber, but it's an unfamiliar object which has apparently crept up behind them, like a predator.
- The cucumber genome was sequenced in 2009, and they have been grown in space as part of an experiment to see whether plant roots grow downwards because of gravity or because of water. FYI, it's water.
- Records for the largest and longest cucumbers seem to be broken quite often so don't take these as gospel truth, but at time of writing, the heaviest cucumber was 12.9 kg (23 lb 7 oz) grown by David Thomas of Worcestershire, UK, and the longest (43in) was grown by Butch Taulton of Knoxville, Md. The largest cucumber plant is covers an area of 56.7 m² (610.31 ft²) and is located at the Epcot Centre in Disney World, Florida. There's also a somewhat wacky cucumber record, which is the most cucumbers sliced from a person's mouth with a sword in one minute. The record stands at 46, by Ashrita Furman of New York in 2017. Homagni Baptista and Anurakta O'Neill deserve a mention here as the brave souls who held the cucumbers in their mouths for Ashrita to lop off.
- A gherkin is actually a kind of small cucumber which is usually pickled. The word gherkin actually derives from the early modern Dutch word, gurken or augurken which means "small pickled cucumber". Standard sized cucumbers can be pickled, too. In northern England, these are sometimes referred to as ‘wallies’.
- How come cucumber Sandwiches are associated with upper class afternoon teas? One theory is that the lower classes would prefer more substantial meat sandwiches, which might actually be one of the main meals of the day, whereas for the upper classes they were a delicate snack served to visitors in the afternoons, and would be followed by supper later in the day.
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