21st July: Melons

The French Revolutionary Calendar celebrated melons on this date. Here are 10 facts about melons.

1. Melons belong to the Cucurbitaceae family, meaning they are related to squash, Pumpkin, gourds and Cucumber.
2. Are they a fruit or a vegetable? We tend to see them as fruit, but then, their cousins listed above are all seen as vegetables. The distinction is important to the US state of Oklahoma, since they made watermelon the state vegetable in 2007. They considered making it the state fruit, but they already had one - the strawberry. Not everyone was happy - State Senator Nathan Dahm tried to knock the melon off its pedestal on the basis it was a fruit. Botanically, melons are berries.
3. Cantaloupe melons get their name from the Italian papal village of Cantalup, where they were first cultivated in the 1700s.
4. Watermelons get their name from being 92% Water. In fact, early explorers would use them as water canteens.
5. Melons were popular in ancient Egypt. They are depicted in Egyptian paintings, and melon seeds have been found in tombs, including that of Tutenkhamen.
6. It's not just the flesh of the fruit that's edible. Watermelon rinds can be eaten, and are full of nutrients. In China, they stir fry, stew or even pickle them. The seeds can be dried and roasted, as pumpkin seeds are, and eaten as a snack.
7. In Japan, you can get the most expensive melons in the world, Yubari King, which have a unique sweet flavour. They only grow in one small area of Japan and hence can cost more than $10,000 each. The Japanese have also perfected the art of growing square melons, making them easier to pack and transport.
8. The largest melon ever grown weighed 350.5 pounds, as much as a man with the build of an American football player. It was grown by Chris Kent, of Sevierville, Tennessee, in 2013.
9. There are other Guinness World Records relating to watermelons which are a bit wacky. There's the record for watermelon seed spitting, held by Jason Schayot since 1995. He spat a melon seed 75 feet 2 inches. The record for the number of watermelons smashed by a person's head in one minute is 43, achieved by Tafzi Ahmed in 2011. Olga Liashchuk holds the record for crushing watermelons open with her thighs - she managed three in 14.65 seconds in 2014. Finally, one you definitely shouldn't try at home. In 2016, Ashrita Furman and Bipin Larkin achieved the record for the number of melons which could be sliced on the stomach of someone who's lying on a bed of nails at the time - 14.
10. Mark Twain called watermelons the food of angels.

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