Happy Watermelon Day! 16 Sweet, Juicy Facts You Didn’t Know
Frida Kahlo painted them and poets have celebrated them. In his “Ode to the Watermelon,” Pablo Neruda described it as “a fruit from the thirst-tree” and “the green whale of the summer.” He wrote: “its hemispheres open/showing a flag/green, white, red,/ that dissolves into/wild rivers, sugar, delight!” Abundant in summer, watermelons are by their very nature sweet and heavy, plus they’re full of vitamins: A, B6, and C. Aug. 3 is National Watermelon Day. We celebrate it here with 16 fun facts.
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- Watermelons are 92 percent water.
- The word “watermelon” first appeared in English dictionaries in 1615, according to John Mariani’s The Dictionary of American Food and Drink.
- Watermelons are related to pumpkins, as well as cucumbers and squash.
- The world’s largest watermelon was grown by Lloyd Bright of Arkadelphia, Arkansas in 2005 and weighed 268.8 pounds, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
- Watermelons originated in southern Africa.
- They appear in Egyptian hieroglyphics nearly 5,000 years ago. Watermelon seeds were found in the tomb of King Tut.
- Early explorers carried watermelons on long trips as a source of water, like canteens.
- Watermelons are both fruits and vegetables.
- China is the largest producer of watermelons in the world today, followed by Turkey and Iran.
- The U.S. currently ranks fifth in watermelon production worldwide. Georgia, Florida, Texas, California and Arizona are the states that grow the most watermelon.
- On April 17, 2007, the Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill declaring watermelon as the official state vegetable.
- Over 1,200 varieties of watermelon are grown in 100 countries across the world.
- Watermelons were introduced to the New World by European colonists and African slaves. Spanish settlers started growing watermelon in Florida in 1576.
- One cup of watermelon has more lycopene, a pigment with antioxidant effects, than a large fresh tomato.
- You can eat the seeds. And the rind. Here’s a recipe for pickled watermelon rind.
- Are your muscles feeling sore? Have some watermelon before your next workout. The juice contains L-citrulline, which the body converts to L-arginine, an amino acid that helps relax blood vessels and improves circulation.
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Number of the Day: $22 Trillion
The total national debt surpassed $22 trillion on Monday. Total public debt outstanding reached $22,012,840,891,685.32, to be exact. That figure is up by more than $1.3 trillion over the past 12 months and by more than $2 trillion since President Trump took office.
Chart of the Week: The Soaring Cost of Insulin
The cost of insulin used to treat Type 1 diabetes nearly doubled between 2012 and 2016, according to an analysis released this week by the Health Care Cost Institute. Researchers found that the average point-of-sale price increased “from $7.80 a day in 2012 to $15 a day in 2016 for someone using an average amount of insulin (60 units per day).” Annual spending per person on insulin rose from $2,864 to $5,705 over the five-year period. And by 2016, insulin costs accounted for nearly a third of all heath care spending for those with Type 1 diabetes (see the chart below), which rose from $12,467 in 2012 to $18,494.
Chart of the Day: Shutdown Hits Like a Hurricane
The partial government shutdown has hit the economy like a hurricane – and not just metaphorically. Analysts at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Tuesday that the shutdown has now cost the economy about $26 billion, close to the average cost of $27 billion per hurricane calculated by the Congressional Budget Office for storms striking the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. From an economic point of view, it’s basically “a self-imposed natural disaster,” CRFB said.
Chart of the Week: Lowering Medicare Drug Prices
The U.S. could save billions of dollars a year if Medicare were empowered to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, according to a paper published by JAMA Internal Medicine earlier this week. Researchers compared the prices of the top 50 oral drugs in Medicare Part D to the prices for the same drugs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which negotiates its own prices and uses a national formulary. They found that Medicare’s total spending was much higher than it would have been with VA pricing.
In 2016, for example, Medicare Part D spent $32.5 billion on the top 50 drugs but would have spent $18 billion if VA prices were in effect – or roughly 45 percent less. And the savings would likely be larger still, Axios’s Bob Herman said, since the study did not consider high-cost injectable drugs such as insulin.
