Original photo by Enrico Morando/ Alamy Stock Photo
Watermelon snow may sound like something from the Candy Land board game, but the phenomenon is very real — Aristotle even wrote about a “reddish” snowbank he found on Mount Parnassus in the fourth century BCE. Visitors to Antarctica, the Himalayas, the Rockies, the French Alps, and Yosemite National Park have also glimpsed this colorful occurrence. In the 1800s, Scottish botanist Robert Brown finally determined the culprit: a species of algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis. Under a microscope, single-celled C. nivalis appear green, but they also feature a secondary red pigment, astaxanthin, which is a carotenoid, part of the chemical family that can make carrots orange. This astaxanthin is dormant for much of the year, but when winter ice and snow start to thaw and the algae surface to divide and photosynthesize, they trigger their astaxanthin as a barrier against the sun’s harsh UV rays, turning red in the process. Some say this rosy snow smells sweet and fruity, although experts warn that eating large amounts can cause digestive problems.
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It's a factFormer Iowa football coach Hayden Fry requested the paint job upon joining the staff in 1979. Fry, who had a master's degree in psychology, felt the color calmed opponents. After Fry's 20-year tenure, pink toilets, showers, and lockers were added to complement the walls.
Algae is responsible for creating much of the world’s oxygen and forming the basis for most food webs; thousands of species exist. Algae is also often a factor associated with major color changes: Dunaliella algae are believed to be one origin for the pink lakes that draw shutterbugs to places such as Australia, Senegal, and Spain, and many experts hypothesize that Trentepohlia algae led to the red rains that fell in Kerala, India, between July and September 2001. Recently, cold climates on different continents have witnessed an increase in clusters (or blooms) of C. nivalis algae, and scientists are working to understand why. Besides red, the blooms can appear green, gray, or yellow.
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Watermelon seeds were found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
King Tut was just 19 years old when he died in approximately 1324 BCE. When British archaeologist Howard Carter unsealed his tomb in 1922, he found 116 baskets and 12 additional containers full of goods and treasures that were meant to help the late pharaoh transition to the afterlife. In 1988, a graduate student in London named Christian Tutundjian de Vartavan came across 30 small cardboard boxes that had been languishing in a Royal Botanic Gardens storage room since their contents were discovered by Carter. Within the boxes, de Vartavan found around 25 plant food species that had once been inside the tomb, including sesame seeds, millet, barley, black cumin seeds, coriander, and watermelon seeds. However, more than 3,300 years ago, wild watermelons were the opposite of the juicy, sweet produce we think of today, and were likely included less for their deliciousness than for their hydrating properties.
Jenna is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and New York Magazine.
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