Supermarket apples can be a year old. These weird facts might have you changing the way you eat. Those fresh apples aren’t all that fresh, per se. They’re usually picked between August and November, covered in wax, hot-air dried, and sent into cold storage. After six to twelve months, they finally land on your grocery store shelves.
100 Mind-Blowing Dried Facts
Napoléon Bonaparte’s penis was stolen. Posthumously, if that makes it any better. The genitalia were removed from his body by his doctor during the autopsy. Allegedly, it was given to a priest in Corsica. However, his junk was not properly preserved, so now it has been compared to dried leather and beef jerky. It was first displayed in a museum in 1927. Currently, the daughter of a urologist (who bought it for US$3,000 to keep under his bed) keeps it. Bids for the shrivelled genitalia have reached US$100,000.
Loofahs are vegetables. If you look at a loofah, you might think it came from a dried sea creature. However, this scrubbing sponge is made from a vegetable. Loofahs are made from the fibrous flesh of the mature Luffa aegyptiaca and L. cyclindrica gourd. They’re distant relatives of melons and squash. Before reaching maturity, luffa is also edible.
Spotted dick is a dish. We know what you’re thinking, but spotted dick is a British dessert popularized in 19th century England. It is a pudding made traditionally with suet and dried fruit, often served with custard. “Spotted” referred to the dried fruit pieces, while “dick” and “dog” were terms widely used for pudding at the time.