Did you know that watermelons are not a melons and they come in square shapes too?  

Famous author Mark Twain once said, "To taste a watermelon is to know what angels eat." Every summer, you might have relished this luscious, refreshing fruit with striped green skin and pink flesh.  

Well, Citrullus lanatus, the scientific name for watermelon, is a combination of Latin and Greek ancestry. The Greek term ‘citrus,’ which means the fruit, is where the word "Citrullus" is derived from. The Latin word ‘lanatus’, which means ‘woolly,’ alludes to the tiny hair that covers the plant's stems and leaves. 

However, did you know that watermelon is not a real melon? Here are strange facts about watermelon that you didn’t know about.  

It's not a real melon, but a berry!  
Scientifically speaking, watermelon falls into the category of berry called pepos; these are fruits with a tough skin, numerous flat seeds and fleshy pulp. The term pepos refers to fruits that don't split open when ripe. So, why is it called watermelon? While the fruit’s high water content (93 per cent) is responsible for the water part, its huge, spherical shape and pulpy, delicious flesh earned it the name ‘melon.’ 

There are watermelons of heart and square shape too!  
Japan innovates by crossbreeding plants and using growing techniques that produce high-quality vegetables and fruits, like white strawberries, purple carrots and square watermelons. Well, differently-shaped watermelons are a popular attraction, especially in the summers! Back in the 1980s, farmers in Japan began producing watermelons shaped to fit more comfortably in the Japanese freezers. The first one was cubical, for easy storage and to prevent it from rolling off the fridge shelves! As their popularity grew, other shapes like heart, square, pyramid and even human faces emerged! Unbelievable, right?  How you ask? Well, while the fruits are still young, they are placed in tempered glass or acrylic moulds. These moulds alter their shape in the growth phase. However, not all watermelons take the shape of the mould. So, only a few come out in the desired shape, making them super expensive!  

Watermelon was harvested first 5000 years ago  
The first known watermelon harvest which took place about 5,000 years ago in Egypt is depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphics on the walls of their historic structures. A few Egyptian tombs included depictions of a huge, striped, oblong fruit on a plate, most likely a watermelon. In fact, researchers did a DNA study of a leaf that was discovered nearly two centuries ago in an Egyptian tomb. Guess what? The results came close to six of the closest relatives of a watermelon, most of which are bitter and have white flesh! This data revealed that a type of white, sweet melon available in Sudan today is watermelon’s closest wild variant.  Some of the genes were similar to today’s watermelons too! What this means is that watermelons were indeed cultivated 3500 years ago, and were tasty as well!  

There is a watermelon with a Guinness World Record 
The Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, an organisation on the mission to cultivate giant pumpkins across the globe, on October 4, 2013, confirmed that Chris Kent, a farmer from` Sevierville, Tennessee, USA, had grown the heaviest watermelon, which weighed 159 kg! Chris was awarded a prize at the Operation Pumpkin festival, held in Hamilton, Ohio. Its astounding size, earned the watermelon a place in the Guinness World Records too!