Peeling Back the Layers: Top 9 Fun Facts About Onions You Never Knew!

1. Space Salad Bar

Grab your space forks and cosmic knives, future Martian settlers: NASA's food scientists plan for astronauts to cultivate a space salad bar, growing vegetables like lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, green onions, and more on their journey to Mars. Upon arrival, they'll farm potatoes, soybeans, wheat, rice, peanuts, and beans in hydroponic chambers, with wheat transforming into space pasta and sweet potatoes offering syrup for interstellar cookies. Resourceful astronauts may also try out cosmic recycling, enlisting fish like tilapia to munch on human waste and convert it into safe, extraterrestrial grub.
Source => nbcnews.com

2. Pharaoh Peek-a-boo

Peek-a-boo, pharaoh style: Onions were an essential part of ancient Egyptian funeral rituals, placed in the eye sockets of mummies like Ramses IV, used as offerings during divination nights, and symbolizing eternal life, light, and purification in embalming practices.
Source => kawa-news.com

Did you know ancient Romans used garlic as a charm and remedy for warding off evil spirits? Discover more intriguing uses of this pungent plant!

=> Fun Facts about Garlic

3. Superhero Onion Goggles

Onion goggles: a dry-eyed superhero's secret weapon! Slice and dice those notorious tear-jerkers, while simultaneously keeping your ocular sidekicks safe from environmental adversaries like air conditioning and dust: Optometrist Dr. Darryl Glover suggests that sporting onion goggles in the kitchen can minimize eye irritation, even proving beneficial for those suffering from dry eye syndrome.
Source => allaboutvision.com

4. No More Sob Stories

Onion-induced sob stories aren't just for soap operas anymore: By giving onions a good soak in water before slicing and dicing, you can minimize those tear-jerking compounds and maybe even win an Oscar in the kitchen. Bonus tip: use a sharp knife to reduce damage to the onion cells, and you might just turn your drama show into a rom-com!
Source => customs.go.jp

5. Mystical Onion Powers

Before the mighty Shrek or the stinging tears, there were ancient Egyptians trying to give evil spirits a taste of their own medicine: onions were believed to have mystical powers that could ward off evil spirits and were used during oath-taking ceremonies to symbolize their commitment to truth.
Source => factmonster.com

6. Magical Hair Growth

Who knew Shrek's favorite veggie could hold the secret to fabulous locks: onions possess magical hair growth powers, with studies revealing their juice being 74% effective in promoting regrowth for those battling alopecia areata, while also minimizing hair woes like dandruff, thinning, and dryness.
Source => apollo247.com

7. Rust-Busting Onions

When life gives you onions, don't cry – just get out your rusty tools and cook up an alchemical miracle: Onions, packed with sulfuric compounds, can remove rust from metal surfaces by cutting one in half, rubbing it on the rusty area, and rinsing with water, though heavy corrosion may prove too much for the allium's powers.
Source => cooking.stackexchange.com

8. Steamy Onion Romance

For those feeling a bit of a "scallion deficiency" in the love department, history holds the recipe for steamy romance: Onions have long been lauded as the cheapest and most effective aphrodisiac across ancient Vedic, Islamic, Christian, and European traditions, promoting bedroom harmony in unexpectedly tearful ways.
Source => timesofindia.indiatimes.com

9. Laughing Through the Tears

Why do we shed so many tears for onions? Maybe they just have a great sense of humor, leaving us in stitches as we chop them up into tiny, fragrant punchlines: The level of syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the tear-inducing gas that assaults our eyes when slicing onions, actually varies based on the onion variety! Pungent white and yellow onions have a higher concentration of this gas, while sweeter red or Vidalia onions show more mercy on our tear ducts.
Source => misen.com