For those of you whose thirst wasn’t quenched with the last Dietribes, here’s another round of water facts for you to paddle, wade, swim or float through:

• Worried about drinking your 8 glasses of water a day? Turns out it may be a myth …

• However, there is definitely the possibility of drinking too much, which results in water intoxication. In some cases it can lead to death. In fact, Andy Warhol’s estate charged that water intoxication caused by the hospital led to his fatal heart attack.

• There are some creatures who don’t need water very often at all – camels, for instance. But is it because they store water in their humps? No! The humps store fat, not water. “Camels get all the water they need from the plants they eat and thus may go six or seven months without drinking. During the summer, [...] camels drink only every five days. ”

• There are of course alternatives to the tap (Quite a few of you mentioned last week about the good or bad taste and quality of your local water; and yes, Florida water tastes the worst in my opinion … sulfur!) – check out these stats on the growing use of bottled water. Of course, states are ready to cash in on this as quickly as they can.

• The varieties of bottled water are endless – you can buy bottled Holy water, bottled water for dogs or even “plain” tonic water … which glows in the dark under a black light thanks to quinine!

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• Ah yes, that cool, glistening refreshment that makes up roughly 70% of the human body 70-75% of the Earth. Unfortunately, only 1% of Earth’s water is suitable for drinking. Luckily (?), the inventor of the Segway is now focusing his efforts on developing a water purifier made out of cow dung.

• Don’t be afraid of your tap water – in fact, many places are trying to make it popular again. And though they may have air pollution problems, there’s nothing wrong with what comes out of the spigot – LA has once again won the award for tastiest tap water.

• Speaking of, you may be interested to know that Aquafina and Dasani are both tap waters (and they constitute 24% of bottled water sales). Additionally, there are no health benefits to oxygenated water. There may not be anything great about carbonated water either, but it does occur naturally (The word seltzer comes from the name of a German town, Nieder Selters, a district where mineral springs are located).

• So then … why does water have an expiration date?

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• First thing’s first: What is a bagel? “A bagel is a round bread, with a hole in the middle, made of simple ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed. All else is not a bagel.”

• If you’ve heard that old yarn about bagels being created in 17th-century Poland as a tribute to King Jan Sobieski after he saved Austria from Turkish invaders at the battle of Vienna in 1683, well … it’s a load of old toss. The origins came prior to this supposed event, and most experts agree that the origin of the word “bagel” probably came from the Yiddish beigen, to bend.

• But why bend it in the first place? The bagel may be a cousin of the pretzel, although its singular shape may also have helped those selling bagels to carry bunches of them on sticks.

• Bagels come in about every variety one can dream up. From the well-known Everything Bagel to the “buzzed” bagel for when you need some caffeine with your caffeine in the morning. And let us not forget this likely first casualty of the recession: the $1,000 bagel (no, it doesn’t have gold chips but it darn well should!)

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• Edible candy on a stick has been around for centuries in many forms, though the “lolly pop” as we now know it was fashioned in the 1920s. Even as far back as the Middle Ages, royalty would sometimes eat boiled sugar with sticks.

• A question that has been around perhaps as long as the candy itself … how many licks does it take to finish a lollipop off? Of course, this postulation was made popular in the 1970s with Tootsie’s unforgettable campaign that continues to amuse and baffle kids (and adults) to this day. There are, however, some scientific studies that have sought to find the answer to this Great Mystery.

• Stick a sock in it! Or … a lollipop? Some British pub owners are helping to control noise pollution after closing by handing out lollipops to costumers to consume on their way home.

• Lollipops are so popular they can even sell for $4.5 Million … well, a painting of them can. Picasso also took a stab at immortalizing the lollipop with a (very strange) 1938 painting, while Salvador Dali did his part by designing the logo for Chupa Chupas, as he was a family friend of the founder, Enric Bernat.

• Lollipops are a popular subject matter for singers and rapper alike – Lil Wayne, The Chordettes (yes this is the song you’re thinking of that will get stuck in your head) and of course … Shirley Temple all have their classic versions regarding the pop Lolly.

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• In reference to its base of red wine, the word sangria means “bloody.” Despite its eerily evocative etymology, Sangria is considered a friendly and socially-inclined drink (perhaps too friendly, to those who have had too much of it!)

• Today its popularity expands beyond the drink itself and gives its name to nail polish, laptop colors, soaps, even chewing gum.

• But before I get carried away let’s start out with the obvious – what’s in Sangria? The drink was originally conceived to help make a lacking base wine more tasty, and at it’s most general, it offers “a mix of wine, cut-up fruit, brandy or other spirits, a sweetening agent such as sugar or honey, and carbonated soda,” (although the specifics have a wide variance depending on region and preference).

• Though Sangria was popularized in 1964 at the World’s Fair, it had already enjoyed a fairly robust history. Sangria is an outgrowth of the red wine punches that were popular at parties throughout Europe in the 1700 and 1800s.

• An early Sangria drink in England was known as “claret cup punch.” The drink had a base of a red claret wine, usually a French Bordeaux or Spanish Rioja, with brandy and fruit added. This punch variant was the choice drink of Jane Austen heroines as it was served at many parties of the era.

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• New Yorkers may consume more hot dogs than other Americans, but ballpark goers will eat enough at major league ballparks this year to stretch to and from Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., the two sites of the 2008 World Series.

• But what exactly is a hot dog? References to sausage go back as far as Homer, and it is likely that the frankfurter was the grandfather of the eventual “weiner” dog (possibly named after Vienna – Wein – Austria from whence it came). However, others suggest that the term might have come from “dachshund sausage,” “dog wagons,” (that delivered the fares to college students) or even from street vendors hawking them from portable hot water tanks.

• In any case, the hot dog as we know it first appeared in ballparks 1893, and they have remained popular ever since. Humphrey Bogart once said, “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than a steak at the Ritz.”

• Pre-Kobayshi, the record for hot dogs consumed in 12 minutes was 25. Kobayshi – at the time, 23 years old and weighing in at 131 pounds – consumed 50 hot dogs in the same amount of time.

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• “Chewing gum may be a $19 billion industry, but it’s not a universally accepted practice. Chewing gum is a crime in Singapore, and, in 15th-century Meso-America, it was the mark of a prostitute.” And how!

• Early conceptions of chewing gum got a boost from a former Mexican President looking to return to power and get the funds to do so by re-inventing a rubber substitute, which explains a lot of things.

• Unfortunately, the first “gum” stuck to the face – so much so that it had to be removed by turpentine (yikes). Bubble Gum as we know it was invented in 1928, by Walter Diemer, an accountant at Fleer Chewing Gum Company. He developed a formula that didn’t stick to the face and had enough elasticity to blow bubbles. Pink was the color on hand for the first batch and so it has doth sacredly remained.

• The process of making gum is probably really difficult to comprehend, but this cool animation breaks it down in simple terms.

• So what really happens when you swallow your gum? Does it sit undigested in your gut until you die? Or does it simple pass on through?

• If you can’t swallow gum, by George, what are you to do with it? Well you can place it in the shrine of Bubble Gum Alley, or Philadelphia’s Gum Tree (actually it was cut down in 2008 … BUT …).

• Whatever you do, just don’t spit your gum out in Singapore, where chewing gum is against the law (although they do allow Nicotine gum thanks to Rep. Philip Crane from Illinois … the home of Wrigley) who applied pressure to lifting the ban as part of a free trade agreement.

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• Just how cool are cucumbers? Their inner temperature can be up to 20 degrees cooler than the outside air, hence the title phrase. They also have a higher percentage of water than watermelons, so they make for a very refreshing summer snack!

• On that note, take a recommendation from the Tolstoy family, who would hollow out cucumbers and fill them with milk to drink on picnics. You may not, however, be as tempted by cucumber-flavored Pepsi, found in Japan.

• Cucumber love has spanned much of human existence. Roman Emperor Tiberius developed an insatiable appetite for cucumbers, and had servants wheel the planted cucumbers around so they would never be without sun. “During the cold months, they covered the cucumber beds with sheets of mica, a transparent stone (sheet glass had not yet been invented). The name given to this kind of neo-greenhouse is specularium.”

• Some cucumber lovers can go overboard. In 10th century Burma, King Theinhko ate a farmer’s cucumbers without permission. The farmer killed the king and took the throne, becoming known as the “Cucumber King.”

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• Bread has been around probably as long as we have, going far back into the Neolithic age. It comes in many shapes, sizes, colors and with varying ingredients, but it persists in its many forms in a way that not even Atkins can wipe out. “Bread” is often synonymous with necessities in general.

• Legend has it that in medieval Europe, “when a loaf was one day old it was fit for the nobility, when two days old for the gentry, at three days it was good enough for scholars and friars, and when it was four days old—granting that any of the loaf remained—the common citizen might taste it.”

• The color-coded bakery twist tie might help you know when it’s your day to eat bread, according to medieval Europe … or just help you know when it was actually baked.

• Like driving a new car off the lot, bread begins going stale as soon as it is made. Which is why you should consider canned bread as an alternative (seriously I’ve had it – it’s really good!)

• Bread has also been influential in history on a number of occasions. In one case, the Great Fire of London was started by a baker. It may also have been responsible for some of the behavior leading up to the Salem Witch Trials … at least, the effects of a hallucinogenic fungus that attacks it might.
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• Though botanically the tomato is a fruit, it was declared a vegetable by the Supreme Court in 1893. Despite the efforts of David Stockman, a Reagan official, ketchup never shared the same vegetable classification as its main ingredient.

• The tomato hasn’t always had an easy time. In colonial America, folklore had it that consumption of a tomato (considered poisonous) would turn your blood into acid. Instead, the colonists grew tomatoes purely for decoration until Thomas Jefferson allegedly debunked the myth.

• Other cultures have always loved the tomato, including the French name, who called it pomme d’amore, or “apple of love.” Love a tomato because tomatoes love you: they can even fight cancer, thanks to lycopene.

• A giant tomato fight like the Festival de la Tomatina might be fun, but you would not want to get hit by one of these giant tomatoes.

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