This Day in History
This Day in History (1990): Dates attain their best flavor this month
Lore has it that the ideal environment for date palms is "with their feet in the water and with their heads in the fires of the heavens."
From the Aug. 8, 1990, edition of The Arabian Sun
Dates have just come in season. However, they will remain popular and tasty throughout the month of August and into September, when, at their peak, they are tasty, sweet and tender.
perhaps that's why you now see so many people climbing date palms in Dhahran to grab a handful of the tempting fruit.
Al-Hasa farmers have about 40 words to describe the variety of date trees in their oasis, raning from the red "Khunayzi" to the yellow "khulas." The date tree's stages of development provide another five words, from "hambambu," the infancy, to "tamr," blooming maturity. The generic term for the date palms in this area is nakhl.
People in the West usually only come into contact with dates commercially when they are fully ripened. However, dates are edible at any stage of growth and development, including "khalal" (green dates), "busr" or "balah" (early stage of ripeness), "rutab" (half yellow, or red, and half-ripened, and "tamr," all brown.
Two of Saudi Arabia's largest date-growing oases, Qatif and al-Hasa, are located close to Dhahran. Many of the date orchards in al-Hasa and Qatif are centuries old and many of the trees have been yielding fruit for more than a century.
Caption for top photo: A native of Qatif selects only the ripest dates for his basket, thereby allowing more air and sun to reach greener dates hidden deep inside the clusters.
Also on this date
2022 — The FBI executives a raid on former president Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach in Florida
2010 — A mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, kills more than 1,400 people
2007— An EF2 tornado touches down in New York, the most powerful to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889
2000 — The Confederate submarine "H.L. Hunley" is raised to the sruface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after being discovered by E. Lee Spence
1991 — The Warsaw radio mast, at the time the tallest construction ever built, collapses
1989 — The Space Shuttle "Columbia" takes off on a secret five-day military mission
1988 — Chicago's Wrigley Field hosts its first ever night baseball game
1974 — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon tells a nationwide television office that he is resigning from the office the following day at noon
1969 — In London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the iconic photo that becomes the cover image of the Beatles "Abbey Road"
1942 — The Quit India Movement is launched in India in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj (complete independence) from Great Britain
1908 — Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France
1876 — Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph
1794 — Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska
1786 — Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabrial Paccard climb Mont Blanc, the first to have done so
1648 — Mehmed IV succeeds Ibrahim as Ottoman sultan
