Did you know? Salt facts
Short, surprising and sourced: salt facts you can share, cite, or use to win a trivia night. Each one links to the full story.
Famous people & history
Emperors, explorers, painters and protesters whose stories turn on salt.
Leonardo da Vinci painted spilled salt into The Last SupperIn his famous mural (1495–1498), an overturned salt cellar sits beside Judas's elbow. The detail is often linked to the superstition that spilling salt is unlucky, though historians point out the belief is older than the painting.Robert Burns moved house with a bowl of saltWhen the Scottish poet moved to his farm at Ellisland in 1789, relatives escorted him carrying a bowl of salt, a traditional blessing for a new home.Gandhi walked 387 km (240 miles) to make saltOn 12 March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi set out from Sabarmati Ashram with 78 volunteers. Twenty-four days later, on the morning of 6 April at Dandi on the Gujarat coast, he made salt from the sea, breaking the British monopoly on salt. Millions joined the protest, and more than 60,000 Indians were jailed.Marco Polo saw salt used as money in ChinaIn the province he called Caindu, in China's southwest, Polo described salt boiled in moulds and stamped with the Great Khan's mark, then spent as small change. Each cake weighed about half a pound, and 80 of them were worth one saggio of gold; in remoter places, traders could get a saggio for as few as forty.Lewis and Clark spent two months boiling seawater for saltFrom late December 1805 to 21 February 1806, men from the expedition boiled seawater “day and night” in five kettles at what is now Seaside, Oregon. They made about three quarts a day, roughly four bushels in all; Meriwether Lewis called it “excellent, fine, strong & white.”A salt mine in Iran preserved six ancient minersSince 1993, miners at Chehrabad near Zanjan have uncovered the naturally mummified bodies of six men. Some date from the Achaemenid period (550–330 BCE), the rest from Parthian and Sasanian times; most died when mine galleries collapsed. The head and left foot of the first “Saltman” are in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.In 1734, miners found a prehistoric man preserved in saltMiners in Austria's Hallstatt salt mine, the oldest still at work, found a body preserved in the salt. Researchers now link him to a disaster around 350 BC that halted mining in the valley. But the miners buried him in the churchyard, so he can never be studied, and only old church and saltworks records describe the find.France's hated salt tax lasted until 1945The gabelle made salt wildly expensive in some regions: in 1784, a minot (about 49 kg) cost 31 sous in Brittany but 611 in Berry, so smuggling was rife. The Revolution abolished it in 1790 and freed everyone jailed under it. Napoleon brought it back in 1806, and it was finally abolished in 1945.Union armies attacked Virginia twice to take the Confederacy's saltSaltville, Virginia, was one of the Confederacy's main saltworks. Union forces were turned back at the First Battle of Saltville on 2 October 1864, a battle followed by the murder of wounded Black Union soldiers. Two months later, General George Stoneman's cavalry captured the works, a major blow to the South.In 81 BCE, China's court held a great debate over saltEmperor Wu of Han had made salt and iron state monopolies. After his death, Confucian scholars and government ministers argued at court over whether to abolish them. The record of the debate, the Discourses on Salt and Iron, compiled by Huan Kuan, is still read as one of the earliest arguments over the state's role in the economy.In 1790s West Africa, eating salt meant you were richExplorer Mungo Park wrote that in the interior “the greatest of all luxuries is salt.” He saw children suck rock salt as if it were sugar, and noted that to say a man ate salt with his food was to say he was rich.A robber who tasted salt went on to found a dynastyA story retold in Trumbull's 1899 book says Ya'qub, a coppersmith's son turned robber, broke into a governor's treasury, licked what he took for a jewel, found it was rock salt, and left the loot rather than betray a host whose salt he had eaten. The real Ya'qub ibn al-Layth founded the Saffarid dynasty and died in 879.The Aztecs had a goddess of saltHuixtocihuatl presided over salt and salt water. Salt-makers and their daughters danced in her honour for ten days each June, in a festival that ended with a human sacrifice.The Muisca of Colombia were called “the Salt People”Their salt mines at Zipaquirá, Nemocón and Tausa, and the salt market at Nemocón, made the Muisca famous traders. Muisca women drew salt from brine in large pots.For the Aztecs, salt was a luxuryThe Mexica gathered tequesquite, a natural crust of salt and soda from dried lake beds, and traded salt from places such as Iztapalapa. Poorer families could not easily afford it.Dene traders carried salt hundreds of kilometres to trade with the InuitDene oral history describes travelling about 300 km from the Yellowknife area to the salt plains of today's Wood Buffalo National Park, then about 600 km to Contwoyto Lake to trade the salt with the Inuit. Dene traders also told the Hudson's Bay Company about the salt, which appears on a company map of 1760.
Famous places
Salt flats, salt seas, salt mines and the towns salt built.
English towns ending in “-wich” were often salt townsNorthwich, Middlewich, Nantwich and Droitwich all grew around brine springs. Droitwich was already paying salt dues when Domesday Book was compiled in 1086.One of the world's biggest salt mines lies under Lake HuronThe Sifto mine at Goderich, Ontario, about 550 metres (1,800 feet) below the lake, is often described as the largest underground salt mine in the world.Polish miners carved a chapel, chandeliers and all, out of saltThe Wieliczka mine near Kraków was worked from the 13th century until 1996 and reaches 327 metres deep, with more than 287 km of passages. Miners carved four chapels from rock salt; St. Kinga's Chapel, lit by salt-crystal chandeliers, still hosts weddings. Copernicus, Goethe and Chopin all visited, and in 1978 the mine was on UNESCO's very first World Heritage list.Colombia has a cathedral 200 metres underground, inside a salt mineThe Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá, near Bogotá, opened in 1995 to replace an earlier underground sanctuary closed in 1992 for safety reasons. Visitors pass 14 small chapels for the Stations of the Cross, carved into the halite. The Muisca people mined salt here as early as the 5th century BC.The world's largest salt flat is used to calibrate satellitesBolivia's Salar de Uyuni covers about 10,582 km² at 3,656 metres above sea level, and its height varies by less than one metre across the whole flat. That makes it ideal for checking satellite altimeters. After rain it becomes the world's largest mirror, and its first hotel built of salt blocks went up in the middle of the flat in 1993–1995.Most “Himalayan” pink salt comes from PakistanIt is mined mainly at Khewra in the Salt Range of Punjab, Pakistan, south of the Himalayas. Trace minerals tint it pink, but it is 96–99% sodium chloride, and there is no scientific basis for its claimed health benefits. Local legend says the deposit was found by Alexander the Great's army; the first recorded mining dates from the 1200s.The Dead Sea is almost ten times saltier than the oceanAt 34.2% salt (measured in 2011), the Dead Sea is about 9.6 times as salty as seawater, so dense that swimmers simply float. Its shores, around 440 metres below sea level, are the lowest dry land on Earth, and the lake is shrinking fast: from 1,050 km² in 1930 to about 605 km² today.The first car to top 300 mph did it on saltOn 3 September 1935, Sir Malcolm Campbell drove his Bluebird to 301.129 mph on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. Racers have used the flats since 1914, and “Speed Week” is held every August, though it was cancelled in 2015 and 2022 because the salt was in poor condition.Caravans of thousands of camels carried salt to TimbuktuThe Azalai caravan hauled slabs of rock salt from the Taoudenni mines in the Sahara to Timbuktu, setting out in November and again in March. French officials counted 20,000 camels on the 1906 caravan. For centuries, caravans had carried West African gold north and brought Saharan salt back south. Trucks have now replaced most of the camels.Salt helped pay for the Erie CanalBrine springs around Onondaga Lake made Syracuse, New York, “The Salt City,” one of America's biggest salt producers in the 1800s. A state-imposed duty on that salt helped pay for building the Erie Canal, and the canal in turn carried Syracuse salt to market.An ancient Arabian city was built of salt blocksPliny the Elder wrote that at Gerrha, a trading city in Arabia, the walls and houses were made of blocks of salt, “soldered” together by wetting them with water.A New Mexico lake is the home of Salt MotherZuni Salt Lake is sacred to the Zuni and other Pueblo peoples, who have gathered salt there for centuries. Its salt is described as the flesh of Salt Mother. In 2003 the Zuni defeated a coal mine that threatened the lake.Maya salt kitchens survive under the sea in BelizeAt Ek Way Nal in Paynes Creek National Park, archaeologists found pole-and-thatch buildings where Maya workers boiled brine and salted fish around AD 300–900, preserved in oxygen-free sediment below the sea floor.Peru's Maras salt pans are older than the IncaAbout 4,500 terraced salt pools near Cusco have been worked since before the Inca. About 400 local families own them today.
Food, science & space
From salted caramel to a salty moon of Jupiter.
Salt isn't on the periodic tableTable salt is a compound, sodium chloride (NaCl), not an element. Its two ingredients are: sodium (element 11), a soft metal that reacts violently with water, and chlorine (element 17), a toxic gas.In Canada, table salt must contain iodineSalt sold for table or household use in Canada must contain potassium iodide, to prevent iodine deficiency. Sea salts and salt sold for a named use, such as pickling salt, are exempt.There's a salt that tastes like eggsKala namak, India's “black salt,” has a natural sulphur note that tastes remarkably eggy, which is why vegan cooks use it in tofu scrambles.Salted butter caramel was perfected in Brittany in 1977Chocolatier Henri Le Roux of Quiberon created his caramel au beurre salé in 1977. It was named best sweet in France at the Paris confectionery fair in 1980, and he trademarked “CBS” in 1981. Bretons had long salted their butter: under France's old salt tax, salt cost far less in Brittany than almost anywhere else in the kingdom.In space, astronauts' salt comes as a liquidNASA supplies salt dissolved in water and pepper suspended in oil, in dropper bottles. Loose grains would float away: astronaut Scott Kelly explained that a powder could get into equipment or someone's eyes, and a spill might force the crew to shut down the station's ventilation.Salt water taffy contains no seawaterThe chewy candy has been sold on the Atlantic City boardwalk since the 1880s. It contains salt and water, but not seawater. Legends say the name came from a storm that flooded a candy stand, or from a helper who used seawater by mistake; Joseph Fralinger made it famous by selling it in boxes.There's table salt on Jupiter's moon EuropaIn 2019, Caltech and NASA JPL scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to show that the yellow colour of Tara Regio on Europa matches sodium chloride darkened by radiation. If the salt rose from the moon's hidden ocean, that ocean may be more like Earth's seas than scientists thought, though that is not yet proven.Egyptian mummies were dried with a natural saltNatron, a salt mixture harvested from dry lake beds such as Egypt's Wadi El Natrun, soaks up water, so embalmers used it to dry bodies. The name survives in chemistry: sodium's symbol, Na, comes from natrium, a name derived from natron.
Salt making, preserving & old cookbooks
Blood and beer in the brine pan, bacon kept in ashes, and why corned beef has no corn.
Salt makers once added blood and beer to their brineAt the salt works of Halle in Saxony, Agricola reported in 1556 that the salt boiler poured a little bullock's, calf's or goat's blood into the boiling brine, then skimmed off the scum that rose. In some places the blood was mixed with beer, and a little beer went in later too.Salt used to be shaped into conesSalt makers at Halle shovelled wet salt into tapered baskets, where it drained and dried into cones; from 37 dipperfuls of brine they made two cones. Elsewhere, salt was pressed into moulds shaped like tablets.Salt pans were once sealed with ox blood and liverTo stop iron salt pans leaking at their rivets, 16th-century salt makers smeared them with a paste of ox liver, ox blood and ashes. The fireplaces under the pans were built from rock salt and clay.Ancient Gauls made salt by pouring brine on burning woodPliny the Elder reports that in Gaul and Germany, salt water was poured over burning wood, leaving salt in the ashes. Oak was thought to work best, and the salt came out black.One English town had 216 salt housesIn 1605, Nantwich in Cheshire had 216 salt houses, each with six lead pans for boiling brine. Salt had been made there since Roman times, but the town made its last salt in 1856.Officials once cut oversized salt pans down to size with shearsCheshire's salt towns strictly limited the size of salt pans. If a pan was too big, an officer of the local court could cut a piece out of its corner with shears to bring it within the legal limit.Pumping brine made parts of Cheshire sinkAs brine was pumped from underground salt beds, the ground above sank. Britain passed an act in 1891 to compensate people whose property was damaged by brine pumping, and in 1907 subsidence near Northwich burst a canal bank.One Cheshire town's salt shipments grew almost 800 times overWinsford shipped 1,055 tons of salt in 1758, 324,249 tons in 1850, and 834,306 tons at its peak in 1881, as brine pumping and canals turned salt into a mass industry.Roman fish sauce cost almost as much as perfumeGarum was made by salting fish guts and scraps and letting them ferment. Pliny says the best, from Carthago Spartaria in Spain, cost nearly 1,000 sesterces for two congii, about six and a half litres; almost no liquid but perfume cost more.Cottagers kept bacon fresh for years in wood ashesWilliam Cobbett told English labourers in the 1820s to dry-salt their bacon for about six weeks, then pack it in dry wood ashes to keep out flies and air. Stored that way, he said, it kept two or even three years.A famous 1820s writer said brine ruined baconCobbett insisted that bacon be rubbed with fresh dry salt, changed every four or five days, and never left “sopping in brine,” which he said gave it the nasty taste of ship's barrel-pork.Saltpetre is why cured meat stays pinkMrs Beeton's Victorian household guide explains that salt alone turns cured meat dull, while a little saltpetre keeps its red colour, at the cost of making it harder. Today's curing salts use measured nitrites for the same effect.Victorian cooks cured salmon for six weeksMrs Beeton describes curing salmon by splitting it, rubbing it with salt and keeping it in pickle for about six weeks, then packing it in casks between layers of salt.Corned beef has nothing to do with corn“Corns” were large grains of salt. Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook explains that salting comes in two kinds: dry salting, and “corning,” which is salting in brine.Old-fashioned ice cream needed three parts ice to one part saltFannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook packs the ice-cream churn with three measures of crushed ice to one of coarse rock salt for smooth ice cream, and equal parts for a coarser frappé. Salt makes the melting ice colder than freezing.Amazon peoples made salt from burned plantsThe Witoto (Murui) burn palm shoots and other plants, wash the ash with water and boil the liquid down to grey “ash salts,” a key ingredient of the ceremonial tobacco paste ambil.Métis families made salt for the Red River SettlementFrom 1818, the Monkman family boiled brine from salt springs on Lake Winnipegosis, making about 1,000 bushels a year by the 1870s. The salt travelled in birch-bark rogans by York boat and Red River cart, until the railway brought cheap salt and ended the trade in the 1880s.
Words, customs & folklore
Salty words, old customs and a few things that only sound salty.
Roman soldiers probably weren't paid in salt“Salary” does come from Latin salarium, which shares a root with sal, “salt.” But there's no evidence soldiers were paid in salt; word historians trace the story to nineteenth-century dictionaries.The word “halogen” means “salt maker”German chemist Johann Schweigger coined it in 1811 from Greek hals (salt). Chlorine, one half of table salt, is a halogen.Astronauts have been welcomed into space with bread and saltThe ancient Slavic welcome has followed crews to the Mir and International Space Station, where arriving crews have been greeted with bread and salt.In Russian, “hospitable” literally means “bready-salty”The word khlebosolny comes from khleb (bread) and sol (salt), the two things a good host offers every guest.A sumo event in Paris used about 200 kg of French saltFor a 2026 tournament in Paris, organizers shipped in roughly 200 kilograms of salt from Guérande for the wrestlers' purification throws.One of ancient Rome's oldest roads is named after saltThe Via Salaria, the “salt road,” was the route the Sabines used to fetch salt from the marshes at the mouth of the Tiber. It later ran 242 km from Rome to the Adriatic, and today's highway SS4 still follows it and keeps its name. Some historians think the salt trade is why Rome was settled where it was.The SALT treaties had nothing to do with saltSALT stood for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. Talks began in Helsinki in November 1969; SALT I was signed on 26 May 1972. SALT II was signed in Vienna in 1979, but the U.S. Senate never ratified it.“When it rains, it pours” began as a salt sloganMorton Salt introduced the line, along with its girl-with-an-umbrella logo, in a 1914 advertising campaign. The point: Morton's salt kept flowing freely even in damp, rainy weather, when ordinary salt clumped.The word “immolate” comes from salted flourRome's Vestal Virgins made mola salsa, toasted flour mixed with salt, which was sprinkled on every animal before an official sacrifice. “To put on the mola,” immolare, came to mean “to sacrifice,” giving English “immolation.”Romans called witty remarks “salts”Pliny wrote that life's pleasures could not exist without salt, and that the Latin word for wit was sales, “salts.” The Greeks had their own version: sharp Athenian humour is still called “Attic salt.”In Ali Baba, the villain gives himself away by refusing saltIn the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the disguised robber captain will not eat food with salt in it, because eating his host's salt would bind him not to harm him. That is what makes the servant Morgiana suspicious.Newborn babies were once rubbed with saltTrumbull records that “in the East and elsewhere” a newborn was washed and salted, and that someone lacking sense might be told “he wasn't salted when he was born.” The Bible's Book of Ezekiel mentions the custom (16:4).Welsh “sin-eaters” ate salt from a coffinSalt was once placed on corpses across Britain. In a Welsh version described by Ernest Jones in 1912, a plate of bread and salt was set on the coffin, and the local “sin-eater” ate it, taking on the dead person's sins.German brides once wore salt in their shoesErnest Jones collected wedding customs in which salt protected the couple: salt strewn in the bride's shoe in Germany, and in Scotland, salt scattered on the floor of the new home the night before the wedding to guard against the evil eye.Medieval Europeans believed witches' feasts had no saltBecause salt resists decay, it came to stand for permanence and eternity, and medieval writers claimed the Devil hated it. Salt, they said, was always missing from the Devil's and witches' banquets.
Cite this page
For school projects and reports. Teachers often prefer the original sources too: see the list below.
The Salt Almanac. (2026, November 8). Did you know? Salt facts. https://saltalmanac.com/did-you-know
“Did You Know? Salt Facts.” The Salt Almanac, 8 Nov. 2026, saltalmanac.com/did-you-know. Accessed [today's date].
“Did You Know? Salt Facts.” The Salt Almanac. Last modified November 8, 2026. https://saltalmanac.com/did-you-know.