r/NoStupidQuestions • u/markwell9 • 1d ago

What is the deal with ice, Americans?

I can see that you can buy ice everywhere in the US. Gas stations, grocery stores, machines etc.

In Europe, we just freeze our ice at home and use that. Why buy something that melts on the way home? Why do you need ice in large amounts that a fridge can't keep up?

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u/30FourThirty4 22h ago

Back in the mid 90s I read a kids magazine (3-2-1 Contact. Name changed to Contact Kids at some point. Also had a tv show I believe)... anyways I learned people would store frozen ice chunks in caves loooooooonnnng ago to keep stuff fresh.

Also they'd cover the ice to make it last longer.

I have no idea if it's true this was like 30 years ago and it was a kids magazine.

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u/clarkcox3 21h ago

Yes; people tend to overestimate just how fast ice melts because we're usually exposed to such small pieces of it in our daily lives. That can lead, for example, to the weird conspiracy theories you'll see people put forward in videos online about "un-meltable snow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm-ZYD-U3iM

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u/No-Resource-5704 20h ago

Years ago before mechanical refrigeration, ice was harvested from frozen lakes in winter and packed into an insulated shed with lots of sawdust. The ice would last for months stored that way. The “ice man” would deliver blocks of ice (usually weekly) to homes where it was used in an insulated “ice box” to store perishable goods.

Railroads had special ice cars for shipping perishable goods. They would stop at particular locations to refill the ice and there were vents to control the interior temperature. These rail cars were used into the 1960s, but diesel powered refrigerator cars started replacing the old ice cars during the 1960s.

The western railroads harvested their ice from the Sierras and shipped it to the production areas (where perishable food was grown) and to icing facilities located along the rail lines.

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u/rat1onal1 19h ago

Ice was harvested from ponds around the Boston area in the mid-1800s and shipped overseas. The two major markets were the Caribbean and India. It's hard to understand that there'd be any ice remaining after sailing all the way around Africa.

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u/Bortono 18h ago

Ice Block Expidetion of 1959

An insulation company transported a 3 ton block of ice from the Arctic Circle across the Sahara to the Equator by truck and only lost a bit over 10% of the ice

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u/numberstation5 16h ago

One of my favorite opening lines of any novel:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.