VINCENNES, Ind. (AP): Former Indiana House Speaker John Gregg will preside over the city of Vincennes' annual watermelon drop that helps New Year's Eve revelers usher in 2015.
Gregg was chosen by the Vincennes Watermelon Drop's organizers to pull a cord that will release 15 watermelons from a giant man-made watermelon hoisted high above the southwestern Indiana city at midnight Wednesday.
Those melons will plunge 75 feet onto a “splatform” where they'll splatter and mark the arrival of 2015.
Vincennes' watermelon drop debuted in 2008 and pays homage to Knox County's many melon farms.
The Illiana Watermelon Association says an ideal soil mixture deposited by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age made the county an excellent place to grow watermelons.
