If the snow is falling around where you are, you may be thinking about building a snowman. But have you ever thought about the history of snowmen?

According to Reader’s Digest, snowmen have been around since the Middle Ages. They were a popular way for people to express themselves. A 19-year-old Michelangelo was even commissioned in 1494 by the ruler of Florence, Italy, to sculpt a snowman in his mansion’s courtyard. During six weeks of subzero temperatures in 1511, known as the Winter of Death, the city of Brussels was covered in snowmen. They ranged in theme from regular old snowmen to being political or downright pornographic.

According to allthingsinteresting.com, the first photograph of a snowman was taken by Mary Dillwyn in 1845. This was shortly after the first camera was invented, which means the first photo of a snowman is also one of the first photos of anything.

And the world’s tallest snowperson was built in Bethel, Michigan in 2008. Olympia, the 22-foot-tall snowwoman, had eyelashes made of skis, lips made of car tires, a 100-foot-long scarf, and a six-foot-long snowflake pendant.