National Banana Split Day recognizes the sweet ice cream treat served with a banana, whipped cream, and various toppings. Get yours on August 25th!
A 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel’s Pharmacy in Latrobe, Pennsylvania created the first banana split in 1904. David Evans Strickler enjoyed inventing sundaes at the store’s soda fountain. For only 10 cents, Strickler sold his first “banana-based triple ice cream sundae,” double the cost of all the other sundaes.
In David Strickler’s hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, they proudly celebrate his creation with a festival annually in August. In 2013, they placed an official marker at the site of the pharmacy where Strickler first made his famous banana split. Then, the United States Post Office honored the banana split and the town of Latrobe in 2016 with a 47-cent “forever stamp” depicting the banana split. It was one of five stamps in the “Soda Fountain Favorites” series. For a time, Latrobe residents could receive a cancellation mark memorializing their claim to fame.
- The city of Latrobe, Pennsylvania celebrates the annual Great American Banana Split Festival and still has the original soda fountain where the first banana split was made.
- Wilmington, Ohio, recently held its 24th annual Banana Split Festival. In 2007, Wilmington marked the 100th anniversary of the banana split’s invention by one of its citizens, E.R. Hazard. Problem is, Wilmington may have missed the banana boat by three years. Most sundae experts (yes, there are some) think that the banana split was created in 1904, about 275 miles away, by David Strickler, a pharmacy clerk in Latrobe, Penn.
- Bananas contain the natural mood enhancer tryptophan (also found in turkey) that instantly relaxes the body and improves mood, they are also high in B vitamins which helps to calm the nervous system.
- Walgreen’s drug stores, operated by Charles Rudolph Walgreens is often credited with spreading the banana split’s popularity to a national level. The store had promoted the banana split as their signature dessert, which attracted customers who might have otherwise been simply satisfied with having their prescriptions filled at other drug stores in the neighborhood.
- With 33,000 bananas, 2,500 gallons of ice cream and 150 gallons of chocolate syrup, Selinsgrove, PA made a 4.5-mile banana split to regain a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
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