Close To 60% Of All Sandwiches Sold All Over The World Are Hamburgers

National Burger Day is held annually in August on the Thursday before the bank holiday weekend. This year, it takes place on August 22. Burgers are convenient fast food and delicious to eat. A burger can be made in a variety of ways and served with different toppings to suit the taste of the one eating it. This is why it’s one of the most liked foods and appreciated and enjoyed by so many.

At the base level, a burger is a piece of meat and a bun with something on it. It’s simple but it seems to make a lot of people happy.  –  Danny Meyer

• 1st Century AD – The closest thing resembling a burger is first made in the 1st century A.D. in Rome — it is a ground minced meat dish prepared with pine nuts, peppers, and flavorings of wine and garum.
• 1885 – At the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York, the Menches brothers use beef in their sandwiches, creating a burger.
• 1891 – to celebrate the Fourth of July, Oscar Weber Wilby and his wife Fanny made the first flame-grilled beef patties and served them between a bun.
• 1900 – Some believe the hamburger originated with Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant who cooked up the first patty in 1900 in New Haven, using ideas he’d picked up in Europe.
• 1904 – The hamburger made its official debut at the 1904 St. Louis Food Festival, but it didn’t take off properly until mass commercialization of the concept in the following decades.
• 1914 – During WWI, the US Gov’t tried to rename hamburgers as ‘liberty sandwiches.’
• 1921 – Walter A Anderson (a short order cook) and E.W. Ingram (an insurance exec) founded White Castle, the oldest burger chain, in Wichita, Kansas. Their first burger sold for a nickel.
• 1930s – During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the need for cheap food reached even greater heights. Seeing hunger and poverty, entrepreneurs looked for ways to get tasty food into people’s bellies without the usual price tag. So they began developing machines that would churn out burgers en masse.
• 1939 – According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hamburger was first abbreviated to burger in 1939.
• 1948 – The McDonald brothers open a restaurant in California and start making hamburgers.
• 1954 – Burger King is established in Florida and becomes the biggest challenger to McDonald’s.
• 1968 – The Big Mac was introduced in 1968 and sold for 49 cents
• Hamburg steaks were introduced to the U.S. by immigrants from Hamburg, Germany and they opened restaurants in the U.S. — it was difficult to eat the steak placed between two slices of bread, leading to the creation of the ‘hamburger sandwich.’
• The Library of Congress credits Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, and owner of Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut as the creator of the hamburger as we know it.
• The people of America eat more burgers out at restaurants or on the go than they do at home.
• The hamburger in its current form, with ground beef and a bun, is a decidedly American creation.
• We have Genghis Khan and his conquering hordes of horsemen to thank for the simple hamburger. While his troops were riding to battle, they would keep scraps of lamb or mutton, formed into patties, under their saddles to tenderize the meat. When they stopped to make camp, the horsemen would cook the patties over open flames or eat them raw. The dish was taken to Russia, where it became “steak tartare.”
• Americans alone consume approximately 50 billion burgers a year.
• The average American consumes about 30 pounds of hamburgers a year.
• On average, Americans eat 3 hamburgers a week.
• More than seven of every ten burgers (73% or 9.6 billion) consumed in the U.S. were prepared and purchased out of the home.
• The Hamburger Hall of Fame is located in Seymour, Wis.
• If all Hamburgers eaten by Americans in a year are arranged in a straight line, it would circle our Earth 32 times or more!
• Hamburger (ground beef patty) is the most popular food for the grill, followed by steak and chicken.
• McDonalds sells 75 hamburgers every second.
• One in eight Americans has been employed by McDonald’s.
• McDonalds is the largest distributor of toys in the world.
• A slider is a very small square hamburger patty sprinkled with diced onions and served on an equally small bun. According to the earliest citations, the name originated aboard U.S. Navy ships, due to the way greasy burgers slid across the galley grill while the ship pitched and rolled.
• Close to 60% of all sandwiches sold all over the world are actually hamburgers.

Sources:

Days of the Year

Foodimentary

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Just Fun Facts

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