22nd June: Doughnuts were invented

Although National Doughnut Day is in early June, I'm doing doughnuts today because they were invented on this date in 1847, by a 16 year old sailor who disliked the cakes he was served aboard ship because they were raw in the middle. He came up with the idea of punching a hole in the middle with a pepper pot, and when it worked, went home and told his mother the technique.

1. The first doughnuts were made by Dutch settlers in the US. They called them oliekoeks (a Dutch word literally meaning "oil cake").
2. Having said that, archaeologists have found fossilized remains of a similar food in ancient Native American settlements.
3. It is thought that the first doughnuts were made by mistake when a cow accidentally kicked over a pot of oil which landed in the pastry.
4. Americans eat 10 billion doughnuts a year. The US town with the most doughnut shops per person is Boston. However, America as a country has less doughnut shops per person than Canada, even though the Canadians only eat one billion doughnuts a year.
5. The largest doughnut ever made was an American-style jelly doughnut. It weighed 1.7 tons, was 16ft wide and 16inches high. It was made in Utica, New York, USA on January 21, 1993.
6. The records for eating doughnuts are 29 in six minutes, and the fastest time for eating one is 33 seconds.
7. Doughnuts were distributed to American troops in both world wars, to give them a taste of home. They were handed out by female volunteers who came to be known as "doughnut girls" in World War I and "doughnut dollies" in World War II.
8. The first machine for making doughnuts was invested by Adolph Levitt, a refugee from Russia, in 1920.
9. Why do doughnuts have holes? Apparently so they cook more evenly. In the world of business, nothing is ever wasted - "doughnut holes", little balls of deep fried dough, are also sold as snacks.
10. Dunking doughnuts became popular in 1934 when Clark Gable was seen doing it in a film called It Happened One Night. However, he wasn't the first person to dunk a doughnut, according to legend. It was an actress called Mae Murray who accidentally dropped a doughnut into her coffee.