National Donut Day is Friday so we cooked up these fun facts about the delicious treats to impress (or annoy) your friends:
- The first National Donut Day dates back to 1938. The Salvation Army had "dough lassie" volunteers who served donuts to soldiers during World War I. The Chicago branch launched National Donut Day as a company fundraiser that year. (Thank you, Salvation Army!)
- More than 10 billion donuts are made in the U.S.every year.
- Boston has the most donut shops per person, according to "The History of Donuts." Long Beach, CA, Dallas, Sacramento and Fort Worth round out the top five.
- If you eat one donut a day, you'll gain about a pound every 10 days. (this "fun" fact is guaranteed to annoy.)
- Renee Zellweger, from Katy, said she ate 20 donuts a day to gain weight for the 'Bridget Jones' sequel, according to Mentalfloss.com. How many could you eat?
- Also from Mental Floss, Actor Clark Gable gets credit for the trend of dunking donuts in milk when he did it in the 1934 movie 'It Happened One Night.'
- Most historians believe the Dutch were the first to introduce the modern doughnut to North America in the form of olykoeks, or “oil cakes” as early as the mid-19th century, according to the "8 outlandish donuts" cookbook.
- Anthropologist Paul R. Mullins said the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was an 1803 English volume.
- Adolph Levitt, a Russian-born immigrant, invented the first automated doughnut machine in 1920. He called it the “Wonderful Almost Human Automatic Donut Machine.”
- Doughnut or Donut? Either is acceptable and both are yummy.
- The French used to call their doughnuts Pet de Nonne, which means “Nun’s Farts.” (Giggle)
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