With summer here, it’s good to reflect on America’s favorite dessert: ice cream. Per this brief New York Times article, the first ice cream cone was popularized (invented?) at the 1904 World’s Fair by a Syrian vendor:

America was on the cusp of an agricultural golden age as the first gas-powered tractors plowed fields and bumper crops spilled out of silos. People who gaped with wonder at the abundance at the fair may well have longed for a way to sample it immediately. According to eyewitness accounts, Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian concessions vendor, invented a way to make that possible: he curled a waffle cookie and transformed it into a receptacle for ice cream. This freed tourists to climb miniature Tyrolean Alps or witness the creation of the earth while slurping ice cream. No plates. No spoons. It was a revelation.

I’ll be making a few visits to Bruster’s ice cream in the next few months, to be sure.