Things You Didn’t Know About Hot Dogs

July is Hot Dog Month, and to help celebrate the wonderful eat, I wanted to do a story on things not commonly known about hot dogs.

Things like, who invented them/ And why are they called dogs anyway? Let's start there and answer those two questions.

First, Germany, is traditionally credited with originating the frankfurter. The cut of meat known as a "dachshund" or "little-dog" sausage, was created in the late 1600's by Johann Georghehner, a butcher, living in Coburg, Germany, who traveled to Frankfurt to promote his product.

The term "hot dog" was coined in 1901 at the New York Polo Grounds baseball stadium. One cold April day, concessionaire Harry Stevens was selling sausages from portable hot water tanks. He was shouting, "Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot!"

Sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan in the press box drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages.Not sure how to spell "dachshund" he simply wrote "hotdog." The cartoon was a sensation and the term "hot dog" was born.

Now for the fun part, a few things you didn't perhaps know about hotdogs:

• Babe Ruth once ate 12 hot dogs and drank 8 cans of soda during a double header, and he was rushed to the hospital with a sever case of indigestion.
• The most popular hot dog topping among adults is mustard (87.6%). Among children, it is ketchup.
• President Franklin Roosevelt served King George VI of England hot dogs & beer during a White House visit in 1939. Mrs. Jimmy Carter served hot dogs at a White House picnic in 1977.
• Americans will consume 20 billion hot dogs annually.

Source: Radio Online