Ice Cream Cone
Let me tell you a fun story about how the ice cream cone was invented. Did you know that people have been making iced desserts for thousands of years? Even the Chinese made them a long time ago! And did you know that even George Washington, the first president of the United States, loved ice cream? But the ice cream cone, the way we know it today, was not popular until after 1904.
Let’s go back to that year and travel to St. Louis, Missouri. That summer was really hot, and people were looking for a cool treat. There was a Syrian man named Ernest A. Hamwi who had a stand selling Persian waffles called Zalabia. Nearby, there was another stand selling ice cream. But the ice cream vendor ran out of dishes to serve his ice cream in, and that’s when something magical happened.
Hamwi quickly rolled one of his waffles into a cone shape and put a scoop of ice cream on top of it. People who tried it loved it! The treat was an instant hit, and they named it the “World’s Fair Cornucopia,” which later became known as the ice cream cone.
But wait, there’s more to the story! There was another man named Italo Marchiony, an Italian who sold lemon ice in a cone from a pushcart business in New York City. At first, he used a paper cone, and then he switched to a pastry cone. Marchiony even applied for a patent in September 1903, six months before the St. Louis World’s Fair began! Great minds think alike!
So, both Hamwi and Marchiony came up with the idea of an ice cream cone, but it was probably the large number of people who tried Hamwi’s cones at the St. Louis World’s Fair that made the ice cream cone the popular treat we know and love today.
There you have it, a fun story about how the ice cream cone was invented. The next time you enjoy a tasty ice cream cone, you can impress your friends and family with this cool bit of history!
