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It’s National Ice Cream month, originally designated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.. Other than eating ice-cream (my favorite flavor is chocolate – the chocolatier the better), I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with these fun facts.

1. America spent about $10 billion on ice-cream in 2010. Americans eat more ice-cream than anyone else in the world, averaging 48 pints a year.
2. Most ice-cream companies are family owned businesses which have operated for more than 50 years.
3. Most of America’s ice-cream is produced in the middle of the country.
4. In 2011, the industry produced 1.53 billion gallons of ice cream and frozen desserts.
5. June is the month when most ice-cream is produced.
6. You need about 12 pounds of milk to make a gallon of ice-cream.
7. When it comes to favorite flavors, vanilla is still America’s sweethear, though Chocolate, Strawberry, Mint Chocolate Chip and Cookies and Cream are also popular.
8. For ice cream to be ice cream it must have at least 10% milk fat, according to federal law.
9. Alexander the Great enjoyed a mixture of honey and nectar flavored snow and ice – perhaps this was the first ice cream?
10. Marco Polo discovered something similar to sherbet while on his travels.
11. The Italians may not have been the first to discover ice cream as people were also eating it in England in the 16th century.
12. Ice cream was once known as cream ice.
13. Ice cream was first advertised in America in 1777.
14. President George Washington loved ice cream, spending around $200 on the dessert in summer 1790.
15. Ice cream was only eaten by the rich until ice houses were invented around 1800.
16. The ice cream sundae was invented in 1874. It was originally a special ice cream soda eaten on Sundays.
17. The invention of the ice cream cone is said to date back to 1904 when a vendor at the World’s Fair in St. Louis got a waffle seller to roll waffles into cones as he had run out of dishes. But it seems that that is a myth and the cone was actually invented by an ice-cream seller from New York in 1896.
18. You need to lick a one-scoop cone about 50 times to finish all the ice cream.

What’s your favorite ice-cream flavor?

Image: sea turtle/Flickr

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Tags: travel, Travel Fun

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2012 at 5:30 am and is filed under Travel Fun, US holidays and observances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.