National Milk Chocolate Day

Five Facts about Chocolate

• More than 50 percent of adults in the US prefer chocolate to any other flavor.
•  Americans eat 2.8 billion pounds of candy annually. About half of it is chocolate.
• The word chocolate comes from “Xocolatl,” the Aztec word that means “bitter water.”
• Eating chocolate can help prevent tooth decay and works as an anti-bacterial agent.
• The Ivory Coast produces more cocoa than any country in the world which makes for 37 percent of it.

Holiday Origins: National Milk Chocolate Day is an “unofficial” national holiday started by the National Confectioners Association in  the 1970’s.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1586 The potato was introduced to England. It is claimed that Sir Thomas Harriot introduced potatoes to England on this day. (Some sources give December 3 as the date).

1852 Andrew Jackson Downing died. An American horticulturist, he was the author of ‘The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America’ (1845) and editor of the ‘Horticulturist’ periodical.

1866 The metric system was authorized to standardize weights and measures in the U.S. (Authorized, yes, but we still don’t use it very much).

1900 One of the many claims to the origin of the hamburger, is that Louis Lassing (or Lassen) first served hamburgers on a bun in his diner in New Haven, Connecticut.

1907 Earl S. Tupper was Born. The inventor of Tupperware.

1977 At 11:02 p.m. the first oil from Prudhoe Bay arrived at Valdez in the trans-Alaskan pipeline. It took 38 days to travel the 800 miles.

1989 The largest halibut (Atlantic) caught with rod and reel weighed over 255 pounds. It was caught in Gloucester, Massachusetts by Sonny Manley