I seriously <3 mental_floss...
Click this link for the whole thing. Excerpted from the linked article:
- New Yorkers may consume more hot dogs than other Americans, but ballpark goers will eat enough at major league ballparks this year to stretch to and from Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., the two sites of the 2008 World Series.
- But what exactly is a hot dog? References to sausage go back as far as Homer, and it is likely that the frankfurter was the grandfather of the eventual “weiner” dog (possibly named after Vienna – Wein – Austria from whence it came). However, others suggest that the term might have come from “dachshund sausage,” “dog wagons,” (that delivered the fares to college students) or even from street vendors hawking them from portable hot water tanks.
- In any case, the hot dog as we know it first appeared in ballparks 1893, and they have remained popular ever since. Humphrey Bogart once said, “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than a steak at the Ritz.”
- Pre-Kobayshi, the record for hot dogs consumed in 12 minutes was 25. Kobayshi – at the time, 23 years old and weighing in at 131 pounds – consumed 50 hot dogs in the same amount of time.