David Hoffman - Who Knew?: Things You Didnt Know About Things You Know Well

Other Books by David Hoffman

The Joy of Pigging Out Very L.A.: The Natives Guide to the Best of L.A. Kid Stuff: Great Toys from Our Childhood

If Jell-O is hooked up to an EEG, it registers movements virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult.

The original Twinkies filling was banana; it was replaced by vanilla-flavored cream during World War II, when the United States experienced a banana shortage.

On average, a Twinkie will explode in a microwave in forty-five seconds.

There are seven loops in the squiggle atop every Hostess cupcake.

There are approximately 1,750 Os in every can of SpaghettiOs.

There are 1,218 peanuts in a single twenty-eight-ounce jar of Jif peanut butter.

Peanut butter was invented by St. Louis physician Ambrose Straub, who, concerned about the nutrition of his elderly, toothless patients, concocted a health-food product that was high in protein and easily digestible.

Peanut butters high protein content draws moisture from your mouthwhich is why, in the end, it always sticks to the roof of your mouth.

One hundred shares of McDonalds stock purchased for $2,250 when first offered in 1965 was worth more than $1.4 million in 1995.

The largest McDonalds is in Beijing, China. It measures more than twenty-eight thousand square feet, seats seven hundred, and has two kitchens and twenty-nine registers.

McDonalds milkshakes contain seaweedin the form of an extract called carrageenan, a thickener and emulsifier that keeps the butterfat in the shake from separating out.

The biggest menu flops at McDonalds include Kolacky, a Bohemian pastry that had been founder Ray Krocs mothers specialty, and the Hula Burger, which was aimed at vegetarians (as well as Catholics who didnt eat fish on Fridays) and consisted of two slices of cheese and a grilled pineapple ring on a toasted bun.

McDonalds teaches its employees that the fastest way to put out a shortening fire is to dump frozen french fries on it.

Some fast-food chains spray sugar on their potatoes, which caramelizes during cooking and gives the fries a golden color.

In 1853, George Crum, the head chef at Moons Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York, was insulted when hotel guest Cornelius Vanderbilt, the well-known railroad tycoon, sent back his dish of french fries, demanding that they be cut thinner and fried longer. In anger, Crum decided to teach the commodore a lesson and shaved off paper-thin slices of potatoes, threw them into a tub of ice water, let them soak, and dropped them into a vat of boiling grease. When they came out curled and fried crisp, he sprinkled salt on them and sent the potatoes back to the Vanderbilt table. Crum was bowled over when the guests sent back their compliments and requested another order. Soon, Saratoga chips (later to become simply potato chips) were a featured item on the hotels menu.

M&Ms owe their success to the United States military, which was hungry for a candy that could hold up in G.I.s pockets and backpacks and could be eaten without their trigger fingers getting sticky.

The original package of M&Ms contained brown, yellow, orange, red, green, and violet-colored candies; violet was dropped in favor of tan in 1949. The red ones were also taken out of the mix, in 1976, but not because they contained red dye no. 2; rather, it was because company officials were afraid that customers would think they did.

Life Savers got their signature shape by accident, when the machine employed to press out a standard circular mint malfunctioned, inadvertently punching a hole in each.

The Hersheys Kiss got its name from the puckering sound made by the manufacturing equipment as chocolate was dropped onto the conveyor belt during the production process.

Coca-Cola was first marketed as the best cure for a hangover, and early production contained trace amounts of coca leaves, which, when processed, render cocaine.

7UP included lithium carbonate in its original recipe.

Dom Prignon, the man commonly recognized for perfecting the process of both making and bottling champagne, was a Benedictine monk.

In 1891, Philadelphia inventor James Henry Mitchell revolutionized the packaged-cookie business by building an apparatus that could combine a hollow cookie crust with a fruit filling. The machinery was quickly bought by the Kennedy Biscuit Works in Boston, which had established the tradition of naming their cookies and crackers after towns in the immediate area.

Since the company already had the Beacon Hill and the Brighton, this fruit-filled number was christened the Newton. And although it was originally manufactured with a range of jam centers, fig quickly proved to be the most popular; hence the cookie officially became known as the Fig Newton.

While making cookies for her hotel guests one evening, Ruth Wakefield lacked the powdered cocoa called for in the recipe, so she substituted tiny bits of chopped chocolate in its place. Unexpectedly, the chocolate pieces did not melt in baking but, rather, held their shape, softening only slightly to a creamy texture. She served the cookies anyway, naming them Toll House after the inn she owned.

The Maxwell House was a luxury hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, known for its coffee.

In 1903, a shipload of coffee consigned to European businessman Ludwig Roselius accidentally got drenched during a storm at sea. Since the beans were no longer fit for commercial sale, Roselius used the cargo for research purposes, eventually discovering that soaking coffee beans in water was the key to decaffeination. When further experimenting proved that he could remove practically all the caffeine, but not the flavor or aroma, he decided to market his invention. He called the product Sanka, a derivation of the French phrase sans caffeine .