When: September 22
National Ice Cream Cone Day celebrates one of food history's most beloved accidental inventions: the edible cone that made ice cream portable. The story of its creation at the 1904 World's Fair involves a moment of improvisation that changed how Americans eat ice cream forever.
The ice cream cone was invented by accident at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and borrowed waffles from the stall next door.
Before the cone, ice cream was served in glass cups called "penny licks" — small vessels that vendors rinsed between customers at best and wiped on an apron at worst. The penny lick was a public health problem that health officials knew about and couldn't solve. Selling ice cream to crowds required a vessel, the vessels were shared, and washing them properly in a street-vending context was not practical. The product was popular. The sanitation was a disaster. The ice cream cone solved both problems at once. The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis is the agreed birthplace of the American version. The most widely credited account involves Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian vendor selling thin, crisp waffle pastries called zalabia near an ice cream stall run by Arnold Fornachou. When Fornachou ran out of dishes on a particularly busy, hot day, Hamwi rolled his waffles into cones. The format was immediately obvious and immediately adopted. Multiple people at the same Fair made similar...