And what dramatic stories they are. It’s said that after too many patrons walked off with the white gloves that vendor Anton Feuchtwanger gave out to hold his steamed sausages, he had his brother-in-law bake buns to hold the meat—thus ushering in the first hot dog! Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian-born waffle concessionaire, had a flash of inspiration when the ice cream vendor next to him ran out of glass serving dishes. Hamwi rolled up one of his thin waffles, scooped in some ice cream—and bam, invented the ice cream cone! On a sweltering day, few passersby were interested in the cups of hot tea offered by Richard Blechynden, the Tea Commissioner in the India Pavilion, so the desperate man decided to pour his tea over ice, and (supposedly) an iconic American beverage was born. Perhaps the most widely repeated tale from the fair is that of Fletcher “Old Dave” Davis, a lunch counter operator from Athens, Texas, who purportedly came to St. Louis to introduce a sandwich he’d invented by placing a patty of ground beef between two slices of bread. German-born St. Louis residents dubbed it the “hamburger,” knowing that the citizens of Hamburg, Germany, had a particular fondness for ground meat.
