Happy National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, Everybody!

Happy National Chocolate Ice Cream Day everybody! Because you obviously need an excuse to eat the stuff.

Yes, on June 7 the world celebrates what only fools and scoundrels would deny is the finest flavor of ice cream. So to pad out this article celebrate that fact, here are a few scoops of obscure ice cream facts and wisdom:

• Some culinary historians suggest Thomas Jefferson may have been responsible for introducing ice cream to the U.S: apparently the third President got a taste for the dessert while living abroad during the 1780s – he was ambassador to France at the time – and introduced the treat to America.

• Yet ice cream has been around for much longer than that suggests – the Roman emperor Nero would send slaves to the mountains to collect snow and ice to make flavored ices. Which were sort of the precursor to ice cream – and this was in the first century.

• While the first ice cream flavors were – yawn – fruit-based, by the 18th century both vanilla and chocolate were quite common. And also DELICIOUS.

• The humble ice cream cone was reportedly invented by chance at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The story goes that an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes to keep up with the demand, so paired up with a waffle vendor who rolled his waffles into cones.

• The biggest ice cream sundae in history was made in 1988 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and weighed a mere 24 tons.

• Vanilla is the most popular flavor in the U.S with 20 to 29 percent of sales. Chocolate comes in a scandalous second, with only 9 to 10 percent of the market.

I don’t need to tell you people how to celebrate, do I?