The frozen margarita was invented in Dallas using a repurposed soft-serve machine

Frozen burritos made the dish widely available in the 1950s

California native Duane Roberts, who also pioneered the frozen hamburger patty, invented the frozen burrito in 1956 to be easily prepared at fast food restaurants. This innovation also allowed it to be sold in supermarkets.

The frozen pizza was invented in 1950

In 1950, some pizzerias were premaking pies, allowing customers to take them home and cook them at their convenience. That same year, Philadelphia's Joseph Bucci filed a patent for a "Method of Making Frozen Pizza." Soon, frozen pizzas were appearing in grocery store aisles.

A deep dive into the man behind ballpark nachos

Nachos were invented in Mexico in 1943, but "ballpark nachos" (featuring liquid cheese and pickled jalapenos) were invented in 1976 for the Texas Rangers, then a relatively new franchise. This Texas Monthly piece digs into the history of Frank Libreto, who realized classic nachos could be a cost-efficient concession with just a few small tweaks.

'Dirty soda' took off in Utah before exploding on TikTok

The concoction is a combination of Diet Coke, coffee creamer, and citrus. This Eater article delves into the history behind the sugary drink, pinpointing its start as a Mormon-friendly alternative to alcohol and caffeine. The explainer also explores why the drink became so popular on social media and offers helpful hints for crafting your own recipe.

The history behind New Orleans' drive-thru daiquiris

New Orleans attracts millions of annual visitors with its freewheeling drinking culture, reaching its apex during the weeks-long Mardi Gras celebration. But even the most intemperate tourists might be confused by the city's drive-through daiquiri stands. This resource offers a brief history of the quirky staple and explains how it has survived changes in the law.

The first gelateria, a precursor to the ice cream parlor, opened in 1694

Francesco Procopia dei Coltelli, a restaurateur from Palermo, Sicily, opened the gelateria in Paris. Gelaterias serve gelato, which is similar to ice cream but uses milk rather than cream.

Tex-Mex is its own distinct cuisine with roots in the Texas borderlands

The cuisine emerged from Tejano cooking, blending northern Mexican ranch food with ingredients such as yellow cheese, beef, and wheat flour. Dishes now considered staples, including chili con carne and fajitas, were Tex-Mex inventions rather than traditional Mexican dishes.

The Victorian queen of ice cream

Agnes Marshall invented "ices," the Victorian equivalent of ice cream, through her books and equipment, as shown in the pictures below. Her 1888 book also includes a recipe for "cornets with cream," an early version of the ice cream cone, which was a major advancement from the time period's most popular method for eating ice cream: licking it from a shared parlor dish.

Legend has it that the Margherita pizza was named after an encounter with Queen Margherita

The Queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, visited Naples in 1889. As the story goes, chef Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi made her a pizza with basil, mozzarella, and tomato, to represent the colors of the Italian flag, and eventually named the pie in her honor. Historians, however, note that the facts don't line up: The proof of her visit to the pizzeria is suspected to be a forgery created when the business was in dire straits in the 1930s.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

High freezing speed restricts the development of gritty crystal chunks in ice cream

For this reason, ice cream does not maintain its smoothness when refrozen in a traditional freezer over several hours. The smooth texture is also made possible by balancing fat, sugar, and emulsifiers.

Every Halloween, one Texas bar transforms into Moe's Tavern

Nickel City, a bar in Austin, Texas, dons a costume once a year, turning itself into Moe's Tavern, the watering hole that figures prominently in "The Simpsons." The menu features themed drinks, including "The Bart vs. Australia" and "The Spicy Marge."

Explore a list of 12 recipes incorporating techniques from molecular gastronomy

The recipes include popcorn shooters that taste like liquid caramel corn, almost-instant soft serve made by blending frozen fruit with sugar and fromage blanc, a fusion of fried rice and pizza, and skewered fruit coated in a broiled, glossy meringue.

One US Marine fighter squadron made their own ice cream during World War II

To boost his squad’s morale during World War II, squadron commander J. Hunter Reinburg developed a method for making ice cream on the fly: Empty ammo cans filled with ingredients were flown at altitudes high enough for them to freeze.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

The ‘three-martini lunch’ was popularized on Madison Avenue

Advertising executives working on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and ’70s popularized the so-called “three-martini lunch” between businesspeople during the work week. Admen of the time supposedly believed alcohol brought more creativity to the second half of their workday. This article explains why three-martini lunches are no longer commonplace.

Tequila is made from the blue agave plant and can only be produced in Mexico

By law, tequila must be produced from blue Weber agave grown in Jalisco and a handful of other Mexican states. The plant takes years to mature before harvest, after which it is cooked, crushed, fermented, and distilled into blanco, reposado, or añejo, depending on its aging process.

There’s a solid argument to be made that Macy’s was the inventor of the retail Santa

The Macy’s website claims that retail Santas—the Christmas icons who invite children to meet them at department stores and malls around the holidays—have been visiting the store since the 1860s.

See Salvador Dalí's art at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosts some of Dalí's most recognizable works, including "The Persistence of Memory," pictured below, and its famous melting clocks. MoMA acquired the painting in 1934, after it became a sensation in 1932.

The steep and slippery Russian ice slides sparked centuries-long obsessions with thrill-seeking

When a French traveler happened upon the 17th and 18th century Russian pastime of sledding down man-made hills, he brought the idea home and inspired others to modernize the mechanics. Adoration for coasters spread around Europe and eventually reached the US, where the scream machine would undergo major advancements.

Chicano artists shaped the celebration of Day of the Dead in the US

Beginning in the 1970s, Mexican-American artists have used Day of the Dead components like ofrendas and festivals to combine cultural identity with social justice movements, highlighting indigenous traditions to address issues like gang violence.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

The term 'artificial intelligence' was coined in 1956

Dartmouth professor John McCarthy introduced the term during a summer workshop aimed at exploring how to make machines perform human-like tasks. Two years later, Perceptron Mark I became one of the first neural network machines.

Atari buried hundreds of thousands of video games in the New Mexico desert

The video game industry crashed in 1983, leaving the company with an enormous inventory. Looking to offload the excess, the company secretly had 800,000 cartridges buried in the desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico. For decades, the story was believed to be an urban legend, but documentary filmmakers pursued the story and, in 2014, unearthed the games.

Discover why Texas runs its own electric grid, separate from the other US interconnections

In 1935, electrical utilities in the Lone Star State opted to rely on the state's own fossil fuel reserves to power an independent electric grid. While this prevented the federal oversight required for the Eastern and Western Interconnections that span multiple states, it also meant Texas's grid was unable to draw sufficient backup power during the winter 2021 power grid failure.

McDonald's intentionally avoids using the word 'milkshake'

The restaurant's US menus use an abbreviated term: the simple "shake." Conspiracy theorists suggest this means the chain doesn't use actual milk, but the truth is a bit more complicated and—much to their displeasure—mostly related to dairy regulations.

How melting ice impacts the whole world

Melting glaciers and ice caps are far from where most people live, but their impact can be felt across the planet. Visit four places—the American West, a Himalayan valley, the northern Atlantic, and Texas—with this immersive interactive to see the various impacts of melting ice around the world.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight