July Is National Ice Cream Month!

July is National Ice Cream month – it was a special decree by President Reagan in 1984.

There’s an old story that George Washington liked ice cream so much that he ran up a $200 bill for ice cream one summer.

Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of ice cream too. He wrote down the recipe for ice cream and gave it to his housekeeper to make.

The world’s first newspaper ad for ice cream appeared in the New York Gazette in 1777.

The world’s favorite flavor by a wide margin is vanilla. Twenty-five percent of Baskin-Robbins ice cream sales are for vanilla. Chocolate is a distant second.

When the Beatles made their first visit to America in 1964, Baskin Robbins created a special flavor in their honor. They called it Beatle Nut.

In the early days of TV if a scene ever called for ice cream they used mashed potatoes instead because real ice cream melted too fast under the hot lights.

Ice cream was invented in Italy under Roman Emperor Nero in 60 AD, but Italian dictator Mussolini banned it in his country during World War II because he thought it was “too American.”

More ice cream is sold on Sunday than any other day of the week.

The most popular ice cream topping is chocolate, followed by whipped cream.

It takes about 12 pounds of milk to make a gallon of ice cream. A gallon of ice cream must weigh a minimum of 4 ½ pounds.

It takes about 50 licks to finish off a single scoop ice cream cone.

SOURCE: Familycrafts.About.com