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Our quest for the holey origin of the donut begins with a browse in the Yahoo! directory. We click our way down the Food and Drink aisle to arrive at the Donuts category (under Food > Desserts). Visiting the "Partially True History of the Doughnut" page on the Call of the Doughnuts site, we learn that a young American named Hanson Gregory first put the hole in the donut in 1847. Today Americans eat an estimated 10 billion (10 to the tenth) of these deep-fried pastries annually. Dunkin' Donuts, which can be found in the Donut category on the commercial side of the
directory, claims to sell about 4 million donuts a day. On the Dunkin' Donuts' Fun Facts page, you'll learn that a Biblical recipe mentions "cake mingled with oil... of fine flour, fried." Later, Admiral Richard Byrd took 100 lbs. of donut flour on an expedition to the South Pole, and frozen donuts were born. It turns out that donuts can also be used as an economic indicator. In prosperous times more dough is used, and the hole shrinks. An expansion in the diameter of the hole is a measure of tighter times. Allen Thompson's House of Donuts mixes donuts, religion, and song. He finds donut moments in
the history of Ancient Egypt, among the Greek philosophers, and in the 18th century European Enlightenment. He sees the religious significance of donuts demonstrated in early circular earthworks at Stonehenge, which were recognizably "toroidal," or donut-shaped. Thompson also introduces some extraterrestrial donut theories, while Jayson's Donut Destination describes how donuts make this world a better place. We wholly agree.
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