Sliced Bread

1. July 7, 1928 in Chillicothe, Missouri sliced bread was born.

2. In 1912 Otto Frederick Rohwedder began his quest to create a machine that could slice bread despite complaints from bakers that slicing it would cause it to go stale. In 1917 he had to completely start over after a fire destroyed everything.

3. Sliced bread was referred to as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped," which later led to the saying "the greatest thing since sliced bread."

4. The creation of sliced bread led to an increase to the consumption of bread due to its convenience, which ultimately led to the increase in sales of spreads like jam.

5. There was a short ban on bread in 1943 in the United States as a wartime conservation effort.

6. Thickness of bread tends to vary from country to country.

7. "Sliced pan" is the most popular type of bread in Ireland.

8. In the UK 70% of the bread eaten is white.

9. Within five years of Rohwedder’s invention, 80% of bread sold in the USA was sliced.

10. The toaster was actually invented before sliced bread but the first pop-up toaster came out in 1926 just two years before sliced bread.

Sources:
http://www.foodreference.com/html/fslicedbread.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread
http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/how-was-sliced-bread-invented-and-when