Who Invented the Hot Dog? - Big Questions (Ep.2)

Hi, I'm Craig, but you can call me hot dog

And this is Mental Floss on YouTube. You don't have to call me hot dog. You don't even have to talk to me, actually

Today I'm gonna answer Ben's big question. Who invented the hot dog

Ben, you've really made things hard for us here at Mental Floss because there aren't many things in this world

as controversial as your question. But I respect your thirst for knowledge, and I like talking a lot

So I'm gonna try to answer it anyway. Let's get started. It goes without saying that the hot dog has an ancestor. The sausage. Unfortunately, we don't know who invented the sausage because it has been around forever. Maybe not forever, forever, forever. But it was mentioned in Homer's the Odyssey, which was written around 8th century BCE. The ancient Romans also ate sausage thanks to Emperor Nero's chef, Gaius, who is credited with popularizing the dish. Also, I'm pretty sure Porkens from Star Wars had some hot dogs, and that was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. You know what I'm talking about

Moving forward in time and across the continent, people from Germany and Austria

embraced sausages as part of their cuisine. And here's where we have a sausage schism

Sausage Schism. Two European towns believe that they are responsible for the hot dog

Frankfort and Vienna. The people of Frankfurt say that the hot dog was invented there in 1487

This is, of course, how we got the word Frankfurter. The people of Vienna, on the other hand

say that the hot dog was invented by two Austro immigrants Emil Ryshal and Sam Ladini They lived in Vienna then moved to Chicago where they sold their hot dogs at the 1893 World Fair Even if these weren the first hot dogs they were probably the first Chicago hot dogs The pair ended up founding Vienna beef a hot dog manufacturer that remains in Chicago today

By the way, Vienna is also known as Vien in German, so that's where we got the term weiner

Tee-he-he-he-he. It's okay. You can laugh. I knew we wouldn't get through a whole video about sausages without you laughing

Just keep it down, okay? Anyway, if this hasn't been confusing enough, I'm gonna throw another

name out there. Johann Jorgahenner. We couldn't find a pronunciation on the

internet for how to pronounce Jorgahenner. He has also been credited with

inventing the hot dog in Germany. Johann was a butcher living in Coburg in the 1600s and some claim that it was actually him who brought the hot dog to

Frankfurt, which would have been much later in time than they claimed the hot dog was actually invented. See? Confusing. So I guess the answer to your question, Ben, is

Europeans. Europeans invented the hot dog. As for the rest, you're just gonna have to go

with your gut on this one. If you have a big question of your own that you'd like answered, leave it in the

comments below. Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube. And when you see our video next week, click on the link

Get it? A sausage link? We're very clever. I need a hot dog