July 8th was a Sunday in 1881, so when a hot young man entered Edward Berner’s drugstore in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and ordered an ice-cream soda, his request was denied. Ice-cream sodas could not be served on the Sabbath owing to the ancient Mosaic injunction against them.
The hot young man pleaded his case so eloquently, however, that Berner felt sympathetic and came up with a compromise: he plopped a scoop of ice-cream into a dish and poured the chocolate-flavored syrup directly over it.
This religious dodge quickly became popular and came to be known as the Ice Cream Sundae. (The spelling was later changed to conceal the heretical origins of the dish. And whatever you do, don’t repeat this story in Ithaca, NY.)
Since that glorious day, hundreds of millions of Americans have consigned themselves to Hell.
And so it goes.
The Haus of Dcaligari 