Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana

Today is National Banana Split Day, observed annually on this date.

A 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel’s Pharmacy in Latrobe, Pennsylvania created the first banana split in 1904. David Evans Strickler enjoyed inventing sundaes at the store’s soda fountain. His first “banana-based triple ice cream sundae” sold for 10 cents, double the cost of all the other sundaes. But wait, Ernest R. Hazard claimed that he invented the banana split in 1907. He owned a restaurant in Wilmington, Ohio, and he hoped that a new ice cream treat would attract students from Wilmington College.

Walgreens had a hand in spreading the word – the early drug stores, operated by Charles Rudolph Walgreens in the Chicago area, is often credited with spreading the banana split’s popularity to a national level. The store had promoted the banana split as their signature dessert, which attracted customers who might have otherwise been simply satisfied with having their prescriptions filled at other drug stores in the neighborhood.