July is National Hot Dog Month

July is National Hot Dog Month, and according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, over seven billion hot dogs are eaten by Americans between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Every year, Americans eat an average of 60 hot dogs each.  How did the hot dog get its name?  The term "hot dog" is credited to sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan.  At a baseball game at the Polo Grounds in New York, vendors began selling hot dachsund sausages in rolls.

Dorgan could hear the vendors yelling, "Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot!"  He sketched a cartoon depicting the scene but wasn't sure how to spell "dachshund" so he called them simply, "hot dogs."  And the rest is history.