3rd November: Sandwich Day

Today is Sandwich Day, so here are some fascinating facts about sandwiches.

1. The sandwich is named after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich who took his title from the town of Sandwich in Kent (which, incidentally is two and a half miles from a village called Ham). The word literally means 'Sandy place'. Also named after John Montagu was an archipelago – the Sandwich Islands, although they're not called that any more. They're called Hawaii.
2. The first recorded use of the word 'Sandwich' was in 1762 by Edward Gibbon, writing about the Beef Steak Club in London. The earliest reference to a bacon sandwich was by George Orwell in 1931.
3. The story goes that the Earl of Sandwich invented the snack when he told his valet to bring him sliced beef between two slices of Bread so he wouldn't have to leave the gambling table in order to eat. However, the Earl worked hard as well as played hard, and it's more likely he called for the first sandwich so he could eat it at his desk.
4. It wasn't the first sandwich, either. People had been eating meat or Cheese with bread for centuries but would just have called it "bread and meat" or "bread and cheese". The first recorded sandwich was actually made in the first century BC by Hillel the Elder, a rabbi, who put chopped nuts, Apples, spices, and Wine between two flatbreads. All the same, the current Earl, also called John Montagu, has cashed in on the story – he owns a restaurant chain specialising in sandwiches.
5. People in the UK eat about 12 billion sandwiches a year, of which about 8 billion are bought pre-packaged from shops. The pre-packaged sandwich has only been around since 1980, when Marks and Spencer started selling them in five stores as an experiment.
6. The Norwegians have a word for ‘anything that could conceivably be put in a sandwich’. The word is pålegg.
7. Some record breaking sandwiches – the most expensive to be sold on a regular basis costs $100 and can be purchased at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago. The most expensive sandwich ever was made by chef Tom Bridge. It was a Lancaster Cheese Sandwich and he sold it on eBay for £345. The world’s largest sandwich weighed 5,440 pounds. There was an attempt in Iran to make the the world's biggest sandwich in Iran in 2008 but the attempt failed because people started eating it before it could be measured.
8. The word sandwich is also a verb, meaning "to position anything between two other things of a different character”. Hence, although there are regulations in various parts of the world that specify a sandwich must be made from slices of bread from a loaf, or must contain 35% meat, you can still get an Ice cream sandwich or sandwich biscuits, or even end up sandwiched between two large people on public transport.
9. Sandwiches have found their way into space – in 1965, John Young, the pilot of Gemini 3, was reprimanded for smuggling a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft.
10. In 2003, a sandwich scuppered a jewel thief in Belgium. He got into a vault protected by a lock with 100 million possible combinations, a seismic sensor, Doppler radar, infrared heat detectors, and a magnetic field and stole diamonds worth 100 million dollars. His mistake? To eat a sandwich while he was “working”, not finish it, and leave the remains of it behind, along with some of his DNA.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.

Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest