Thursday, September 8 is National Cheeseburger Day

SEPTEMBER 18 … NATIONAL CHEESEBURGER DAY.

Enjoy a cheeseburger in Paradise today.

Cheeseburgers in Paradise – Jimmy Buffet

Get ready to celebrate National Cheeseburger Day.

You might not realize it, but we’ve got a good old-fashioned American celebration heading our way. Thursday, Sept. 18 is National Cheeseburger Day.

We’ve got input on that from a couple of burger-centric restaurant operations based in Kansas City. But, first, a little burger background to help put this momentous occasion into perspective.

According to Wikipedia, adding cheese to hamburgers became popular in the U.S. in the late-1920s to mid-1930s.

There are several competing claims as to who created the first cheeseburger.

Lionel Sternberger said he did it in 1926 at the tender age of 16 while working as a fry cook at his father’s sandwich shop in Pasadena, CA. According to legend, it was an experiment – Sternberger dropped a slab of American cheese onto a sizzling burger.

Not long after, cheeseburgers started popping up on menus. A 1928 menu from O’Dell’s restaurant in Los Angeles offered a cheeseburger topped with chili for a quarter.

There are other claimants to the cheeseburger crown, including Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, CO, who was awarded a trademark for the name in 1934.

Steak n’ Shake also said its founder, Gus Belt, applied for a trademark on the word cheeseburger in the ’30s.

Whoever, however, and whenever the cheeseburger made it into the American lexicon, the rest, as they say, is history.

Who doesn’t like a mouth-watering cheeseburger. Well of course I guess if you are a vegan. Of course then there are the following cheeseburger ads that will make you forget or care who crated the first cheeseburger and be thankful that some one did