National Pizza Day on February 9th celebrates one of America’s all-time favorite foods. Whether it is thin crust, Chicago-style, deep dish, or anything in between, pizza is an American favorite.

Pizza is one of the few foods that almost everyone knows and loves around the world. It’s cheesy, delicious, and just about everywhere.

Pizza Day, your time to get your pizza eating game on! Yes, you heard correctly! A whole day – 24 happy hours – to celebrate that yummy carb that almost no one can do without! From the humble beginning to today’s gourmet offerings pizza has captured the heart and stomachs of people around the globe. Do you like the traditional cheese and pepperoni? Are you more adventurous and need to show that in your pizza toppings? Now is time to show the world!

You can say that Pizza Day started in the 10th century in Naples, Italy. This is when records first show the presence of pizza. It started out as a simple flatbread spread with sauce and sprinkled with cheese. I bet the women who most likely made this as a creative snack for their families had no idea the sensation that they had whipped up.

Drive around any American city and I am sure you will be able to find a pizza place on almost every corner. From the chains that boast a perfect pizza exactly like every other one made from any of their stores to the quaint mom and pop restaurants that share their family traditions with us year after year.

Which do you prefer? Personally, I like them both. Sometimes those commercials and funny jingles just get into my mind and make me drive over for a slice! 61% of American’s prefer thin crust.  Here are a few other interesting pizza facts ….

• In the US 350 slices of pizza are eaten every second. Pizza is one of the most popular food options for Americans, with 350 slices eaten by the second. To put that in perspective, about 21,000 slices are eaten nationally in just one minute.
• According to the United States Department of Agriculture, about 13% of Americans eat pizza on a given day.
• There are 18,703 Pizza Huts around the world and they sell more than 2 million pizzas during the Super Bowl.
• The first documented pizzeria in the world was open in Port’Alba in Naples, Italy during the late 1800s. The researchers at the William E. Macaulay Honors College also noted that the first pizzeria opened in Port’Alba, Naples. The pizzeria, called Antica Pizzeria, named the Margherita pizza after Queen Margherita of Italy.
• The first pizzeria in America was Lombardi’s in New York City. Lombardi’s, which was originally a grocery store, started selling pizzas in 1905. This lead to the explosion of pizzerias around New York City within the coming years, as pizza was still looked at as a foreign food until the late 1940s.
• The average pizza slice in New York City usually matches the price of a subway ride. In the Big Apple, the price of a slice of pizza has been rising in parallel to the price of a New York City subway ride. This is known as the “Pizza Principle” and has been going on since the 1960s, according to Business Insider.
• Pizza wasn’t popular in America until after WWII. Former World War II soldiers that were stationed in Italy grew a heavy liking to pizza. They brought the idea back to the United States and helped make it the popular dish it is today.
• According to a study conducted by the USDA, pizza is an extremely popular meal choice among men. The most popular demographic is among males ages 6-19 years, as more than 1 in 4 of them consume pizza on any day.
• Consumption of pizza has increased American’s consumption of cheese by 41% since 1995. In roughly a 25-year span, cheese consumption has nearly doubled due to the high consumption of pizza in the United States. The USDA also noted that a usual two-slice serving of pizza accounts for 37% of your daily recommended calcium consumption.
• The first known documentation of the word “pizza” is from 997 C.E. Although pizza wasn’t a global phenomenon until the 1950s, the word dates back to centuries ago. A manuscript in the small Italian town of Gaeta is the first known document to contain the word “pizza,” food historian Giuseppe Nocca told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
• NASA funded & tested a 3D printer that can make pizza for astronauts.  Even astronauts crave pizza in space. NASA commissioned BeeHex, an Austin-based tech company, to create a 3D printer that makes food, including pizza. This 3D printer can make a pizza in half of the time that the average pizza chef can and has a variety of toppings and sauces, including vodka sauce and burrata cheese.
• One 18-inch pizza gives you more pizza than two 12-inch pizzas. This may seem off, but it’s true. The area of a circle increases with the square of the radius (aka the diameter). Therefore, the larger the diameter of the pizza, the more pizza you get per slice.