It’s difficult to find someone that doesn’t love pizza! This is the ultimate list of Pizza Trivia, with 50+ Random Useless Facts & Trivia About Pizza, thanks to the powerful Reddit community!
- Six Georgia inmates out on work detail saved a Deputy Sheriff who collapsed unconscious. They could have taken his gun & fled with the work van but used the Deputy’s phone to call 911. The Sheriff’s Office gave the men a pizza party with homemade dessert & recommended reduced sentences. (cbsnews.com)
- Modern body armor was created by a pizza delivery guy who was wounded in the head and leg after a pizza delivery turned into a shootout. Richard Davis, a former US Marine, developed the bulletproof vest using Kevlar. During testing, he shot himself in the chest 190 times. (businessinsider.com)
- The deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 when someone at the small pizza shop Pizzeria Uno in Illinois decided to make a pizza using a cake mold. (tuscaneats.com)
- In 2006, $8 million were stolen from the Banco Rio branch in Acassuso, Argentina. During the robbery, the robbers ordered pizza for the hostages, sang happy birthday to a female lawyer, and then left a note that said they stole ‘money, not love’ before escaping on a boat. (cnn.com)
- No ingredient in Hawaiian Pizza originated from Hawaii. The pizza’s creation was credited to Sam Panopoulos, a Greek-Canadian who named his invention “Hawaiian” after the brand of canned pineapple he used for it. (wikipedia)
- A Florida woman used the Pizza Hut app to get police help. Her boyfriend held her hostage with her children, and took her phone away. She convinced him to let her use the phone to order a pizza; she put in the comments: “Please help. Get 911 to me.” Police arrived; the boyfriend was arrested. (arstechnica.com)
- Package Saver is the name of the little plastic table that goes into the middle of pizza boxes. (eater.com)
- Because Taco Bell is not well known outside the United States, the movie Demolition Man has every spoken/graphic mention of “Taco Bell” removed and replaced with “Pizza Hut” for international releases. (wikipedia)
- Stuffed pizza came along in Chicago 1974 when Nancy’s and Giordano’s both opened their doors. They claim that their recipes came from old family recipes from Italy of scarciedda or Easter pies. (thespruceeats.com)
- Before the 20th century, Pizza was a sweet dish. (wikipedia)
- Hawaiian Pizza was invented in Canada, and is the most popular pizza in Australia, accounting for 15% of pizza sales. (atlasobscura.com)
- Reindeer meat is actually some of the healthiest meat out there. It contains way less fat than beef, and Norwegians are known to eat smoked reindeer, grilled reindeer, reindeer pizza and reindeer tartare. (melmagazine.com)
- Italian police officers posed as “pizza delivery boys” in order to arrest mafia boss Roberto Manganiello of Naples’ notorious Camorra mafia, listed as “one of Italy’s 100 most dangerous criminals” as he watched football in his apartment. He offered no resistance to the fake “delivery boys.” (theguardian.com)
- Mikhail Gorbachev did ads for Pizza Hut. (getpocket.com)
- A pizza company, Zume Pizza uses robots for many stages of pizza production. The pizzas are cooked en route in a van equipped with 56 GPS-equipped automated ovens, timed to be ready shortly before arrival at the address, and are then sliced by a self-cleaning robot cutter. (wikipedia)
- Pizza Hut was the first restaurant to test online ordering for delivery, PizzaNet was created in 1994 and serviced Santa Cruz, California. The site can still be visited today. (thehistoryoftheweb.com)
- Pizza Hut once delivered a pizza to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. (guinnessworldrecords.com)
- National Pizza Month observance began in October 1984, and was created by Gerry Durnell, the publisher of Pizza Today magazine. (wikipedia)
- Greek Key design, on the toga the mascot for Little Caesars Pizza wears, is actually the initials LC for Little Caesars. (littlecaesars.com)
- Tomato, once nicknamed “poison apple,” was feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years until pizzas were invented in Naples, Italy around 1880 and tomato sauce became a key ingredient. (smithsonianmag.com)
- There’s so much concern about violence in Brazilian cities that some gated residences have “pizza holes,” so that delivery people can hand pizzas in through gaps in a gate (radicalurbanist.substack.com)
- Apple has a patent for a round pizza box and has been using these boxes in their Campus cafeteria for years. (theverge.com)
- The first pizza delivered in space was in 2001 by Pizza Hut. (businessinsider.com)
- There are pizza farms, where all the ingredients needed for pizza are grown in wedge shaped plots. (huffingtonpost.com.au)
- Pesto can be made with Cashews. If you have allergies, don’t forget to read the label. (paleoleap.com)
- Joe’s Pizza from Spider-Man 2 (2004) is a real place. (wikipedia)
- Deep-fried pizza is a normal snack in Scotland, it is called Pizza crunch. (wikipedia)
- The term pizza was first recorded in the 10th century in a Latin manuscript from the Southern Italian town of Gaeta, several hundred years before tomatoes arrived in Italy. (wikipedia)
- Lady Gaga once bought $1000 worth of pizzas for fans waiting in line for her. (people.com)
- Oregano was practically unheard of in the U.S. until American G.I.s in WWII returned from Italy with a taste for the “pizza herb”. (npr.org)
- 13% of the US population consumes pizza on any given day. (wikipedia)
- Domino’s Pizza invented the 3D car top sign. (dominos.com)
- One 18 inch pizza has more pizza than two 12 inch pizzas. (lifehacker.com)
- The plastic table-like item found in pizza boxes was patented in 1983. Most people in the business now call it a pizza saver. (gizmodo.com)
- Greasy pizza boxes cannot be recycled; the paper fibers cannot be separated from the oil during the pulping process. (philly.com)
- In 2010, a Japanese chef from Nagoya, Japan was crowned World Champion for having the best pizza in the world, topping 150 chefs from other countries, including Italy. (japantravel.com)
- The two founders of Pizza Hut sold the business to Pepsi in 1977, and one of the founders then became a prolific Papa John’s franchisee, owning 133 locations by the year 2001. (wikipedia)
- In 1889, the Queen of Italy – Margherita Savoy ordered the first pizza delivery. (wikipedia)
- Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, came up with the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre concept in 1977, initially as an effort to promote Atari’s own games. (vice.com)
- Since the 1960s in New York City, the price of a slice of pizza has been roughly the same as the price of a subway ride causing economists to create the term ‘The Pizza Principle’. (businessinsider.com)
- A popular dish in Scotland is a frozen pizza folded in half, dipped in batter and deep fried. It is usually served with salt and vinegar. (wikipedia)
- Pizza wasn’t popular in the U.S. until after WWII, when U.S. troops (including Dwight Eisenhower) returned home from occupied Italy with an appreciation for Italian pizza. (wikipedia)
- In 2005 the Italian Prime Minister, Berlusconi, insulted Finnish cuisine and joked that Finns ate “marinated reindeer”. In 2008, Finland won an international pizza contest, beating Italy. The name of the winning pizza was “Pizza Berlusconi” which was made of smoked reindeer. (wikipedia)
- Jeff Bezos enforces a two pizza rule, a preference for meetings to be small enough where two pizzas can feed everyone in the board room. (wikipedia)
- The guy who started Atari sold the company and used the money to start Chuck E. Cheese. (wikipedia)
- Eating pizza with one’s bare hands is mostly an American custom. Authentic pizza in Italy is eaten with knife and fork. (ottsworld.com)
- Americans eat 100 acres of pizza everyday Thats 350 slices every second! (theatlantic.com)
- There’s a pizza with a sunny side up egg on top called bismarck pizza. (tasteatlas.com)
- Little Caesars was the fastest growing pizza chain in the U.S. – based on net number of stores added each year between 2008-2015. (littlecaesars.com)
- Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, was a Catholic. After he sold it for $1 billion in 1998, he spent his fortune promoting the pro-life movement and teachings on “combating the nation’s ‘moral crisis'”. (wikipedia)
- If you’re ordering and paying for extra ingredients at an U.S. restaurant you’re paying on the average a 426% mark-up for extra sour cream, 417% for cheese on a burger, and 525% for any ingredients on a pizza. An unidentified pizza chain has a 636% mark up for meat in their “meat-laden” pizza. (time.com)
Read on this post archive, more useless facts and trivia about food !
