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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that serves up a scoop of history every day

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Speaker 1: of the week. I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're looking at the surprisingly heated debate surrounding the origin

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Speaker 1: of the ice cream Sunday. The day was July eighth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one. According to culinary legend, the first ice

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Speaker 1: cream Sunday was made at Ed Berner's Soda Fountain in

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Speaker 1: Two Rivers, Wisconsin. It happened one summer Sunday when Berner's

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Speaker 1: was preparing a dish of vanilla ice cream for George

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Speaker 1: hall Hour, a friend who was visiting from Marshall, Illinois.

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Speaker 1: Hall Hour spotted a bottle of chocolate syrup on the

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Speaker 1: back shelf behind the counter, and he asked Berners to

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Speaker 1: pour some of it over his ice cream. The shopkeeper

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Speaker 1: tried to talk him down from this unusual request, explaining

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Speaker 1: that the chocolate syrup was meant to be mixed with

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Speaker 1: seltzer when making an ice cream soda, so in its

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Speaker 1: concentrated form it would have been excessively sweet, but Holler

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be denied, insisting that he'd try anything once, so

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Speaker 1: Berners was forced to oblige. He doused the ice cream

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Speaker 1: with the chocolate syrup, and to his surprise, haul hour

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Speaker 1: ate every bite. Happy to be proven wrong, Berners quickly

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Speaker 1: put ice cream and chocolate soda syrup on the menu

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Speaker 1: as a Sunday special, which he sold for five cents

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Speaker 1: a dish. It was a huge hit with customers, and

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Speaker 1: with one little girl in particular, who insisted that they

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Speaker 1: served the treat on other days beside Sunday. Berners eventually

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Speaker 1: agreed and added the item to the permanent menu. He

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Speaker 1: also started experimenting with other toppings, including bananas, nuts, raspberry sauce,

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Speaker 1: and puffed rice. He thought up colorful names for these

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Speaker 1: new concoctions, such as the Jenny Flip and the Floradora,

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Speaker 1: and he settled on a name for his chocolate syrup

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Speaker 1: and ice cream dish too. Even though he now sold

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Speaker 1: it every day of the week, he called it a Sunday.

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Speaker 1: There's no solid answer for why the name of the

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Speaker 1: dish is spelled with an E at the end instead

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Speaker 1: of with a Y, but there are some likely theories.

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Speaker 1: Many accounts say it's because of a misspelling on an

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Speaker 1: order form. Burners had placed an order for canoe shaped

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Speaker 1: dishes from a glassware salesman, and in his request he

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Speaker 1: referred to them as Sunday dishes, spelling Sunday with an E.

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Speaker 1: The misspelling could have been a simple mistake, but most

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Speaker 1: historians think it was likely on purpose. At the time,

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Speaker 1: Christian churches held a lot of sway in small American towns,

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Speaker 1: and since Sunday was the Sabbath, it may have been

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Speaker 1: seen as disrespectful to sell a diy dish of ice

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Speaker 1: cream named after the Lord's Day. Changing the y to

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Speaker 1: an E could have been a way to avoid offending

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Speaker 1: the church once the dish had started to catch on.

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Speaker 1: At this point, you may have noticed that I've been

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Speaker 1: hedging a little on whether or not any of this

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Speaker 1: actually happened. Well, the reason for that is that Twin

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Speaker 1: Rivers isn't the only town to lay claim to the

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Speaker 1: ice cream Sunday. Other challengers include Evanston, Illinois, Norfolk, Virginia,

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Speaker 1: and Cleveland, Ohio. Many of their stories connect to the

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Speaker 1: so called Blue laws or Sunday laws, that were prevalent

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Speaker 1: in nineteenth century America. These are state and local laws

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Speaker 1: that were strict or ban certain activities on Sundays as

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Speaker 1: a way to promote a day of rest in accordance

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Speaker 1: with Biblical tradition. The consumption of alcohol was a frequent

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Speaker 1: target of blue laws, but the most puritanical bands forbade

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Speaker 1: drinking soda as well. Such was the case in Evanston, Illinois,

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Speaker 1: when in eighteen ninety the town prohibited the sale of

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Speaker 1: ice cream sodas on Sunday. Thankfully, for all the residents

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Speaker 1: sweet tooths, the soda fountains and drug stores found a workaround.

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Speaker 1: They started serving ice cream sodas without the soda, or

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Speaker 1: just ice cream and the syrup of your choice. This

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Speaker 1: new dish was dubbed the Sunday Soda, and according to

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Speaker 1: Evanston residence, it was the true original Sunday. But don't

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Speaker 1: tell that to the people of Ithaca, New York. The

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Speaker 1: upstate college town is easily the most aggressive challenger to

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Speaker 1: the Sunday throne. According to city officials, it was on Sunday,

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Speaker 1: April third, eighteen ninety two that the world's first Sunday

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Speaker 1: was made. The story goes that Reverend John Scott stopped

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Speaker 1: by the platte and cult Pharmacy after delivering his sermon

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Speaker 1: and ordered a bowl of his usual plain vanilla ice cream,

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Speaker 1: but for whatever reason, the store's proprietor, Chester Platt, decided

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Speaker 1: to spice things up by adding cherry syrup and a

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Speaker 1: candied cherry on top. Platte called his creation the Cherry

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Speaker 1: Sunday in honor of the Reverend, and it quickly became

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Speaker 1: one of the most popular items on the menu, though

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Speaker 1: he too, eventually changed the name to Sunday with an

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Speaker 1: E to avoid offence. The stories of Two Rivers, Evanstone,

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Speaker 1: and Ithaca are all pretty similar, and it isn't a

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Speaker 1: stretch to imagine that multiple places might think of drizzling

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Speaker 1: flavored syrup over ice cream and around the same time.

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Speaker 1: Many argue that Evanston and Ithaca have the stronger claims,

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Speaker 1: as theirs are backed up by hard evidence newspaper ads

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Speaker 1: and articles from the eighteen nineties that touts Sunday Sodas

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Speaker 1: and cherry Sundays respectively. Meanwhile, Two Rivers paper trail only

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Speaker 1: goes back to eighteen twenty nine, when Ed Berners gave

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Speaker 1: an interview recounting the fateful day when he invented the

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Speaker 1: ice cream Sunday. Despite the lack of concrete proof, Two

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Speaker 1: Rivers maintains that Burner's was the first person by about

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Speaker 1: a decade to combine syrup and ice cream without soda.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to say with certainty when and where the

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Speaker 1: ice cream Sunday was invented, but Two Rivers certainly boasts

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Speaker 1: the oldest claim, as well as the most officially recognized.

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Speaker 1: It's the only one endorsed by the National Register of

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Speaker 1: Historic Places, and in twenty sixteen, the United States Postal

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Speaker 1: Service introduced a series of ice cream Sunday stamps, which

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Speaker 1: it sold for the first time at the Two Rivers

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Speaker 1: visitor Center. Edward Berner closed down his soda fountain in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, but there's a working replica of it

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Speaker 1: inside the visitor center. None of those appeals to authority

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Speaker 1: are likely to satisfy Two Rivers detractors, and the debate

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Speaker 1: over who deserves credit for the ice cream Sunday is

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Speaker 1: far from over. But thankfully you don't have to choose

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Speaker 1: sides in order to eat one. I'm gay, blues gay,

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you now know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep

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Speaker 1: up with the show. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my

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Speaker 1: way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to kazb Bias for producing the show, and thanks

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Speaker 1: to you for listening. I'll see you back here again

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Speaker 1: tomorrow for another day in History class