Happy Birthday Donuts! Here’s to 175 Years!

The original donut did not look or taste like today's donuts. Though they were REALLY GOOD! It was basically deep fried bred with a hole in it. Not the fluffy glazed bread we have for donuts today.

The inventor was a Maine mariner Captain Hanson Crockett Gregory.

At the time he was just a galley boy and only 15 years old.

For breakfast, sailors might get some deep friend bred that was often undercooked in the middle.

So he cut out a hole in the middle to solve the problem of the undercooked middle that was causing stomach aches.

The idea quickly spread to other ships.

This is more like what the original donut looked like.

The donut turns 175 years old on June 22nd, 2022.

But Donut lovers celebrate National Donut Day on the first Friday of June — June 3, 2022, this year.

The Salvation Army celebrates the day. They started giving donuts to soldiers back in WWI, with a cup of coffee.

The culinary world should celebrate another milestone later this month as well.

Boston-area entrepreneur William Rosenberg opened the first Dunkin’ Donuts in 1950 in Quincy.

The proximity of the original donut maker's burial place, and the birth of the nation's largest and most famous donut chain, appears to be nothing more than coincidence.

Gregory’s humble gravestone is in a small, isolated sailors’ cemetery in Quincy, Mass., overlooking Boston Harbor, where he lived out his final years.

All his gravestone has is his name, rank, birth, and death date, plus the words, "Inventor of the donut.