Saturday, April 15 — Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the opening of a small hamburger restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. It was the first of what would become one of the world’s best-recognized brand names — McDonald’s. The franchise shop belonged to Ray Kroc, whose main interest at the time was selling the machines that mixed milkshakes. The name came from two McDonald brothers who ran a hamburger shop in California.
The first day’s revenue at the Illinois outlet was $366.12. That McDonald’s shop is now a museum housing artifacts from the growth of the chain, which has famously served billions of hamburgers around the world. In the U.S. today, there are nearly a quarter-million fast-food outlets serving hamburgers and other comestibles, with earnings of over $185 billion per year.
You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online here.
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