But, perhaps your dessert of choice on a hot day is an ice cream cone. If so, you should be glad for the unexpected event that brought two men together at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. An ice cream vendor named Charles Menches was doing such booming business that he ran out of bowls to put the ice cream in. The vendor next to Menches was a young Syrian immigrant named Ernest Hamwi. Hamwi was selling a Syrian treat called zalabia, a crisp, wafer-like pastry. Hamwi came up with a solution to Menche's quandary. Hamwi rolled some of his warm pastry into a cone so that Menches could put ice cream inside. In that instant, a favorite international hot weather treat was born.
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