(NEXSTAR) – Nearly every cuisine is represented by the restaurant industry in the U.S. — even “dirty sodas” have a home. But it’s the humble hamburger, an American icon that four cities claim to have invented, that gets all the credit for being there at the very beginning of one of the nation’s beloved establishments: the fast food restaurant chain.
While the hamburger dates back to at least the 1880s, the first chain of restaurants serving the sandwich didn’t open until the 1920s.
More specifically, the year was 1921. President Warren Harding was the newly elected president of the country, which was only 48 states in size. World War I, then considered the Great War, was still relatively visible in the rearview mirror. America was on the verge of the “Roaring Twenties,” just as Prohibition was taking effect…