In 1905, an 11-year-old American boy named Frank Epperson accidentally left a glass of soda water on his front porch, along with a wooden stick he had used to stir the drink. It got cold overnight, and the soda froze. The next morning, the boy warmed the glass under running hot water, removed the contents—which had stuck to the stick—and ate them. That was the first popsicle. In the 1920s, Epperson obtained a patent and registered the Popsicle trademark, but he soon sold the rights to it to another company. Today, that company sells about two billion “popsicles” a year.
