In the USA, July is National Hot Dog Month. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council decided that National Hot Dog Day would be around July 23rd every year. In fact, Hot Dog Day is celebrated outside of the USA too. There are celebrations in Canada, Great Britain and Germany. The main activity on this day is to eat hot dogs, but there are other activities and events. The event with the highest profile is the annual Hot Dog Lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. More than 1,000 Washington officials celebrate the hot dog at the lunch. The Hot Dog Council provides information about hot dogs and how to eat them. They even provide advice on hot dog eating etiquette. There is a lot more to eating hot dogs than most people think.

The German city of Frankfurt is said to be the birthplace of the sausage used in hot dogs – the frankfurter. In 1987, the city celebrated the 500th birthday of the hot dog. The Austrian city Vienna disputes this. Officials there say their Wiener sausages existed many years before frankfurters. North Europeans brought sausages of all kinds to America. The name “hot dog” was first used in 1901 in New York at the New York Polo Grounds. A food seller started selling dachshund sausages in bread rolls. He shouted to people to get them while they were hot. A sports cartoonist didn’t know how to spell “dachshund” and so called them “hot dogs” in a newspaper cartoon the next day. The name has stuck for over a century.

译文属可可英语原创，未经允许，不得转载。