Who invented the hamburger? Biting into the messy history of America’s iconic sandwich.

This early burger reference inspired me to dig deeper, and I have since found more than a dozen newspaper references to hamburgers in the 1890s, including in Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, California and Hawaii. These findings debunk the Louis’ Lunch claim and suggest other burger origin stories are not true, either. In Wisconsin, many claim the burger was invented by Charlie Nagreen, who purportedly sold a meatball between two slices of bread at an 1885 fair in Seymour. In Athens, Tex., the title of “hamburger creator” is bestowed upon Fletcher Davis, who supposedly came up with it in the 1880s. Other burger origin stories can be found in New York, Oklahoma and elsewhere, but they lack documentation.

Source: WP