Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie in Salem, Massachusetts is the oldest, continuously operated candy company in America. In 1806, the company began selling Gibralters, a hard sugar candy. Learn more here.

Vanilla is considered America’s favorite ice cream because it’s simple and goes with everything.

According to ice cream expert and International Dairy Foods Association Vice President, Cary Frye, “Vanilla has long been the best-selling ice cream flavor not only because it is creamy and delicious, but also because of its ability to enhance so many other desserts and treats.”

Even though America’s first great botanist, John Bartram, assumed peaches were native to America, this “roseate pearl”—as describes this exquisite fruit in his Backroad Portfolio story—was introduced either in 1565 by Spanish settlers in St. Augustine Florida, or in 1562 by the French in an isolated Gulf of Mexico settlement. Many historians believe peaches had been grown in Mexico even earlier than the 1560s.

Native Americans brought peach culture with them as they migrated north with Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries.

By 1863 William Penn observed wild, Indian peaches as far north as Philadelphia.

And today, well, we enjoy them all over the United States!

Several factors contributed to the gradual decline in drive-in movie attendance beginning in the 1960s. Improvements and changes to home entertainment—chiefly more color TV ownership and an increasing number of subscriptions to cable TV—triggered its decline.

So throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as most folks went from watching black-and-white TVs to color TVs (which had been invented in 1953), and the number of cable TV subscribers kept going up, the drive-in movie industry also had to contend with the invention of VCRs and video rentals, which really caught on during the early 1980s.

Additionally, the 1970s energy crisis led to the widespread adoption of daylight savings time—which caused drive-in movies to start an hour later—and lessened use of automobiles, making it harder for drive-ins to remain profitable. Thank goodness we still have some around to enjoy today!

Daniel Boone was born November 2, 1734 in Oley Township, Pennsylvania.

You can visit his homestead in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. At the age of 15, Boone left Pennsylvania with his family following a break with the Society of Friends (better known as the Quakers). Boone resided in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley for about a year before settling along the Yadkin River in North Carolina. He set out to explore Kentucky in 1769.