facts.txt

[PIZZA FACT] Basic pizza most likely began in prehistoric times, with bread cooked on flat, hot stones.
[PIZZA FACT] Roughly 1,000 years ago herb-and-spice-covered circles of baked dough (known as focaccia) grew exceptionally popular in Naples.
[PIZZA FACT] Pizza developed in Italy in pre-refrigerator times. After focaccia was "Casa de nanza," which means "take out before."
[PIZZA FACT] Pizza as we know it could not have evolved until the Europeans overcame their fear of a New World discovery - tomatoes.
[PIZZA FACT] Brought back by Conquistadors to Spain, the tomato was thought to be poisonous and was viewed with suspicion.
[PIZZA FACT] The peasants of Naples who lived mostly off of bread were the first to add tomatoes to their focaccia bread rounds.
[PIZZA FACT] In 1830 pizza truly began with the opening of the world's first pizzeria. Named Port'Alba.
[PIZZA FACT] In Port'Alba, the pizzas were cooked in an oven lined with lava from Mount Vesuvius.
[PIZZA FACT] Modern pizza was born in 1889 when Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanni visited Naples.
[PIZZA FACT] Don Raffaele Esposito developed the well-known Margherita pizza.
[PIZZA FACT] Shops in the volcano-devastated city of Pompeii bear the characteristics of pizzerias.
[PIZZA FACT] World War II servicemen returning from Italy began opening pizzerias and raving about that "great Italian dish."
[PIZZA FACT] In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi opened the first licensed American pizzeria, Lombardi's Pizzeria Napoletana.
[PIZZA FACT] Pizza restaurants are opening in such unlikely locations as the Caribbean islands and in most Arab countries.
[PIZZA FACT] The deep-dish pizza was invented in Chicago by pizza entrepreneur Ike Sewell.
[PIZZA FACT] The world's largest pizza was built on October 11, 1987 and measured 140 feet across.