Chicago invented Pizza - and the Hot Dog.
Ah, the fairy tales of Chicago.
It was Greece that invented Pizza. And it was New York that perfected it.
The Origin of the Hot Dog Sausage
The sausage, it seems, has always been a popular food for mankind. It was a favourite fare back in the time of the Romans, and it certainly was a treat to King George VI of England (1895 - 1952) who ate his first hot dog in 1939 at a picnic organised by the Roosevelts in Hyde Park2.
The history of the baseball stadium or pavement stall hot dog can be traced to the year 850 BC where it was mentioned in Homer's Odyssey:
As when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted...
It is said that Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar's cook discovered the first wiener some time around 64 AD. Back then it was the custom to starve pigs for a week before slaughtering, to ensure that they would be clean and fit for eating. One roast pig that passed through Gaius's kitchen had apparently by-passed the cleaning process. Gaius slit the pig's belly to check if the pig was fit to eat, and was duly surprised when the pig's intestines fell out - puffed out and hollow. He exclaimed, 'I have discovered something of great importance', stuffed the intestines with ground venison, and ground beef mixed with cooked ground wheat and spices then tied them into sections. The first wiener was born.
At the time, sausages were associated with a Roman festival called Lupercalian. The Lupercalian Festival was celebrated on 14 and 15 February and was the predecessor of the modern-day Valentine's Day. It included a sexual initiation rite, so it is hardly surprising that, when Catholicism arose and Constantine the Great embraced Christianity in 325 AD, he completely banned sausage consumption.
The sausage was not seen again publicly until the 15th Century, when the Germans in Frankfurt developed the frankfurter - thick, soft, fatty sausages that Constantine would have hated. However the modern type of sausage only came into existence in the 1690s. It was created by a German butcher named Johann Georghehner, who subsequently went to Frankfurt to promote this new food.
German immigrants brought frankfurters with them to the US in the 1860s, where they were sold with milk rolls and sauerkraut from a push cart in New York City's Bowery. It was there that the frankfurter would evolve into the hot dog that we all know today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1021834