Charles Feltman, age 30, is credited with inventing the hot dog on a bun in 1871. After a modest beginning selling sausages from a pushcart, the German-American went on to establish a large restaurant complex on Brooklyn’s Coney Island that included a beer garden and carousel, and served millions of customers annually. Nathan’s hot dog stand, which sold nickel franks on the boardwalk, was opened in 1916, 45 years later, by Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker, who originally worked for Feltman. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

30-year-old Charles Feltman invented hot dog on a bun in Coney Island 45 years before Nathan’s opened

Woodruff Home for the Aged, a lively place where old people go to die