Do you picture your distant ancestors eating ice cream in a cone? Well, that’s probably not very accurate. While you may think that ice cream cones have existed as long as ice cream itself, that’s not exactly the case. The origins of ice cream date back to the second century B.C., with more modern takes emerging in the 1700s with colonial Americans. Some version of ice cream has existed for much of human history, yet the only vessel that could hold the creamy stuff was a cup or bowl.

It wasn’t until the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri that the actual modern ice cream cone came to be. At the World’s Fair, a Syrian/Lebanese concessionaire by the name of Arnold Fornachou ran an ice cream booth. When he ran out of standard cups, he noticed he was located next to a waffle stand owned by a man named Ernest Hamwi. He sold Fornachou some of his waffles. With great innovation, Fornachou rolled the waffles into cones to hold the ice cream. This is believed by most to be the moment when ice-cream cones finally became mainstream and reached their modern iteration!