The biggest pizza ever made was baked in Norwood, South Africa in 1990. It was a massive 100 feet across.

The word pizza was originally spelt as “pitsa” Americans eat billions of slices of pizza every year; in fact the annual per capita pizza consumption is 23 pounds!

Saturday night is traditionally the biggest night of the week for eating pizza.

America's favourite pizza topping is pepperoni.

America's least favourite pizza topping is anchovies.

Americans eat 90 to 100 acres of pizza per day.

During TV news broadcasts, most pizza is ordered during the weather forecast, and the delivery folks report that women, perhaps not surprisingly, are better tippers!

Post Columbus tomatoes were brought back to Europe from the New World in the 16th century. Originally they were thought by many to be poisonous, but later became accepted and added to pizza and bread in Italy.

In the 16th century, Maria Carolina, the Queen of Naples eventually convinced her husband, King Ferdinand IV, to allow the peasant dish pizza to actually be made in the royal oven.

In 1889 Raffaele Esposito, the most famous pizza chef created a pizza pie for Queen Margherita - tomato, basil and cheese, to resemble the Italian flag, which remains the basis for American pizza and many pizzerias serve it as a margherita pizza.

In 1905 the 1st American Pizzeria opened in New York City at 53 1/2 Spring St.

In 1945, soldiers returning from WWII brought with them a taste for certain foods, and as their rations were dull when fighting in Italy pizza was at the top of their list.

Outside of Italy, Argentina may well be the second best place for Italian food, especially pizza. Over sixty per cent of Buenos Aires' residents are of Italian descent, which is evidenced by the massive number of pizzerias lining the city's beautiful streets. But America may be a close second or third also.

The people of America eat around 350 slices of pizza each second, or 90 to 100 acres per day. Each year, the pizza market is a $30 billion industry.

In the U.S. alone there are about 61,269 pizza parlours.

Everyone in the United States eats about 23 lbs., or 46 slices, every year. That’s a lot of pizza!

Each year in the United States, over 3 billion pizzas are sold.

The most popular ethnic food in the US today is Italian.

Children aged 3 to 11 prefer pizza over all other foods for lunch and dinner, that’s according to a recent Gallup Poll.

Thirty six percent of all pizza orders want their pizza topping to be pepperoni, far and away the most popular pizza topping! We consume around 251,770,000 pounds of pepperonis every year.