The doughnut evidently first appeared in the 1800s in Manhattan, they were known as oily cakes. The Dutch were the ones who introduced them to America. In 1847 it was claimed that a 16-year-old sailor, Captain Hanson Gregory, invented the hole in the doughnut when he needed to have both hand on the wheel in a storm he stuck the doughnut through a spoke of his ships wheel. Though others claim that the hole was made in the middle because the sides would be fried but the inside would be raw. Later during World War I when millions of soldiers were in the trenches of France, some volunteering women brought them homemade doughnuts, this caused the soldiers to want more doughnuts when they returned from war. In New York City, 1920, the first doughnut
