BBB Destination - Chillicothe

Sliced bread is the benchmark against which wonderful inventions are measured. Its birthplace was long claimed by Battle Creek, Michigan -- without apparent proof -- but that assertion has now been nullified. On January 26, 2007, Chillicothe, Missouri, erected not one, but two plaques proclaiming itself to be "The Home of Sliced Bread" and pegging the date as July 7, 1928. Even more majestic manifestations of its claim are in the works.

Chillicothe had no idea that it was the home of sliced bread until 2001, when a local reporter came across an old newspaper clipping that referred to the event. Further digging revealed that the son of the bread-slicing-and-wrapping machine was still alive in Arkansas. At age 88, he flew to Chillicothe with a scrapbook of clippings from the late 1920s, which proved that his father, Otto F. Rohwedder, had indeed first put his invention to use at Frank Bench's Chillicothe Baking Company.

Sliced bread was an immediate hit, according to the scrapbook: bread sales soared, orders for the machines poured in, and Otto F. Rohwedder dreamed of fame and fortune -- until the Great Depression forced him to sell his patents and he spent the rest of his life as an employee of other food industry machine companies.