• 1930 - Twinkies are created and sell two for a nickel.

• 1940s - World War II creates a banana shortage. Consequently the classic banana-cream filling in Twinkies is replaced with vanilla cream.

• 1941- Lewis Browning, a mailman in Shelbyville, Indiana, begins treating himself to one Twinkie a day. By 1997 the Twinkie King had consumed 20,440 Twinkies!

• 1950s - The Twinkies mascot is Twinkie The Kid, a rambunctious lasso-twirling Twinkie dressed as a cowboy.

• 1980 - Twinkies turn 50. Continental Baking celebrates with a 10-foot-long Twinkie that weighs more than a ton and is the equivalent of 32,300 regular Twinkies. It takes five days and 100 hours to bake.

• 1999- The Twinkie is chosen to be included in the nation's millennium time capsule, representing "an object of enduring American symbolism."

• 2000- On April 1, Hostess throws a birthday part at Chicago's Navy Pier, and the world's tallest birthday cake is constructed, standing 25 feet high and containing 20,000 Twinkies.

Bake your very own Twinkie-esque cake
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