This is Origins in Five. Five minutes. One word. A small story to start the day. Today's word is sandwich. Now, not to worry, there will be no ancient Latin or Greek in this episode, or even old French. Today our journey starts in the eighteenth century with a person named John Montague. John was an English aristocrat with a fancy title, the Earl of Sandwich, named after the town of Sandwich, located in the southeast of England. At this point in history, the title had been in his family for four generations. The Earl had quite the pedigree and career. He went to school at Eton, which has a reputation of educating some of the elite in British society, including prime ministers and other world leaders. He also held many jobs, including the first Lord of the Admiralty, which was the title of the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was postmaster general, then Secretary of State. And in these roles he supported the legendary Captain James Cook. In fact, in honor of the Earl of Sandwich in the late 1700s, Cook named a beautiful group of islands the Sandwich Islands. Over time, the name Sandwich Islands was phased out and the islands became known by their current native name, Hawaii. Interestingly, the Earl of Sandwich is not well known for these accomplishments. Rather, he's known for his penchant to gamble for long hours, or more specifically, he's known for what he ate during those long sessions. The story goes that sometime in the 1760s he was spending long hours at the gambling table, so long that he did not want to get up to go eat a proper meal. In addition to not getting up from the table, the other requirement he had was that he needed to be able to use one hand to eat, as the other one would be used to hold his cards. And he didn't want the food to be greasy because he couldn't risk getting the cards messy and dirty. So the solution? Eat a bunch of meat placed between two slices of bread. This solved the problem. It allowed him to eat with one hand without getting grease all over everything, and perhaps more importantly, without interrupting his game. Other people at the table reportedly began ordering the same as sandwich, and eventually the name stuck. Now, to be clear, the Earl of Sandwich did not invent the concept of putting food inside bread. Humans had been doing versions of that for centuries. What he seems to have invented, or at least popularized, was the specific, fashionable version of cold meat and bread. This was also in some ways at the time a class issue. The fact that someone from such an aristocratic family was eating this type of food made it easier to accept in the broader British social scene. And the timing mattered. In eighteenth century London, coffee houses and gambling clubs were major social hubs. Portable, convenient foods were becoming more popular, especially among wealthy men spending hours socializing, drinking, or gambling. So the sandwich spread quickly. By the late 1700s the word had entered common English usage, and for there, from there it exploded into endless varieties, ham sandwiches, ice cream sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, submarine sandwiches, even the word the verb to sandwich mean to squeeze something between two other things. Now, this is a very popular history, but let's not forget that the Earl did have some fairly important jobs in the British government, and at least a few historians think that this story may be blown out of proportion. It may be that he did eat two slices of bread with meat, but not at the gambling tables, but at his work desk, as he was far too busy to get up for a proper meal. While it's difficult to know what story is correct, what we do know is that the word sandwich is certainly associated with John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich. It is unlikely that the story of the Earl would still be discussed if it was just about someone eating at their desk working late. The image of an individual sitting at a gambling table for hours on end is much more memorable. And that's Origins in Five. One word, one story to start your day.