Poultry pioneer Teressa Bellissimo inspired a delicious all-American bar-food phenomenon. The late restaurateur cooked the first batch of Buffalo wings, the most iconic of all barroom bites, by happenstance one winter night in 1964 at Anchor Bar in Buffalo. Her invention soon upended an entire multi-billion-dollar sector of American agriculture. 

The nation has delighted with teary eyes and sauce-soaked fingers ever since a small band of barflies savored those first bites of spicy chicken limbs in New York nearly 60 years ago. Americans consume an incredible 27 billion chicken wings per year, according to an estimate by the National Chicken Council.