Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

It's probably best to just come right out and say it. This episode is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Okay, okay, but I really am here, believe it or not, to talk about sliced bread, the history of sliced bread.

Let's take a road trip down U.S. Route 36 to the town of Chilicothe, Missouri.

It's a long, flat ride stretching for 200 miles across the farmland of northern Missouri, connecting

Kansas to Illinois.

The route is called The Way of American Genius, because some of the nation's best-known

innovators in creative minds spent part of their childhood in nearby towns.

Mark Twain, Walt Disney.

For ages, Chilicothe, a town of 9,500, felt left out.

It was located along Route 36, but as far as anyone knew, nothing had been invented there of equal stature.

Then, in 2001, a local journalist combing through microfilm of old newspapers

stumbled upon a slice of American innovation long overlooked by local residents and state historians.

The headline on an old news clipping said,

Sliced bread is Made Here.

That headline was on the front page of the Chilli-Cothe Constitution Tribune on July 6, 1928.

The day before the Chilicothe Banking Company,

we'd become the first bakery in the nation to sell

machine-slice and wrapped bread to customers. Other bakers said it couldn't be done without the

bread losing its freshness. But in the same year that Disney created Mickey Mouse, just

months before the Great Depression, Chilli

Coffee proved them wrong.

...