In honor of National Bubblegum Day, a FactSlap column (Bazooka Joe remix):

• Children in North America spend approximately half a billion dollars on bubblegum every year.
• The largest piece of gum ever was equivalent to 10,000 pieces of chewing gum.
• 100,000 tons of bubblegum is chewed every year all around the world.
• Sixty to 70 percent of bubble gum is sugar.
• One of the most famous, but false facts, is that swallowed gum will remain in your gastrointestinal tract for seven years. It is not so. Swallowed bubble gum will not get stuck to your intestines, but will pass through your system, because gum base cannot be digested, as it has fiber that is indigestible.
• Scientists found a 9,000-year- old wad of chewing gum in Sweden.
• The average American chews around 300 sticks of gum in one year.
• The first bubble gum ever marketed was done so under the name “Blibber-Blubber”.
•  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest bubble ever blown measured 23 inches in diameter.