Friday officially marked National Cheeseburger Day, so lettuce give thanks for the mighty meat this weekend with a FactSlap column, served medium well:

• Each year, Americans eat 50 billion burgers, or three burgers a week. 

• Hamburgers and cheeseburgers account for 71 percent of beef served in commercial hotels in the United States.

• McDonalds sells 75 hamburgers a second.

• Louis Ballast of Humpty Dumpty Drive was awarded the hamburger trademark in 1935.

• The Jimmy Buffet song Cheeseburger in Paradise was first inspired by a boat trip that he took. The trip was hampered by bad weather and he was forced to eat nothing but canned food and peanut butter that was aboard the boat, leaving him dreaming of a cheeseburger.

• The most expensive burger sold in America is sold from the New York City food truck 666 Burger. The $666 burger is wrapped in a gold leaf, topped with lobster, caviar, truffles, foie gras, and aged gruyere cheese melted with steam from champagne poured on a hot griddle. The good thing is you get $300 back, as the burger comes wrapped in three greasy $100 bills.

• The biggest cheeseburger ever was cooked by a Minnesota casino in 2012 and weighed 2,014 pounds. It required a special oven, a crane, and a special bun that had to be baked for seven hours.

• During the First World War the U.S. government tried to rename burgers as “Liberty Sandwiches” in order to promote patriotism and avoid using its original Germanic name.