When did doughnuts get a hole?

The Washington Post published an article on 26 March 1916 stating, ‘The man who invented the hole in the doughnut has been found.’ They interviewed Captain Gregory, then 85, about how he came to the idea to cut out the middle of a doughnut when he was about 16 years old.

Well, sir, they used to fry all right around the edges, but when you had the edges done the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used to sop up all the grease just where they bent, and they were tough on the digestion … I took the cover off the ship’s tin pepper box, and I cut into the middle of that doughnut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes!