30 Billion Sliders: America's First Fast Food Burger Chain Just Reached A Major Milestone

Harold and Kumar must be weeping for joy somewhere. America's first fast food burger chain, White Castle, has just reached an almost unfathomable milestone. Since 1921, White Castle has sold 30 billion sliders. That works out to over 288 million sliders every year for the past 104 years. Aside from a short-lived foray into a handful of other countries, nearly all of these burgers were sold in the United States. At today's current population of 342 million, White Castle has sold 88 sliders for every person in the U.S. With a world population of 8 billion, that means White Castle has cooked up enough sliders for us all to have a four-pack, more or less. Not too shabby.

Seems like only yesterday White Castle hit 28 billion sliders. For this new occasion, White Castle has done some hamburger homework to come up with a way to put 30 billion sliders in perspective. If you stacked all of those burgers on top of each other, it would stretch 1.45 million miles into the sky. The moon is just under 239,000 miles away, so that White Castle slider stack is equal to about six trips up there.

If you're more into road trips than moon flights, compare it to a drive down Route 20, America's longest highway at 3,365 miles. White Castle's slider chain could make the drive from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts about 431 times.

The company that paved the way for fast food burgers has made enough sliders to circle the Earth 60 times. Spread out, White Castle estimates that the sliders cover about 68 square miles. That's roughly the size of Cincinnati, Ohio, or three times the size of Manhattan.

Yankee Stadium covers an area of 1.3 million square feet, which is about 0.05 square miles. That means you can cover Yankee Stadium with White Castle's sliders about 1,460 times. In terms of capacity, if Yankee Stadium seats 52,000 people, 30 billion sliders could accommodate about 75.9 million people. That's close to twice the population of Canada.

So we know White Castle sliders cover a lot of space, but let's talk bulk. White Castle sliders weigh 55 grams each. Thirty billion of them clock in at a crushing 3.64 billion pounds, or about 1.65 million metric tons. Blue whales, the largest animal to ever exist, typically weigh between 200,000 and 300,000 pounds. Split the difference and 30 billion sliders weigh as much as 14,560 blue whales.

How do White Castle burgers stack up to Harold and Kumar? Using unofficial estimates of John Cho and Kal Penn's weight, 30 billion sliders weigh as much as around 11 million Harold and Kumars. Our hats (or little crowns, as the case may be) off to you, White Castle. That's a lot of burgers. Feel free to celebrate with them, but take it from us: avoid their fish sandwich.