Which came first, Fanta or McDonald's?

Both arrived in 1940. Coca-Cola's German bottler invented it when syrup imports stopped. Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino.

Side by side

Fanta

When the war cut Coca-Cola GmbH off from American syrup, its head Max Keith made a drink from what was available in Germany — whey left over from cheese making and apple pomace left over from cider pressing. The name came from a brainstorming session where staff were told to use their imagination, Fantasie. Sprite arrived 21 years later in 1961, developed from a German lemon drink Coca-Cola had launched in 1959, so Fanta comfortably predates it.

McDonald's

The brothers opened in 1940 as a barbecue drive-in and reinvented it in 1948 with the Speedee Service System — a tiny menu, no waiters, food assembled on a production line. The company itself dates its founding to 15 April 1955, when Ray Kroc opened his franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Both dates are defensible and the corporate one is not the restaurant one.