Pizza Hut is more than 65 years old : Much of the Pizza Hut nostalgia comes from its prime in the 1990s, but the company is much older. Pizza Hut was founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958 by two brothers, Dan and Frank Carney.

The first store wouldn’t have been possible without dear old mom : Dan and Frank Carney weren’t two businessmen flush with cash. They were Wichita State college students who needed to borrow $600 from their mother to open their first restaurant. Mom got some early reassurance, as the brothers opened a second shop after only six months and had a total of six locations after the first year.

The original restaurant is now a museum : The original Pizza Hut location — which was once staffed by the Carney brothers’ friends, family, and fraternity brothers — still stands…sort of. The building on the corner of Bluff and Kellogg on the Wichita State campus is no longer an operational restaurant but instead, a Pizza Hut museum that tells the story of the company’s founding. (The building itself also had to be picked up and moved to its current location!)

The name was created out of necessity and limitations : The Pizza Hut name wasn’t exactly a well-thought-out plan. The first restaurant’s sign could only fit eight letters, and when you subtract five letters of the word “pizza,” you’re not left with much wiggle room. “Hut” literally fit the bill, and considering the small size of that first location, it worked out.

Pizza Hut used to have a mascot : A long time ago, Pizza Hut unveiled a cartoon mascot named Pizza Pete. The since-retired character — a mustachioed man with a big nose, black hat, and red-and-white checkered neckerchief — was introduced so long ago that he predates most other corporate mascots. His debut in 1963 occurred in the same year that McDonald’s created the character of Ronald McDonald.

Mikhail Gorbachev once filmed a political ad in a Pizza Hut : In 1997, when Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to promote himself as offering freedom and economic opportunity to the country’s citizens, he filmed a commercial in a Russian Pizza Hut. “Because of him, we have many things, like Pizza Hut,” says one patron in the commercial, leading to cheers of “Hail to Gorbachev!” from the other customers. Gorbachev is then shown smiling as he dines with his granddaughter. The commercial never aired in Russia, but it did appear internationally.

You used to be able to buy a toy pizza oven : Coleco is short for The Connecticut Leather Company, best known for creating a hit gaming system in the 1970s. That same decade, Coleco also released a Pizza Hut-branded toy pizza oven that actually cooked food — sort of like an Easy Bake Oven for pizza. If you’re willing to search hard and pay a premium, you can still find some vintage versions for sale online.

Pizza Hut once delivered to the White House :  The White House once received a Pizza Hut delivery, but it wasn’t a late-night run for President Clinton or a game-day delivery for George W. Bush. First Lady Barbara Bush ordered food for 200 kids as part of a “Reading is Fundamental” pizza party in 1989.

Pizza Hut also delivered to space! : After you deliver a pizza to the White House, the sky’s the limit — literally. In 2001, Pizza Hut sent a pie to the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). And it wasn’t just an ordinary order, as the world’s first space-consumable pizza was a year-long collaboration between Pizza Hut and Russian food scientists. It measured just six inches in diameter (to fit inside the ISS’s oven) and was topped with salami because pepperoni didn’t pass the 60-day testing process.

A very young Elijah Wood was in a Pizza Hut commercial : Before starring in the Rob Reiner film North in 1994 and the big-screen adaptation of The Adventures of Huck Finn the previous year, Elijah Wood appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial in 1992. Only 11 years old, Elijah was shown flinging potato salad at a cookout before his parents ditched the BBQ idea in favor of ordering from Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut was the first pizza joint to offer online ordering : In the early days of the internet, Pizza Hut was a trailblazer for online ordering — they first offered the service way back in 1994! When the chain demoed its “PizzaNet” website, ordering anything online was a novel concept. For context, 1994 was the same year that Amazon was founded, and they didn’t even go public for another year!