Fun facts about doughnuts:

The history of the doughnut is disputed:
o There is one theory that suggests they were invented in North America by Dutch settlers who were responsible for popularizing other American desserts including cookies, apple pie, cream pie and cobbler.
o An American, Hanson Gregory, claimed to have invented the ring shaped doughnut in 1847 while on board a lime-trading ship at the age of 16. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box and later taught the technique to his mother.
o Anthropologist Paul R Mullins states that the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was an 1803 English volume which included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes.
o An 1808 short story describing a spread of "fire-cakes and dough-nuts" is the earliest known recorded usage of the term "doughnut".
o A more commonly cited first written recording of the term is Washington Irving's reference to "doughnuts" in 1809 in his History of New York. He described "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat and calleddoughnuts. Today, these "nuts" of fried dough are called doughnut holes.
"Donut"
o Peck's Bad boy and his Pa, written by George W. Peck and published in 1900, was the first known printed use of "donut" in which a character is quoted as saying, "Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut."
o It is said that the alternative spelling "donut" was invented when the New York-based Display Doughnut Machine Corporation abbreviated the word to make it more pronounceable by the foreigners that they hoped would buy their automated doughnut making equipment.
Doughnut is the more traditional spelling however, doughnut and the shortened form, donut, are both pervasive in American English.
A few of the many different types of doughnuts across the United States include: frosted, glazed, powdered, sugar, chocolate, Boston cream, coconut, sour cream, cinnamon, jelly, cider and potato.

Source: http://nationaldaycalendar.com/