Pop quiz: what do Ronald Reagan, King Tang of Shang, Chinese rice, Roman emperors, King Charles I of England, Marco Polo and Evanston, Illinois have in common with today in the USA?

Well, if you scream and I scream and we all scream “ice cream,” everybody’s a winner!

Today is National Ice Cream Day, surely cause enough to pause and reminisce about your most enjoyable personal memories of the frosty delight; A child and father taking turns licking a cone, a grandparent pulling out an old-fashioned ice cream-maker and letting you crank that handle to transmogrify mundane ingredients into the miracle treat, that time in your teens when you took the dare to finish the giant banana split in an ice cream shop and got a badge or other certification that you did, indeed, succeed in “pigging out” (or some such accolade).

Maybe an outing for sundae after your pee-wee, Little League or other team-for-kids had a particularly poor game. Perhaps a first date with a first puppy love. It could have been one of those pre-made cones from an old freezer behind the concession counter at a drive-in movie, the goo dripping onto your hands as you momentarily forget to lick because that giant monster in the latest Kaiju import from Japan just trapped the heroine. It could have been the last licks from a pint of Ben & Jerry’s snarfed down to prove you don’t need that two-timing twerp too dumb to appreciate you.

But enough of the ice cream-infused memory lane. What are the connections mentioned above?

For starters, it was President Ronald Reagan, back in 1984, who designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of said month as National Ice Cream Day.

For finishers, one of the more popular origin stories for the ice cream sundae says Evanston passed a law prohibiting the sale of ice cream sodas on Sundays around 1890, and soda fountain operators got around the ban by selling dish sans the soda. That left ice cream and syrup, argued to be the base of all ice cream sundaes today.

For everything in between, we offer insights on the likely origin of ice cream from the BBC (news.bbc.co.uk):

• An ice-cream-like food was first eaten in China in 618-97 AD. King Tang of Shang had 94 ice men who helped to make a dish of buffalo milk, flour and camphor.

• A kind of ice-cream was invented in China about 200 BC when a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow.

• Roman emperors are supposed to have sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavored and served as an early form of ice-cream.

• Charles I is supposed to have offered his chef £500 a year to keep his ice-cream recipe a secret from the rest of England.

• Famous explorer and swimming pool game eponym Marco Polo (1254-1324), is believed to have seen ice creams being made during his trip to China and introduced them to Italy (where they presumably became gelato).

But you don’t really need to know the history because, well, ice cream!

So consider briefly overpowering the many concerns of our times by indulging in ice cream today. Many shops are offering special deals. We have ample roadside ice cream stands for a spontaneous stop. The state has its annual Scooped: An Ice Cream Trail offering online if you want a slightly more structured approach to picking an ice cream stop with state production in mind (www.visitpa.com). Or just head to the nearest grocery store, select from the many variations behind the glass doors, and celebrate.

After the last few years, this Ice Cream Day could really hit the spot.