Pages 58-61 from “Eat This Book” about the “history” of Nathan’s Famous eating contest can be viewed below (click on pages to enlarge) or by using Google Books. The section treats the 1916 origin story as a historical fact instead of an “urban legend”.

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“Famous Nathan: A Family Saga of Coney Island, the American Dream, and the Search for the Perfect Hot Dog” a book by Lloyd Handwerker, a grandson of Nathan Handwerker, the founder of Nathan’s famous was released yesterday. Lloyd Handwerker will give a talk about the book tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.

In the book, Lloyd Handwerker corroborates the claim made by Mortimer Matz in a 2010 New York Times interview that the 1916 origin story for Nathan’s is a fabrication.

(image from page 5 of the book)
update Jun 23Daily Beast has an article about the book with this paragraph about the contest:

So, what would Nathan have thought about the modern-day popularity of the hot dog eating contest? Lloyd was a bit hesitant when I asked him. “Some of the old timers are disgusted by it,” he admitted. While he wasn’t sure if his grandfather would have agreed with them, he “couldn’t deny the advertising impact on the company.” But on the other-hand “he hated waste” and each night he even inspected the garbage to see what people weren’t finishing.

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Bully The LSB posted a page from a comic book where Superman cooked and served food for an eating contest for Daily Planet employees that was to have awarded a sports car. Jimmy Olsen was one of the competitors.
updated Jun 19 A commenter noted that the page was from a 1958 Jimmy Olsen comic. Here is the cover and plot summary.

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The ESPN3.com schedule for July 4 is now out. The men’s & women’s Nathan’s finals will be live streamed on that platform. The broadcast will be tape-delayed on ESPN at 3pm eastern due to Wimbledon coverage.

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The Village Voice has an article about Famous Nathan, a book about the history of the hot dog restaurant that will be released June 21 co-authored by Lloyd Handwerker, a grandson of the company founder. The book is a companion to the 2014 documentary by the same name and will include a debunking of the 1916 contest origin myth. Another book Nathan’s Famous: The First 100 Years of America’s Favorite Frankfurter Company by William Handwerker, who is also a grandson of the founder, was released on May 10.

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The ESPN schedule for July 4, 2016 lists the first showing of the Nathan’s finals at 3 pm. This will be a three hour tape-delay if the competition has its traditional noon start time, as the countdown counter on nathansfamous.com implies. There will also be three reruns on ESPN2. The July 4 web-streaming schedule for ESPN3.com, which shows the women’s division, is not yet available.

It appears that both ESPN and ESPN2 will be broadcasting tennis from Wimbledon while the Nathan’s finals competitions take place.

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Entertainment Weekly has an interview with director Rob Reiner and Andy Lindberg, who played “Lardass” about the filming of the pie eating contest scene in Stand by Me, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

LINDBERG: The first time the crew tried the vomiting effect, they used a power washer. They filled the reservoir and just rocketed it out, and 500 pounds per square inch of pressure went on the guy to my left. But that didn’t work. The stream was too fine. Finally, after experimenting, they got four or five guys to press down on a giant plunger on top of a cylinder, which pushed all five gallons of pie filling up a vacuum hose through my shirt collar and out from the tube taped to the side of my face.

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