71 years of historic pizza milestones

Despite what your delivery driver would like you to believe, most pizzas have a history of way more than 30mins.

To shed light on the cheesy middle-ground between frozen pies (taste-test here!) and the best independent shops, we've created a timeline that shows the opening date of every major pizza chain. Scroll down to take a trip through time from pizza's late '50s boom years (Little Caesars! Pizza Hut! Domino's!) to the birth of '80s babies like Papa John's and California Pizza Kitchen.

Then once you're done, commit these facts to memory for use in a free pizza joke that your delivery driver will think is... extra cheesy.

Dan Gentile is a staff writer on Thrillist's national food/drink team. By the time he was born, Little Caesar was already too old to be on his parents' health insurance. Follow him to unfinished crusts at @Dannosphere.