My little logical brain as a child used to get very annoyed at a McDonald's adverts which advertised their Hamburgers as 100% Pure Beef - surely they should be called Beefburgers or made from 100% Pure Ham.
As I am now pretty much a veteran in this investigative journalism malarkey I thought I would find the answer as to why they are called Hamburgers.
Early 18th Century German travellers in Asia noticed that locals stuffing beef in their saddles whilst they rode. They found that this softened the beef the taste was fantastic.
The idea of softening beef was brought back to Germany and to Hamburg in particular.
The process and end product became known as Hamburg Meat.
150 or so years later immigrants introduced the process to America, over the next 20 odd years different styles of Hamburg Meat appeared but it wasn't till the World Fair in 1904 that the Meat & Buns that we know today were made popular.