After borrowing $600 from their mom, Dan and Frank Carney bought some secondhand equipment and opened a 25-seat pizza parlor in Wichita, Kans., in 1958. The two brothers called the place Pizza Hut partly because the sign they bought didn’t have space for more letters. The company was incorporated a year later, and the first franchised unit was soon introduced in Topeka. By the early 1970s, there were more than 1,000 Pizza Huts in the U.S., and locations in Canada, England, and Japan, as well. Today, there are over 11,000 Pizza Huts worldwide, in nearly 100 countries.