Karen Yazzie, age 8, of Window Rock, Ariz., for her question:

WHY DO DOUGHNUTS HAVE HOLES?

A fried cake named the olykoeck was brought to Colonial America by the Dutch. It was an extremely popular dessert item.  About 1847, a sea captain named Hanson Gregory came up with the idea of putting a hole in the center of the cake. He figured that the removal of some of the dough at the center would give the cake a wider cooking area, and thereby make it more digestible than it had been as a large flat cake. And presto:  a doughnut with a hole in its center was born.

In the town of Rockport, Me., is a bronze plaque prominently displayed proclaiming that location as the birthplace of Capt. Gregory, father of the great American favorite, the doughnut.