Thank you! Come again…I am not generally one for suggesting that anyone go to a convenience store looking for grub. But when it’s as hot as balls out there, when there’s a frosty treat waiting for you, and when said frosty treat is free? Well, then I have a tendency to relax my standards just a bit.On Sunday, July 11 (7/11, get it?), participating U.S. 7-11 stores will celebrate the birthday (kinda) of 7-11 by giving away free Slushees to all comers. This comes straight from the 7-11 Facebook page:”Join us at any participating 7-Eleven Store in the US and get a free 7.11oz Slurpee drink. Who says you can’t throw your own birthday party?”In honor of this auspicious day, here’s some stuff you might not know about 7-11, all courtesy of Wikipedia or just plain made up by me:It has been around forever. Founded in 1927, it started out as one guy who worked for the Southland Ice Company selling milk, eggs, bread (and probably cigarettes, liquor, cans of Fix-A-Flat and skeevy rotisserie hot dogs, too) from an ice dock in Dallas, Texas. The original name, Skeeter’s Ice Dock Eggs ‘n Liquor, was abandoned shortly after police discovered the kinds of terrible things Skeeter would do with the eggs once he’d drunk enough liquor.7-11 was probably not born on July 11. That’s just the day that the company calls “7-11 Day.” But so long as they’re giving out free Slurpees, no one really seems of a mind to argue.Though it was started in Texas and run by the Southland Corporation for many a year, in the 80’s, the company ran into financial troubles and, by 1991, a controlling share was held by the Japanese company Ito-Yokada. 7-11 remains a Japanese company to this day and is really a secret front for Japanese mind control experiments. How else do you think they get people to eat those hot dogs?7-11 is the largest chain operation in the world. It has roughly 38,000 locations, outpacing the #2 chain, McDonald’s by something like a thousand stores.It has its own proprietary low-price wine label: “Yosemite Road.” I can just imagine what that must taste like.Japan has more 7-11’s than anywhere else in the world, with over 1500 in Tokyo alone. But if you’re reading this in Tokyo and looking to score your free 7-11 Day Slurpee, you’re out of luck. The Japanese stores stopped selling Slurpees and Big Gulps long ago because, apparently, the Japanese have better taste than we do. Or, perhaps, are simply more terrified of what drinking a hundred ounces of soda in a sitting might do to them. Also, since green Slurpees are made with Godzilla semen, the Japanese are four square against them.In Norway, there is one 7-11 for every 47,000 Norwegians. Because there are nearly a hundred 7-11’s in Norway, this means there are a lot more Norwegians out there than I thought there were. This makes me happy for reasons I can’t understand.There are no 7-11 stores in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is because Torishi-Yan, Japanese god of convenience stores, is terrified of tornadoes. And Oklahomans.