In a building erected about 1895, the world's first Dairy Queen store opened on June 22, 1940. Soft serve ice cream had been unknown before its inception in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1938 by John Fremont "Grandpa" McCullough and his son Alex McCullough. They persuaded their friend and customer Sherwood D. ("Sherb") Noble to offer the product in his Kankakee ice cream store, where the new treat proved extremely popular. Noble and the McCulloughs then opened the first Dairy Queen store here, and from that beginning in 1940 the Dairy Queen system grew to more than 5,900 locations in the United States, Canada, and 17 additional countries around the world.