Birth of the modern bagel dates back to late 1600s in Vienna

NEW YORK -- The birth of the bagel as we know it dates back three centuries ago to Vienna, Austria, the story goes.

According to Lender's Bagels, a grateful baker is said to have created the first one as a gift for the king of Poland for saving his country from Turkish invaders in 1683.Other European countries adopted the bagel and developed different associations for it. In Poland, mothers gave them to babies to chew as nutritious teething rings. In Russia, hot bagels were sold on strings in cold weather. Bagels were brought to the United States by immigrants in the 1920s.