Leigh, NE - It is illegal to sell donut holes (circa late 1800’s-1997).

This one has appeared on many websites and trivia games as a little known weird fact. And it’s not hard to see why, as it appears completely arbitrary and puritanical, not to mention annoyingly hard to research.

Leigh, NE, which is an hour and a half northeast of Omaha, is a village of around 400 people that was founded in 1887. Not long after it was founded, this strange law somehow found its way onto the books. Now, the why has long been lost, and there are many theories that have been thrown around for the reasoning behind it.

Allen Schroeder, who had been the Village Board Chairman in the late 90’s-early 00’s, suggested that it was because they felt it was wasteful to make them. The phrase bandied about was ‘undue profit’.

Whatever the case, the law was repealed in 1997, when a radio host from Lincoln happened to mention the law and came to Leigh to do a live show talking about it. I think it was likely that most of the people in the town had long forgotten that the law even existed, and probably just assumed that the reason the local grocery store didn’t sell them was a lack of demand and not the risk of a fine.