The term "The Big Apple" was first used in the early 1900s, but it became popular in the 1920s.
Sportswriter John J. Fitz Gerald is credited with popularizing the term in his column "Around the Big Apple" in the New York Morning Telegraph.
Fitz Gerald claimed he heard the term from two stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, who used it to refer to the large prizes at New York horse races.
