93 Fun Facts About Turkey Day

Which Patuxet man taught the Plymouth colonists to catch eel and grow corn?

Squanto (Tisquantum), a Patuxet who learned English after being kidnapped and sold in Spain in 1614, showed the colonists how to plant corn with fish and where to catch eels.

How many days did the 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth famously last?

Three days: Edward Winslow's 1621 letter says the colonists 'entertained and feasted' about ninety Native men for three days, and that the guests went out and killed five deer for the table.

Which 19th-century editor tirelessly campaigned for Thanksgiving to become a national holiday?

Sarah Josepha Hale, the Godey's Lady's Book editor who also wrote 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', lobbied governors and presidents for 17 years before her letters finally won a national proclamation in 1863.

Which president began the unbroken yearly run of national Thanksgivings by proclaiming one for the last Thursday of November?

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it on October 3, 1863, asking Americans in the middle of the Civil War to remember its widows and orphans, and presidents have proclaimed the day every year since.

In which Dutch city did the Pilgrims live before sailing for America?

Leiden: the congregation settled there in 1609 and stayed about eleven years, then left partly because their children were growing up more Dutch than English.

Which 1796 volume was the first known cookbook written by a citizen of the United States?

American Cookery, published in Hartford by Amelia Simmons, turned away from the British cookbooks Americans had relied on by cooking with native cornmeal, as in its recipe for johnny cake, or hoe cake.

Which soldier did the Pilgrims hire as their military captain before sailing on the Mayflower?

Myles Standish, who had served with English troops in Holland, organised the colony's defences, and Plymouth's militia re-elected him as its commander for the rest of his life.

What does the cornucopia, often seen as a Thanksgiving decoration, traditionally symbolize?

Abundance and prosperity: in one Greek myth the infant Zeus broke a horn off the goat Amalthea, who had nursed him, and it poured out endless food and drink, hence the 'horn of plenty'.

On which day is Thanksgiving celebrated in Canada?

The second Monday in October was fixed by a 1957 proclamation; the first annual Thanksgiving, in 1879, fell in November, and from 1921 to 1930 the holiday shared a day with Armistice Day.

What is Germany's traditional harvest festival, often likened to Thanksgiving, called?

Erntedankfest, literally 'harvest thanks festival', is a church celebration held around early October, when altars are piled with produce that is often given afterwards to the poor.

Which sachem made a 1621 peace treaty with Plymouth and came to its harvest feast with about ninety men?

Massasoit, the Pokanoket sachem, sealed the treaty in March 1621; at the feast his men went out and killed five deer, which they gave to the colony's leaders.

Which state kept marking Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November until 1956, long after Congress fixed the date?

Texas: Congress fixed the fourth Thursday in a law signed in December 1941, but Texas kept the old last-Thursday rule, which split the two dates whenever November had five Thursdays, as in 1956.

What is an adult male turkey commonly called?

A tom: adult males are also called gobblers, after the gobbling call they make in spring to announce themselves to females and to rival males.

Under what name have Native Americans gathered in Plymouth, Massachusetts every Thanksgiving since 1970?

A National Day of Mourning began in 1970, when Frank James was invited to speak at a Mayflower anniversary dinner, had his speech rejected, and delivered it on Cole's Hill above Plymouth Rock instead.

In what city is the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade primarily held?

New York City has hosted the parade since 1924, with one break: from 1942 to 1944 it was called off because the rubber in its balloons was needed for the war effort.

Which Native American tribe joined the first recorded Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony in 1621?

Wampanoag: an epidemic shortly before 1620 had wiped out their village of Patuxet, and the English built Plymouth on its empty site.

Which NFL team has hosted a Thanksgiving game almost every year since 1934, missing only 1939 to 1944?

The Detroit Lions: owner George A. Richards launched the tradition in 1934, persuading NBC radio to carry his team's game against the Chicago Bears nationwide, and the Lions have played every Thanksgiving since 1945.

Which Thanksgiving side dish is a mashed root vegetable baked under a brown sugar topping?

Sweet potato casserole: its main ingredient is often sold as a 'yam', but the supermarket 'yam' is nearly always a sweet potato, and true yams are a separate plant, only distantly related.

Which second ship was meant to sail with the Mayflower but was left behind as unseaworthy?

Speedwell: the leaky Speedwell twice forced both ships back to port, so the Mayflower finally sailed alone from Plymouth, England on September 6 and lost the mild-weather crossing.

Which shopping day after Thanksgiving got its name from a retail trade group's 2005 press release?

Cyber Monday: Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation, coined it to promote online shopping, billing the Monday as one of the year's biggest web shopping days when it then ranked only twelfth.

Which berry do growers harvest by flooding their bogs so the fruit floats to the surface?

Cranberry: the vines grow on drained beds, not in water; growers flood them for the autumn harvest, when a machine knocks the fruit loose and the floating berries are corralled and lifted out.

Which group lobbied President Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939?

Retailers: with the holiday due on November 30, a dry-goods trade group warned that a short Christmas shopping season would hurt the recovery, but about half the states refused to move the date.

Which Roman goddess was often shown holding a cornucopia and a ship's rudder?

Fortuna, goddess of luck, was also shown with a ball or a wheel, and her turning Wheel of Fortune became the medieval emblem of how quickly luck can change.

Which U.S. President formalized the tradition of pardoning a turkey annually for Thanksgiving?

George H.W. Bush made the pardon a fixed part of the ceremony in 1989, his first year in office; Ronald Reagan had joked about pardoning a turkey in 1987, during the Iran-Contra affair.

A Thanksgiving turkey trot billed as North America's oldest continuous footrace has run since 1896 in which city in upstate New York?

Buffalo: the YMCA Turkey Trot was first run on Thanksgiving 1896, a year before the first Boston Marathon, and has been held every year since, through two world wars and two pandemics.

Which president issued the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation, at the request of Congress?

George Washington issued the proclamation on October 3, 1789, naming Thursday, November 26 as a day of public thanksgiving; it was a one-off rather than the start of an annual holiday.

Which part of a roast turkey was long known in England as the 'merrythought'?

The wishbone: 'merrythought' dates from the early 1600s, when the winner of the pull was said to marry first or get a wish; the word 'wishbone' appeared only in the mid-1800s.

Which agreement did the Pilgrims write and sign before going ashore?

The Mayflower Compact was signed by 41 men aboard ship after some passengers argued that, having landed outside their patent, no one had the power to command them.

What type of pie is most commonly associated with Thanksgiving dessert?

Pumpkin pie has English roots: 'pumpion pie' recipes appear in 17th-century English cookbooks, while early colonists more likely ate their pumpkin stewed or as a savoury soup.

What did the first Macy's parade feature instead of the giant character balloons that came later?

Live zoo animals: some 25 of them, bears and elephants included, were borrowed from the Central Park Zoo to walk the 1924 route, and character balloons took their place from 1927.

Which NFL team took up hosting a Thanksgiving Day game in 1966?

The Dallas Cowboys: Tex Schramm volunteered to host in 1966 for the national television exposure, and Dallas has hosted every Thanksgiving since except 1975 and 1977, when St. Louis took the slot.

To which branch of English Protestant dissent did the Plymouth Pilgrims belong?

Separatists: the Plymouth settlers were English Separatists who broke from the Church of England entirely, unlike the Puritans who later founded Massachusetts Bay hoping to reform it from within.

Roughly how long did the Mayflower's Atlantic crossing take?

About 10 weeks: the ship left Plymouth, England on September 6 and dropped anchor 66 days later; the first half went smoothly, then autumn storms left it drifting at times with its sails furled.

When FDR moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939, critics mocked the new date with which nickname?

Franksgiving blends 'Franklin' and 'Thanksgiving'; Atlantic City's mayor is credited with coining it, and it stuck as about half the states refused to move their holiday.

Which bundle of turkey organs, often bagged inside a whole bird, is simmered to make a classic gravy?

Giblets: the heart, liver and gizzard, usually with the neck, are often cooked apart from the bird; the name comes from an Old French word for a stew of game.

Which Ohio city's Bulldogs lost to the Akron Pros on the NFL's first Thanksgiving, in 1920?

Canton: the league, then called the American Professional Football Association, played on Thanksgiving in its very first season, and Akron's 7-0 win over the Canton Bulldogs kept it unbeaten on the way to the first title.

Which Thanksgiving side dish often includes cream of mushroom soup and crispy fried onions?

Green bean casserole: Dorcas Reilly created it in the Campbell Soup test kitchen in 1955 as a way to use cream of mushroom soup, and it became a holiday fixture.

Which company built the Macy's parade's giant balloons from the 1920s until 1980?

Goodyear built Tony Sarg's balloons in Akron, Ohio from the 1920s through 1980; the early ones were set free after the parade until 1932, when a pilot trying to snag one nearly crashed her plane.

What is a group of turkeys traditionally called?

A rafter: the word has nothing to do with roof beams; dictionaries trace it, probably, to 'raft' in the sense of a large collection, as in 'a raft of problems'.

What is the fleshy flap that hangs over a male turkey's beak and lengthens during courtship displays called?

A snood: it fills with blood, reddens and stretches well below the beak when a male displays, and studies of captive wild turkeys found that hens prefer the males with the longest ones.

Long before it meant shopping, 'Black Friday' was the name given to an 1869 panic in which market?

Gold: on Black Friday, September 24, 1869, the gold price collapsed when the Treasury sold $4 million in gold to break a corner engineered by two speculators working with Grant's brother-in-law Abel Corbin.

Which prize did broadcaster John Madden start giving the best player of an NFL Thanksgiving game in 1989?

The Turkey Leg Award went first to Reggie White in 1989; when Madden wanted more drumsticks to hand to a whole offensive line, a barbecue owner built him a turkey with six legs.

Which Founding Father called the turkey more 'respectable' than the bald eagle in 1784?

Benjamin Franklin wrote it in a private letter to his daughter Sarah Bache, not as a proposal for the national bird.

What cargo had the Mayflower mostly carried before she took the Pilgrims across the Atlantic?

Wine: under master Christopher Jones she mostly ran to Bordeaux and back, bringing French wine home; her first recorded voyage, to Norway, ended with cargo thrown overboard in a North Sea storm.

How many passengers did the Mayflower carry across the Atlantic in 1620?

102 passengers sailed with a crew of about 30; one young servant died at sea and one baby, Oceanus Hopkins, was born on the way, so 102 passengers arrived as well.

In a turducken, which bird is tucked inside the duck?

A chicken: the name stacks turkey, duck and chicken, each bird boned and stuffed inside the next, and John Madden's Thanksgiving broadcasts made the Louisiana dish famous nationwide.

Which cartoon character was the first inflatable balloon in the Macy's parade, in 1927?

Felix the Cat was filled with air and held up on sticks in 1927; a year later the balloons were set free after the parade, with a reward for anyone who found one and sent it back.

In 1928 Macy's switched from air to which gas so its parade balloons would float?

Helium has lifted the balloons since 1928, and it helped stop the parade from 1942 to 1944, when the gas and the balloons' rubber were both needed for the war effort.

Which 1947 film opens with scenes shot during the real Macy's parade?

Miracle on 34th Street: its parade scenes were filmed live while the real 1946 parade went by, only the second one held after the wartime break.

High winds in 1997 slammed which Macy's balloon into a lamppost, injuring a spectator?

The Cat in the Hat: the balloon knocked the arm off a lamppost, and the rules that followed retired the largest balloons, this one included, and stripped the lamppost arms from the route.

Which actress co-hosted NBC's Macy's parade coverage with Lorne Greene from 1963 to 1972?

Betty White hosted it with Greene for ten Thanksgivings while also fronting NBC's Rose Parade, a job the network took from her in 1975 because viewers knew her from a rival channel's hit, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Which city holds the oldest continuously running Thanksgiving parade in the United States?

Philadelphia: the city's department-store parade began in 1920, four years before New York's, and passed to new sponsors when the original store went out of business in 1986.

Which department store sponsored the oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States when it began in 1920?

Gimbels: Ellis Gimbel sent about 50 costumed employees down Market Street so that Santa could arrive and climb a ladder to the store's eighth-floor toy department.

Hudson's department store started a Thanksgiving parade in 1924 that still marches down Woodward Avenue in which city?

Detroit: Hudson's display director Charles Wendel borrowed the idea from Toronto's Santa Claus Parade, and his first edition featured marchers in giant papier-mache heads like ones he had seen in Europe.

Which 2000 mockumentary inspired the programme NBC began airing after the Macy's parade in 2002?

Best in Show: after Christopher Guest's mockumentary became a hit, NBC's Jon Miller launched the National Dog Show in 2002 to replace It's a Wonderful Life in the post-parade slot, which had been losing ratings.

Under which president did the official yearly White House turkey presentation begin?

Harry S. Truman received the first official bird in 1947, after poultry farmers protested his administration's 'Poultryless Thursdays' campaign to save grain.

Which president spared the turkey presented to him at the White House in November 1963?

John F. Kennedy sent the bird back to its farm on November 19, 1963, three days before his assassination, although it wore a sign wishing the president good eating.

From 2005 to 2009, pardoned presidential turkeys retired to which kind of attraction?

Disney theme parks: after animal-rights groups complained that pardoned birds soon died at their old Virginia farm home, the turkeys went to Disneyland or Walt Disney World as honorary parade grand marshals.

Which historic estate kept pardoned turkeys 2010–12, then quit over historical accuracy?

Mount Vernon: the estate housed the pardoned birds from 2010 to 2012, then stopped, because its famous owner never farmed turkeys and they broke its rule of showing the farm as it was.

In 2013, which turkey beat its stablemate Caramel in a White House online vote?

Popcorn won the 2013 White House online vote over Caramel, though both were spared; the winner died of heatstroke the next summer, while Caramel lived on at Morven Park until October 2015.

To which commercial breed do the National Turkey Federation's presidential turkeys belong?

Broad Breasted White: the standard commercial bird is bred for the table rather than for long life, which is why pardoned turkeys rarely survive long; its white pin feathers also show less on a dressed carcass.

The turkey's English name came from confusion with which African bird?

Guineafowl: the English called the African guineafowl a 'turkey cock' because it was believed to come from Turkish lands, and the name then passed, by confusion, to the New World bird.

The French name for the turkey originally meant 'chicken of' which country?

India: French 'dinde' shortens 'poule d'Inde', 'chicken of India', a relic of the belief that the New World was the Indies; Swedish 'kalkon' points to the Indian port of Calicut instead.

Which naturalist introduced the turkey genus Meleagris in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus named the genus in the 1758 edition of his Systema Naturae; because that book is the official starting point for animal names, no earlier name for the turkey counts.

The ocellated turkey, the only other living turkey species, is native to which region?

The Yucatán Peninsula: its whole range covers about 130,000 square kilometres there and in nearby Guatemala and Belize, where overhunting for food has helped make it Near Threatened.

About how much did the heaviest domestic turkey on record weigh?

86 lb: the record bird weighed 39 kg, nearly three times the 30 lb or so of an average farm turkey, itself the product of decades of breeding for size.

Florida's wild turkey subspecies is named after which Seminole war leader?

Osceola led Seminole resistance to removal from Florida in the 1830s; the turkey named for him in 1890 is smaller and darker than its eastern cousin and found mostly on the Florida peninsula.

From 2007 a power plant in Benson, Minnesota burned what unusual fuel?

Turkey litter: the Fibrominn plant in Benson burned about 500,000 tons of turkey droppings and bedding a year to make 55 megawatts, until Xcel Energy bought it and shut it down as uneconomic.

The domestic turkey descends from wild birds tamed some 2,000 years ago in which present-day country?

Mexico: ancient Mesoamericans raised turkeys for meat, eggs and feathers, and the Spanish shipped them to Europe in the 1500s; today's main farm breeds descend from those Mexican birds.

What is the single most common question asked on Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line?

How long a bird takes to defrost: Butterball's own advice is at least a day in the fridge for every four pounds, and its line began in 1981 with six home economists answering about 11,000 calls.

Which boxed stuffing mix, created by home economist Ruth Siems, did General Foods launch in 1972?

Stove Top can be made in minutes in a pot with no bird involved; Kraft, which later took over the brand, was reported in 2005 to sell about 60 million boxes every Thanksgiving.

Marcus Urann, who first sold jellied berry sauce in 1912, founded which cooperative?

Ocean Spray: Urann, a lawyer turned bog owner, began canning his sauce in 1912 and joined two other growers in 1930 to widen the market for their crop; the jellied log went nationwide in 1941.

Libby's canned pumpkin comes from the Dickinson variety, which belongs to the same species as which squash?

Butternut: both are Cucurbita moschata, and the Dickinson's tall, tan-skinned fruit, grown around Morton, Illinois, looks far more like a butternut than a carving pumpkin.

Which syrup brand helped popularise pecan pie by promoting its recipe from the 1930s?

Karo's makers promoted the recipe to sell more corn syrup, but they did not invent the pie: a pecan pie recipe had appeared in Harper's Bazaar back in 1886.

Per Gerry Thomas, Swanson's 1953 TV dinner was invented to use a huge surplus of what?

Frozen turkeys: Thomas said poor Thanksgiving sales had left Swanson with a huge surplus, but Swanson heirs and a Los Angeles Times investigation credit brothers Gilbert and Clarke Swanson with the product.

Thanksgiving drowsiness is popularly blamed on which amino acid in turkey, though beef and pork contain about as much?

Tryptophan: turkey has no more of it than beef or pork, and the after-dinner slump is better explained by the sheer size of the meal and the carbohydrates served alongside.

In Friends' 'The One Where Ross Got High', whose Thanksgiving trifle has a layer of beef?

Rachel: the cookbook's pages are stuck together, so she combines an English trifle with shepherd's pie, layering custard and jam with sautéed beef, peas and onions.

'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving' premiered in 1973 on which network?

CBS premiered it on Tuesday, November 20, 1973, two days before the holiday; the network had carried every Peanuts special since A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.

Which character invites herself to dinner at Charlie Brown's house in 'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving'?

Peppermint Patty phones to invite herself, then Marcie and Franklin, because her father is out of town; the meal she gets is buttered toast, pretzel sticks and jelly beans, and she complains loudly.

In 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles', a blizzard diverts Neal and Del's flight to where?

Wichita: the diverted flight lands in Wichita, where the pair share a motel double bed and accidentally swap credit cards, setting up the rest of the trip to Chicago.

In 'Alice's Restaurant Massacree', what offense gets Arlo Guthrie arrested on the holiday?

Littering: Arlo and a friend dump Alice's garbage down a hillside on Thanksgiving 1965 because the Stockbridge dump is closed, and the littering conviction later lands him on the draft board's Group W bench.

In WKRP's 'Turkeys Away', how does Arthur Carlson deliver his live turkey giveaway?

Dropped from a helicopter: Carlson has live turkeys thrown from a helicopter over a shopping-centre car park, Les Nessman's report echoes the Hindenburg broadcast, and the 1978 episode ends with 'I thought turkeys could fly'.

Which actress directed the 1995 Thanksgiving family drama 'Home for the Holidays'?

Jodie Foster directed it as her second feature after Little Man Tate; Holly Hunter stars as Claudia, who flies to her parents' Baltimore home after losing her job and kissing her ex-boss.

In 'Addams Family Values', Wednesday is cast as whom in the camp's Thanksgiving play?

Pocahontas: after a spell in the Harmony Hut watching saccharine family films, Wednesday feigns cheer, takes the part, then breaks from the script and leads the other outcasts in burning down the stage.

Norman Rockwell's 'Freedom from Want' first appeared in 1943 in which magazine?

The Saturday Evening Post ran it on March 6, 1943; Rockwell painted friends and family from Arlington, Vermont one at a time, and said of the turkey, 'Our cook cooked it, I painted it and we ate it.'

In Lydia Maria Child's 1844 poem 'Over the River and Through the Wood', whose house were the travelers originally bound for?

Grandfather's: the 1844 poem, printed in Flowers for Children as 'The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day', runs 'to grandfather's house we go'; later singers swapped in grandmother and turned 'wood' into 'woods'.

Which early president refused to proclaim national thanksgiving days on church-state grounds?

Thomas Jefferson declined to proclaim thanksgiving days, writing in 1808 that religious exercises were not the federal government's business; James Madison revived the practice at the close of the War of 1812.

Canada's first thanksgiving is credited to which explorer's safe landing in 1578?

Martin Frobisher's fleet, scattered by ice and storms, regrouped in what is now Nunavut, where its chaplain Robert Wolfall led a service of thanks for their deliverance; Canada's official holiday dates from 1879.

What happened to Plymouth Rock when townspeople tried to haul it to Town Square in 1774?

It broke in half: patriots hitched up oxen to drag it to the town's liberty pole, and only the top half made the trip; the two pieces were not brought back together at the shore until 1880.

Which African nation has held Thanksgiving on the first Thursday of November since 1883?

Liberia: the custom came with the country's founders, free and formerly enslaved Black Americans settled by the American Colonization Society from 1822, and the holiday falls on the first Thursday of November.

Which two colleges played their first Thanksgiving Day football game against each other in 1876?

Yale and Princeton first met on Thanksgiving in 1876, and after three scoreless Thanksgiving ties in a row the college association made its championship a fixed Thanksgiving Day game in New York from 1882.

Plymouth Rock was first named as the Pilgrims' landing place in 1741, when townspeople planned to bury it under what?

A wharf: hearing of the plan, the aged church elder Thomas Faunce had himself carried to the shore in a chair and pointed out the rock from his father's telling, 121 years after the landing.

Bradford's manuscript history of Plymouth vanished from Boston during the Revolution and resurfaced decades later in which city?

London: the manuscript vanished while British troops held the Boston church that kept it, turned up in the Bishop of London's library at Fulham Palace, and was handed back to Massachusetts in 1897.