Happy Thanksgiving

Fun Facts

Turkeys are known to spend the night in trees.

Domesticated turkeys cannot fly, however wild turkeys can fly up to 55 miles per hour over short distances.

Corn is one of the popular symbols of thanksgiving. It came in many varieties and colors - red, white, yellow and blue. Some Americans considered blue and white corn sacred. The oldest corns date 7000 years back and were grown in Mexico.

Turkeys can drown if they look up when it's raining.
There was no milk, cheese, bread, butter or pumpkin pie at the original Thanksgiving Day feast.

The cranberry got its name because the pale pink blossoms on the plant resembled a crane’s head and neck. The name craneberry stuck, eventually becoming cranberry. Fresh cranberries are ideal for cranberry sauce.

Part of the reason that Swanson started creating T.V. Dinners in 1953 was because they needed to find something to do with 260 tons of frozen turkeys that were left over from Thanksgiving. Talk about a lot of Turkey dinners!

Here's one of those funny Thanksgiving facts: Turkeys have heart attacks. When the Air Force conducted test runs, breaking the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.
Sarah Josepha Hale is credited as the person most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States. She also authored “Mary Had A Little Lamb”


Fossil evidence shows that turkeys roamed the Americas 10 million years ago.

91% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Fifty percent of Americans put the stuffing inside the Turkey.

President Abraham Lincoln established the original date for our National Thanksgiving Day celebration in 1863. President Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea of establishing a national “Thanksgiving Day.” Thomas Jefferson thought the concept of Thanksgiving was "the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard."
According to the National Turkey Foundation, when Armstrong and Aldrin sat down to eat their first meal on the moon, their foil food packets contained roasted turkey.
The average person consumes 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day and Americans feast on 535 million pounds of turkey.

Contrary to popular belief, the Pilgrims did not have big buckles on their clothing, shoes, or hats. Buckles did not come into fashion until the late 1600s – more appropriate for the Salem Witchcraft trial time period.

The Plymouth Pilgrims dined with the Wampanoag Indians for the First Thanksgiving.
Turkeys have had a pop-culture effect in that Big Bird's outfit is made entirely of turkey feathers.
Turkeys were one of the first animals in the Americas to be domesticated.
Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird.

The night before Thanksgiving is the single biggest day for bar sales in the United States. Bigger than New Year's Eve. Bigger than the Super Bowl. Even bigger than St. Patricks Day.

Only male (tom) turkeys gobble. Females make a clicking noise. The famous gobble is actually a seasonal mating call.

Turkey is the traditional dish for the Thanksgiving feast. There is no official reason or declaration for the use of turkey. They just happened to be the most plentiful meat available at the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, starting the tradition.

Do you know which state is the top turkey-producer in the country? The great state of Minnesota.

Cranberries of the highest quality will always bounce! (If you try this at home, please wash the cranberries before eating. Twenty percent of cranberries eaten are eaten on Thanksgiving.
Congress did not declare Thanksgiving a national holiday until 1941.

On the West Coast Dungeness crab is commonly used as an alternate main dish instead of turkey, as crab season starts in early November.

The Detroit Lions are the reason there's football on Thanksgiving. The Detroit Lions are also the reason a lot of other teams have gotten easy wins on Thanksgiving. The NFL games that are now an indispensable part of Thanksgiving started back in 1934. That year, a guy named G.A. Richards bought the franchise, which, at the time, was called the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans and moved it to Detroit. In order to compete with the Tigers for a market share of Detroit's sports fans, he had to get creative. So he decided to schedule one of their games that season for Thanksgiving, against the defending world champion Chicago Bears. The game sold out, it was broadcast nationwide on NBC radio, it was a huge success and the tradition stuck.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." – John F. Kennedy