Thanksgiving Trivia – Who Knew???
In light of celebrating Thanksgiving this month, we thought it would be appropriate to share some little known facts about one of America’s favorite holidays!!!
- Californians consume the most turkey in the US on Thanksgiving day.
- Female turkeys (called hens) do not gobble…they cackle. Only male turkeys (called toms) gobble.
- Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird…not the eagle.
- The average Thanksgiving turkey weighs 15 pounds.
- The heaviest turkey on record (according to the Guiness Book of Records) weighed 86 pounds.
- Americans eat 46 million turkeys each Thanksgiving.
- Campbell’s Soup created Green Bean Casserole for an annual cookbook 50 years ago. It now sells $20 million worth of Cream of Mushroom Soup per year. Marketing Genius!!!!!
- Thanksgiving is the reason for TV dinners! In 1953, Swanson had so much extra turkey (260 tons) that a salesman told them they should package it onto aluminum trays with other sides like sweet pototoes…and the first TV dinner was born.
- Historians say that there was no turkey, mashed potatoes or pumpkin pie served on the first Thanksgiving. Instead they ate deer, ducks, geese, oysters, lobster, eel and fish. They also ate pumpkins (not in a pie) and cranberries.
- Forks were not introduced to the Pilgrims until ten years after the first Thanksgiving, so they ate their first meal with spoons and knives!
- Doomed from birth! A turkey that is less than 12 weeks old is called a “fryer-roaster!”
- Each year the President of the US pardons a turkey and spares it from being eaten for Thanksgiving. The first “turkey pardon” was issued by President Truman in 1947. President Obama pardoned a 45-lb turkey named Courage, who was flown to Disneyland and served as Grand Marshall of the park’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
- Don’t blame turkey for your “food coma!” Scientists say it’s the extra glass of wine or the high-calorie count of the entire meal that makes you drowsy.
- The Calorie Control Council estimates that the average person consumes 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day.
- The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1924, with 400 employees marching with live animals from the Central Park Zoo. Someone with the bright idea of blowing up huge balloons came later!