With the Thanksgiving break approaching, we at The Houstonian decided to lighten the mood and take a look at the not-so-serious side of Turkey Day. After all, we all need something funny to get us through the days with crazy families.
– Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the United States. But it was Thomas Jefferson who opposed him. It is believed that Franklin then named the male turkey as ‘Tom’ to spite Jefferson.
– Only male (tom) turkeys gobble. Females make a clicking noise. The famous gobble is actually a seasonal mating call.
– If you or your family makes cranberry sauce with real cranberries, be sure to literally throw every cranberry on the floor first. The best fresh cranberries will always bounce!
– Congress didn’t officially declare Thanksgiving a national holiday until 1941. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to declare a day of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved it forward a week in 1939, in an effort to extend the Christmas shopping season to stimulate the depressed economy!
– According the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the United States at Thanksgiving. That number represents one sixth of all the turkeys sold in the U.S. each year!
– According to the National Turkey Foundation, approximately 690 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the United States during Thanksgiving 2007. This equals the weight of 4.48 million individuals of average weight (154 pounds). This is the same amount of the estimated weight of the total population of Singapore.
– Turkey was the first food eaten on the moon! Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin enjoyed roasted turkey eaten out of a foil pack.