10 Fun Facts about Thanksgiving

Karen DiDonato ⋅ November 19, 2020

Thanksgiving may look quite different this year for many people. We’re having atypical conversations with family and friends about how to better social distance during the holiday, or even how we can share a virtual meal over Zoom. Some people are choosing to enjoy a small Thanksgiving with only the people who live in their households instead of traveling to larger gatherings. Regardless of how you plan to celebrate this year, Thanksgiving is right around the corner.

We’ve compiled a list of 10 facts that are sure to get the conversation going at your dinner table, whether virtual or in person.

• Turkeys are named after the country. Linguists theorize that early Europeans were reminded of the African Guinea Fowl which had come to Europe through Turkey, and the similarity led to its name.
  Source: National Audubon Society

• Wild turkeys are able to fly at just 13-17 days old.
  Source: Farm Sanctuary

• Turkeys can run upwards of 25 miles per hour.
  Source: National Wild Turkey Federation

• Male turkeys are called “gobblers,” after the “gobble” call they make to announce themselves to females (which are called “hens”). How can you tell if it’s a hen or a gobbler? A turkey’s gender can be determined from its droppings; males produce spiral-shaped poop and females’ poop is shaped like the letter J.
  Source: Smithsonian Magazine

• Snoopy has made the most appearances in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
  Source: House Beautiful

• If Ben Franklin had his way, the turkey would be our national bird. An eagle, he wrote in a letter to his daughter, had “bad moral character.” A turkey, on the other hand, was a “much more respectable bird.”
  Source: CNN

• Thanksgiving hasn’t always taken place on the fourth Thursday in November. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up one week to help boost retail sales during the Depression. So many people complained that it was eventually moved back to the original date in 1941. The Thanksgivings between those years are referred to as “Franksgivings” still today.
  Source: Country Living

• In 1953, the influential food corporation Swanson overestimated how much turkey would be consumed on Thanksgiving and had to get creative with the 260 tons of leftover meat. Using 5,000 aluminum trays and an assembly line of hand-packers, the corporation created a Thanksgiving-inspired meal with the aforementioned turkey, cornbread dressing and gravy, peas, and sweet potatoes, selling the whole thing for a grand total of 98 cents. In the first full year of production, they sold ten million of them, and birthed the prepackaged frozen meal industry.
  Source: Town and Country Magazine

• While domesticated turkeys cannot fly, wild turkeys can, for short distances, and at up to 55 miles per hour, according to the National Turkey Federation.
  Source: Huffington Post

• The United States has several locations named after the holiday’s main dish and a very popular side dish:
  Turkey Creek, Louisiana
  Turkey Creek, Arizona
  Turkey, Texas
  Turkey, North Carolina
  Cranberry township, Butler County, Pennsylvania
  Cranberry township, Venango County, Pennsylvania
  Source: United States Census Bureau

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!