When the guests around your Thanksgiving table are busy stuffing their bellies, here’s one way to break the lull in conversation: dazzle them with some tasty turkey trivia.
Here’s 10 to get you started. We bet you they’ll eat them up!
- A tradition is born: TV dinners have Thanksgiving to thank. In 1953, someone at Swanson misjudged the number of frozen turkeys it would sell that Thanksgiving — by 26 TONS! Some industrious soul came up with a brilliant plan: Why not slice up the meat and repackage with some trimmings on the side? Thus,the first TV dinner was born!
- Going shopping?:Not if you’re a plumber. Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for them, according to Roto-Rooter, the nation’s largest plumbing service. After all, someone has to clean up after household guests who “overwhelm the system.”
- This land is my land:There are four places in the U.S. named Turkey. Louisiana’s Turkey Creek is the most populous, with a whopping 440 residents. There’s also Turkey, Texas; Turkey, North Carolina; and Turkey Creek, Arizona. Oh, let’s not forget the two townships in Pennsylvania: the creatively named Upper Turkeyfoot and Lower Turkeyfoot!
- Leaving a legacy: When Abe Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, it was thanks to the tireless efforts of a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale. Her other claim to fame? She alsowrote the nursery rhyme, “Mary had a Little Lamb.”
- Gobble, gobble?: Not so fast.Only male turkeys, called toms, gobble. Females, called hens, cackle.
- Have it your way: If Ben Franklin did, 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.”
- Born in the U.S.A.: Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday.Canadians celebrate it too. Except they do it the second Monday in October.
- Doomed from birth: Those poor turkeys; they don’t stand a chance. Just look at the name we gave them. A turkey less than 12-weeks-old is calleda fryer-roaster.
- Talking turkey: Why is it called a turkey? Oh boy, this will take some explaining’. Back in the day, the Europeans took a liking to the guinea fowls imported to the continent. Since the birds were imported by Turkish merchants,the English called them turkeys. Later, when the Spaniards came to America, they found a bird that tasted like those guinea fowls. When they were sent to Europe, the English called these birds “turkeys” as well.(http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/28/living/thanksgiving-fun-facts/index.html)