This week thousands of Americans will roast turkeys for their traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Here are some fun facts about turkeys and some Thanksgiving trivia to wow family and friends at the dinner table.
• The first Thanksgiving was held in the autumn of 1621 and included 50 pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians. The celebration lasted three days. Many historians believe that only five women were present at that first Thanksgiving, since many women settlers didn't survive that difficult first year in the U.S.
• Americans eat about 46 million turkeys each Thanksgiving!
• Contrary to popular belief, it is not eating turkey at Thanksgiving that makes consumers sleepy. Post-feast drowsiness may have more to do with everything else on the plate, especially carbohydrates.
• 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.
• The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1924 with 400 employees marching from Convent Ave to 145th street in New York City. Instead of large balloons in the first parade, it featured live animals from Central Park Zoo.
• 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 potatoes - and the first TV dinner was born!
• The five most popular ways to serve leftover turkey are as a sandwich, in stew, chili or soup, casseroles and burger.
• White meat has fewer calories and less fat than dark meat.
• Gobbling turkeys can be heard a mile away on a quiet day.
• Turkey eggs are tan with brown specks and are larger than chicken eggs. They hatch in 28 days.
• Baby turkeys are called poults. A 16-week-old turkey is called a fryer. A five-to-seven-month-old turkey is called a young roaster and a yearling is a year old. Any turkey older than 15 months is mature.
• A turkey's gender can be determined from its droppings. Males, called toms, produce spiral-shaped poop. Females, called hen, produce poop that is shaped like the letter J.
• Tom turkeys have beards. These are black, hair-like feathers on their breast. Hens sometimes have beards, too.
• Male turkeys gobble to announce their presence to females and competing males. Hens "yelp" to let gobblers know their location. Hens rarely "gobble."
• The heaviest turkey ever raised was 86 pounds!
• Turkeys have 3,500 feathers at maturity.
Turkey feathers were used by Native Americans to stabilize arrows and adorn ceremonial dress, and the spurs on the legs of wild tom turkeys were used as projectiles on arrowheads.
• The wild turkey is native to northern Mexico and the eastern United States.
• Ben Franklin wished the turkey had been chosen as the official United States bird. He believed the Bald Eagle was a "bird of bad moral character...For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours..."
• The wild turkey was hunted nearly to extinction by the early 1900s, when the population reached a low of around 30,000 birds. But restoration programs across North America have brought the numbers up to seven million today. They life in every state except Alaska.
• The fleshy growth under a turkey's throat is called a wattle.
• A turkey's brain is about the size of a walnut and it is said that it has fewer brain cells than a cockroach.
• Turkeys can drown if they look up when it's raining.
• Wild turkeys can fly for short distances up to 55 miles per hour and can run 20 per hour.
Commercially raised turkeys are too heavy to fly.
• Wild turkeys spend the night in trees where they are safe from predators, which include coyotes, foxes and raccoons.
• Turkeys have excellent hearing and visual acuity up to 100 yards away with a nearly 270-degrees field of vision.
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