Fun Thanksgiving Trivia

At the Tutoring Club of Jacksonville, we try not to miss any opportunity to learn something new!  Here are some fun trivia bits about Thanksgiving:

• In 2013 it is reckoned that nearly 320 million turkeys have been reared for Thanksgiving celebrations.  In the UK approximately 13 million turkeys are reared for Christmas Day.
• There appear to be three places in the USA named after this traditional meal: Turkey in Texas [population 491]; Turkey Creek, Louisiana [population 364]; and Turkey, North Carolina [population 267]. Three towns in Kansas also have the name Turkey. Do you know of any others?  
• Following this discovery we have found that there are a number of places named Cranberry - perhaps after the sauce often eaten with turkey. The biggest appears to be Cranberry in Butler County, Pennsylvania with 28,000 inhabitants.
• Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrim Father's landed, is celebrated by 28 sites in the US.  Of course, England have the original Plymouth in Devon city, and this is where the Pilgrims set sail. Minnesota and Massachusetts have the biggest conurbations of Plymouth.
• There is Pilgrim in Dade County, Missouri with a population of some 133 good folks!
• Pilgrims, or Romans? The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days.
• Talk'n Turkey about turkey... Turkeys are called turkeys because hundreds of years ago, Turkish merchants imported similar fowls to Europe. The Europeans called them turkey birds. The name just seemed to fit the fowls they later found in America.
• FDR would be proud. Hoping to stimulate an urge to shop, in 1939 President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving one week closer to Christmas. It didn't work, so it was changed back a couple of years later years later. No need to worry now. Last year shoppers spent a record $59.1 billion over the four-day weekend.
• Green Bean Overload: Campbells sells $20 million in mushroom soup on Thanksgiving.
• They girlble, maybe? Female turkeys don't gobble.