Enjoy this Thanksgiving quiz and some turkey facts to share with your friends and family around the dinner table:
The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. It lasted three days.
The drink that the Puritans brought with them was beer.
The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.
The Pilgrims named their colony Plymouth after the harbor in England from which they departed for the New World.
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.
In Canada it’s celebrated on the second Monday in October.
The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of about 90 Wampanoag Indians.
Pilgrim leader Gov. William Bradford organized the first feast.
All thirteen colonies finally celebrated Thanksgiving on the same date in October 1777.
Benjamin Franklin lobbied to make the turkey the national bird.
President George Washington declared Thanksgiving a holiday in 1789.
For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation and set the current November date. Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been an annual tradition since 1924.
Minnesota is the biggest producer of turkeys, followed by North Carolina and Arkansas. California ranks sixth.
The first National Football League’s Thanksgiving Classic game was played in 1934.
This year approximately 46 million turkeys will be consumed over the Thanksgiving holiday.
