REGION — Halloween has come and gone, but don’t let the department stores fool you; it isn’t even close to Christmas. Before Jolly ole’ St. Nick swings around the corner, the spotlight is on one fair-weather fowl: turkey. This bird, native to the North American territories, has been a staple of Thanksgiving and it is almost synonyms with the holiday, but there are some facts many don’t know about the turkey, and we would love to share them with you.
First and foremost, the most common fact people will often hear about turkey and Thanksgiving is the lack of it at the first Thanksgiving. The first original Thanksgiving, which was a three-day harvest festival in 1621, featured little to no turkey at all.
Despite turkeys being common in the region, ducks, geese, and swans were believed to be the birds of choice served among the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians. Deer, fish and other items harvested from their crops, like pumpkins, where also shared.
Thanksgiving would not become recognized as a holiday for many years after the first initial meal. 200 years, to be exact when, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation to declare the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving after the victory at the Battle of Gettysburg.
In the 7th century, more than 10 million turkeys roamed the country. However, by the 1930s, only 30,000 remained as the bird was on the verge of extinction. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, biologists began trapping wild turkeys and re-introducing them into other states, including Minnesota and Vermont. Since then, the population has exploded, particularly in Minnesota.
While many consider turkeys to be a flightless bird, only commercially raised turkeys are flightless. In fact, turkeys can reach speeds up to 55 miles per hour while they are in flight.
While the bald eagle is the national bird, founding father Benjamin Franklin believed the turkey to be a better choice, stating in a letter to his daughter, “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country … For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird.”
Each year, roughly 46 million turkeys are cooked for Thanksgiving, but once a year, one turkey in particular will get a presidential pardon. This tradition actually started with President George H. W. Bush in 1989.
Since then, every president has kept up with the tradition, and a few of the turkeys have gone on to serve a different purpose. In 2005 and 2009, the birds went to Disneyland and Disney World parks to participate in the annual Thanksgiving parades.
And finally, while most get confused when talking about turkey [the animal] and Turkey [the country] one actually did inspire the naming of the other. During the Ottoman Empire, guinea fowls were exported from East Africa through Turkey into Europe, and these birds were dubbed ‘turkey-cocks’ or ‘turkey-hens’ as a result of the trade route.
Naturally, when Europeans first sailed to North America and discovered birds that looked similar to guinea fowl, the name of ‘turkey’ stuck with them.
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