Food
What did the Native American Squanto teach the undernourished pilgrims to cultivate?
Name the ship the pilgrim took from Plymouth England?
The Mayflower
True or False: Benjamin Franklin wished to make the turkey the national bird.
True
Which Federalist US President refused to recognize Thanksgiving as a holiday to create a separation between Church and State?
Thomas Jefferson
True or False: The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was a short parade with animals from the Central Park Zoo in 1924
True, it was a two block procession which featured camels, donkeys, elephants and goats
On average, how many turkeys do Americans finish preparing for Thanksgiving each year ?
16, 46 or 66 million
46 million
Why did the Pilgrims leave the shadow of England to come to America?
The Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom
Name the footrace competition that take place on Thanksgiving day
Turkey Trot
Which US President took the action to make thanksgiving a National Holiday?
President Abraham Lincoln
True or False: Canada has their own Thanksgiving celebration
True, but it is celebrated in October commemorating a feast between English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew after their successful sail from England to the Canadian territory in 1578.
True or False: In 1705 the Connecticut town of Colchester postponed its Thanksgiving for a week because there wasn’t enough molasses sugar available to make pumpkin pie.
True
Name the compact signed by the English Pilgrims to serve as their governing document for the Plymouth Colony
The Mayflower Compact
How many towns in the USA are named Turkey as a connection to Thanksgiving?
4 are named Turkey while 1 is named Cranberry and 34 are named Plymouth
In 1871, what was the first state to accomplish adopting an annual Thanksgiving holiday?
New York, Massachusetts or Pennsylvania?
New York was on one of the first but each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition.
True or False: Some historians believe that the true first Thanksgiving occurred when Spanish colonists landed in Florida over 50 years before the Pilgrims.
True - Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés with 800 colonists landed ashore on September 8, 1565 inviting the Timucuans Native Americans to join the newcomers in a communal meal.
How many days did it take to finish the first Thanksgiving feast?
3 days
Do male or female turkeys accomplish gobbling?
Only male turkeys gobble, female turkeys cackle
Did President Franklin D. Roosevelt move Thanksgiving up or back a week in order to extend Christmas shopping?
In 1939, he moved Thanksgiving up a week, in an effort to extend the already important shopping period before Christmas and spur economic activity during the Great Depression.
In what century did Americans begin to share Thanksgiving with watching Football?
19th century when the first Thanksgiving football game was a college match between Yale and Princeton in 1876, only 13 years after Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday. Soon after, Thanksgiving was picked for the date of the college football championships.
Name two of the dishes present at the first Thanksgiving
1. A type of fowl
2. Local vegetables that likely appeared on the table include onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots, corn and perhaps peas.
3. Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries,
Name the astonishing amount of women who were present at the first Thanksgiving according to historians -
5, 10, 20?
5 women survived the harsh winter compared to the 22 men and 25 children
True or False: Turkeys do not share a connection to the country of the same name.
False - During the reign of the Ottoman Empire, a bird called the guinea fowl which looks like an American turkey — was imported to Europe from its native North Africa. Because the birds came from Turkish lands, Europeans called them the turkey-hen. When settlers in the Americas began sending similar-looking birds back to Europe, the name had already stuck.
What did President Calvin Coolidge do with the racoon he received as a foolish Thanksgiving gift?
Mississippi man sent him a racoon to eat but the Coolidge family adopted the pet and named it Rebecca. Rebecca was only the latest addition to their already substantial white house animals that included a black bear, a wallaby, and a pygmy hippo named Billy
What childish song about a girl and her white pet was created by Sarah Joseph Hale who is known as the mother of Thanksgiving because she wrote articles calling for Thanksgiving to be made a holiday?
‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’