Katie H. asks: Why do we eat turkey on thanksgiving when the pilgrims didn’t? Every year on the fourth Thursday in November, over three hundred million Americans sit down at a table filled with culinary delights. From overstuffed turkeys to whipped-cream-topped pumpkin pies, it’s probably not a shock to learn that many of the traditional foods we eat on Thanksgiving […]
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Embed This Infographic: Source: Today I Found Out How the Black Friday Tradition Got Started While it wasn’t called “Black Friday” until the 1960s, and then not popularly called such until the last two decades, retailers have been trying to push people to shop the Friday after Thanksgiving since the late 19th /early 20th century. Around this time, it was […]
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Today I found out the song Jingle Bells is thought to have been written for a Thanksgiving Sunday school program. Jingle Bells was originally called One Horse Open Sleigh and was written by James Pierpont sometime between 1853 and 1857. At the time, Pierpont was working as an organist and music director in Savannah, Georgia. Pierpont was hired on by […]
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Embed This Image On Your Site: [Source: Today I Found Out] If you liked this Thanksgiving Myths infographic, check out 10 Interesting Thanksgiving Facts
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Embed This Image On Your Site: [Source: Today I found out] If you liked this Thanksgiving Facts infographic, check out 10 Thanksgiving Myths Dispelled
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Myth: The Pilgrims Celebrated the First Thanksgiving in America. The Pilgrims did not celebrate the first Thanksgiving in America. In fact, the particular Pilgrim event that is often cited as the first Thanksgiving wasn’t even the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving. They had several before then at various times and none of them were an annual thing. These days were simply a […]
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Today I found out Sarah Josepha Hale, author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, was largely responsible for the establishment of the United States’ Thanksgiving Holiday. Hale, one of the great women in American history, campaigned for nearly 20 years to get Thanksgiving made a national holiday. It previously was only celebrated, as we think of it, in New England; […]
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Today I found out how the Black Friday tradition got started. While it wasn’t called “Black Friday” until the 1960s, and then not popularly called such until the last two decades, retailers have been trying to push people to shop the Friday after Thanksgiving since the late 19th /early 20th century. Around this time, it was very popular for various […]
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Myth: Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Black Friday is not the biggest shopping day of the year. In fact, it’s typically not even in the top five, though has cracked the ranks a few times in recent years. The real biggest shopping day of the year is nearly always the Saturday before Christmas, excepting a […]
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Today I found out how the tradition of the Detroit Lions playing on Thanksgiving got started. In 1934, radio executive G.A. Richards bought the Portsmouth, Ohio Spartans NFL team, moved them to Detroit, and renamed them the Lions. Unfortunately for him, nobody in Detroit cared much for watching the Lions. Despite winning all their games but one before Thanksgiving, having […]
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Today I found out why turkeys are called turkeys. In the 16th century, when North American turkeys were first introduced en masse to Europe, there was another bird that was popularly imported throughout Europe and, most relevant to this article, England, called a guinea fowl. This guinea fowl was imported from Madagascar via the Ottoman Empire. The merchants who did […]
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Myth: Pilgrims wore black and white clothing with buckled top hats. The myth that they dressed like this stems from the popular clothing style of the day in England in the late 17th century, which carried over to 18th and 19th century depictions. Artist depictions, at that time, depicted Pilgrims having worn the same style clothing that had become the […]
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Today I found out turkey does not make you drowsy after you eat it. Now to be clear, turkey does contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid which the human body doesn’t naturally produce, but is essential to proper body function and, thus, must be acquired from food. The reason tryptophan is tied to drowsiness is that it is used […]
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