Thanksgiving Greetings

ASPPA Connect wishes its readers a happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for your support! ASPPA Connect will not be appearing on Friday, Nov. 27; however, it will be back to business as usual on Monday, Nov. 30.

In keeping with the season, here are a few unusual facts about Thanksgiving.

• The turkey was almost our national bird, but in a vote in Congress, the bald eagle won out over the turkey.
• TV dinners arose because of Thanksgiving. Someone at Swanson overestimated the number of frozen turkeys it would sell for Thanksgiving in 1953 by 26 tons. The answer they came up with? Slice the meat and repackage it with trimmings on the side. 
• Six places in the United States have Turkey in their name: Turkey, NC; Turkey, TX; Lower Turkeyfoot and Upper Turkeyfoot, both in PA; Turkey Creek, AZ, and Turkey Creek, LA. The latter is the biggest, with a population of 435.  
• Stuffing was not invented by Stove Top. The cookbook “Apicius de re Coquinaria” from the ancient Roman Empire had recipes that called for stuffed chicken, rabbit, pork and more.
• Approximately 50% of Americans fill their Thanksgiving birds with stuffing; in the South, cornbread stuffing is popular, and white bread is common is most other parts of the country.
• Pumpkins are believed to come from Central America. Pumpkin seeds from 5500 B.C. have been found in Mexico.
• Early American settlers made pumpkin pie by filling a hollowed out shell with milk, honey and spices, then baking it.
• The world's largest pumpkin pie was made in New Bremen, OH. It was 20 feet in diameter and weighed 3,699 pounds. 
• A Thanksgiving Day football game was televised for the first time in 1953 and was carried by the DuMont Network. The first time a TV broadcast of a Thanksgiving Day football game was in color was in 1965.
• The highest score any football team has ever gotten in a Thanksgiving Day game is 55 points. This happened twice: in 1977 when the Miami Dolphins defeated the then-St. Louis Cardinals, and in 1997, when the Detroit Lions defeated the Chicago Bears.
• Sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner? It’s not because of tryptophan in turkey. Chicken has more tryptophan than turkey. The culprit is you — you ate too much! Digesting takes lots of energy.