10 Thanksgiving Facts That You Will Gobble Up

If you are an American, you know Thanksgiving as a holiday where families come together to gorge themselves in turkey and wine while watching football and absolutely positively avoiding political discussions. If you aren’t American, Thanksgiving is just another 4th Thursday of November where nothing happens. That’s just sad, isn’t it? But whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, we can all agree that this Brainberries article is definitely worth your time. Here are 10 mind-blowing facts about Turkey Day.

1. 46 Million Turkeys are Eaten on Thanksgiving Day

That’s a lot of turkeys, kids. A whole lot of, um, gobble-gobble birds (an expression that nobody uses!). To put this number in perspective, if America consisted of just one person, that person would end up eating 46 million turkeys in the course of a single meal!

2. Abraham Lincoln Established Thanksgiving as a National Holiday

While George Washington proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving celebration in 1789, it wasn’t until 1863 that Lincoln made things official. The purpose of the holiday was to celebrate the success the Union was having during the ongoing Civil War. It wasn’t until the 1870s following Reconstruction that the entire country celebrated the holiday.

3. The First Thanksgiving Football Game Was Between Rutgers and New Jersey

In 1869, Rutgers College and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) played in what is believed to have been the first Thanksgiving day game. Rutgers won the snoozefest 6-4, and 150 years later this remains the sole highlight of their sorry excuse for a football program.

4. Nobody Knows Where the First Thanksgiving Celebration Took Place

Americans are usually taught in elementary school that in 1621, Pilgrims who had settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving. They ate alongside the Native Americans who helped save them from starvation, and as a big “thank you” were subsequently slaughtered as the settlers expanded their territory. But that’s a sad story for another time. The point here is that there is considerable debate amongst historians about where the first Thanksgiving was originally held. Some say that it actually occurred two years earlier in Virginia. Meanwhile, others claim the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by Spanish explorers in current-day Texas in 1598, while others still trace it back to the Spaniards who landed in Florida in 1565. So who knows and who cares, right?