142 Fun Facts About Thanksgiving Trivia for Kids

Turkey is often blamed, without good evidence, for causing which after-dinner feeling?

Sleepiness gets pinned on tryptophan in the turkey, but the bird holds no more of it than other poultry, and there is no evidence that it makes diners drowsy.

Canada's Thanksgiving holiday always falls on which day of the week?

Monday has been the fixed day since 1957; in the 1920s the holiday shared a Monday with Armistice Day, until the two were split in 1931 so that veterans had a day of their own.

Where did most of the Pilgrims live during their first winter in America?

On their ship: the colonists stayed aboard through the winter, and sickness spread fast in the cold, crowded quarters before the survivors moved ashore in spring.

Pictures of the Pilgrims often show which item on their hats that they never really wore?

Buckles were added by 19th-century artists; the Pilgrims' own estate records list red caps, violet coats and green gowns, not just the black and white of the pictures.

A baby boy born at sea during the Pilgrims' voyage to America was given which fitting name?

Oceanus Hopkins was born in mid-Atlantic; his father Stephen was the one passenger who had crossed before, and had been shipwrecked on Bermuda on the way to Jamestown.

Which president made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863?

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it in the middle of the Civil War, after magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale had spent years urging one president after another to name a single national day.

In the New York parade's early years, what happened to the giant balloons once the parade was over?

Released into the sky, the balloons drifted off and the store paid a reward to whoever sent one back; the stunt was dropped after one wrapped itself around an aeroplane's wing in 1932.

What does a courting male turkey do with his tail to impress a hen?

Fans it out is right: a courting male spreads his tail into an upright fan, droops his wings until the quills rattle, and struts slowly past her.

Which animal, sent to President Coolidge for Thanksgiving dinner in 1926, became a White House pet instead?

A raccoon arrived from a supporter in Mississippi; Calvin Coolidge had no wish to eat it, so the family named her Rebecca and kept her at the White House.

Native Americans ate cranberries and also used them for which other purpose?

Dyeing cloth: the juice was used to colour fabrics, and the fruit was also pounded with dried meat and fat into pemmican, a food that kept through the winter.

When two people snap the forked bone from a turkey's breast, what does the one with the bigger piece get to do?

Make a wish, in the usual version of a custom traced to the early 1600s; the bone itself only came to be called the 'wishbone' around 1860, named after the game.

Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving in which month?

October it is, though only fixed since 1957: before then the date wandered, and Canada's first national Thanksgiving, in 1879, fell about a month later in the year.

Which NFL team has hosted a Thanksgiving Day game since 1934?

The Detroit Lions had only just moved to the city in 1934, so owner George A. Richards, a radio man, staged a holiday game to win fans from baseball's Tigers, and the fixture stuck.

The bare skin on a turkey's head changes colour to show what?

Its mood: a male's bare head and neck are flushed with blood, and the skin shifts between red, white and blue when he gets excited or shows off to a rival.

Before the Pilgrims hired it, the ship that took them to America had mostly carried barrels of what?

Wine was its usual cargo, along with cloth: it was a merchant ship never built for passengers, so the Pilgrims lived packed together on the gun deck.

What is a baby turkey called?

Poults can walk and leave the nest within a day of hatching, which is why turkey chicks are called precocial.

What is the tuft of stiff, hair-like feathers on a male turkey's chest called?

A beard keeps growing all through a male's life, so biologists use its length as a rough guide to his age; about one hen in ten grows a short, wispy one too.

The fleshy flap that hangs over a turkey's beak is called what?

The snood sprouts from the turkey's forehead, not from the beak itself, and droops down over the bill; on a strutting male it swells and stretches well past the tip.

Why do male wild turkeys gobble in spring?

To attract mates: a courting male gobbles to draw in hens and, with the same call, to warn rival males to keep their distance.

Where do wild turkeys usually spend the night?

Wild turkeys roost in trees, settling on high branches at dusk; sleeping up high in a group keeps them safer from predators that hunt after dark.

Most turkeys raised on farms have feathers of which colour?

Most farm turkeys are bred white because the tiny pin feathers left after plucking are hard to spot on pale skin, so the dressed bird looks cleaner.

Which of these can wild turkeys do that farm turkeys mostly cannot?

Fly quickly is right: wild turkeys are strong fliers for a quarter of a mile or so, while the biggest farm birds have been bred too heavy to leave the ground.

Squanto, who helped the Pilgrims, had earlier been kidnapped and sold in which European country?

Spain: he was sold at the port of Málaga, where local friars are said to have taken in some of the captives; he got home in 1619 to find his village wiped out by disease.

Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eels and grow which crop?

Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, burying fish in each hill as fertiliser, and where to catch eels; the 1621 corn harvest was the colony's first real success.

Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who campaigned for a national Thanksgiving, also wrote which nursery rhyme?

Hale's 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' was published in 1830, and her years of letters to presidents earned her the nickname 'Mother of Thanksgiving'.

In 1939, the US president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier to give people more time for what?

The 1939 move was meant to lengthen the Christmas shopping season; it caused such confusion that some states kept the old date, and Congress settled the matter two years later.

Which president signed the 1941 law that fixed the date of Thanksgiving for good?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it on 26 December 1941, ending two years of muddle that began when he moved the holiday himself and part of the country refused to follow.

Which president made pardoning a turkey an official yearly White House tradition in 1989?

George H. W. Bush announced the pardon at the 1989 ceremony and every president since has repeated it; under Ronald Reagan the birds were already going to farms, but with no fixed ritual.

The first big New York City Thanksgiving parade in 1924 had live animals borrowed from where?

The Central Park Zoo lent bears, elephants, camels and monkeys for that first parade in 1924; it went so well that the store behind it promised next morning to stage it again.

Which cartoon character was the very first giant balloon in the New York Thanksgiving parade?

Felix the Cat arrived in 1927, when character balloons took the place of the live animals that had marched in the earliest parades, and balloons have been the main attraction ever since.

Which cartoon character got his first New York parade balloon in 1934?

Mickey Mouse joined the parade in 1934; balloons have had bad days since, as in 1997, when high winds drove the Cat in the Hat into a lamppost and the very largest balloons were barred afterwards.

Who arrived at Herald Square at the very end of the first New York Thanksgiving parade in 1924?

Santa Claus was the guest of honour, because the event was first billed as the store's Christmas parade; it took the Thanksgiving name only later.

The New York parade was cancelled from 1942 to 1944 because the rubber in its balloons was needed for what?

World War II took the balloons: in 1942 the store gave them to the government's rubber scrap drive, the mayor stabbing a giant dragon to deflate it, and the parade did not march again until 1945.

Green bean casserole was invented in 1955 by a cook working for which food company?

Campbell's home economist Dorcas Reilly came up with the dish in the company's test kitchen; her original recipe card was later handed to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

What do the red berries in Thanksgiving sauce do when farmers flood the fields at harvest?

They float: once the flooded field is churned to knock the fruit loose, the ripe berries bob to the surface, where farmers corral them into a corner and scoop or pump them out.

Which US state grows the most cranberries?

Wisconsin grew about six in every ten American cranberries in 2021; Massachusetts, where the fruit was first farmed some two centuries ago, now comes second.

The Pilgrims were religious separatists who had broken away from which church?

The Pilgrims were Separatists who had left the Church of England, believing it could not be reformed from within, and were persecuted for worshipping apart from it.

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, what does Snoopy serve the guests instead of a proper dinner?

Toast and jelly beans arrive with popcorn and pretzel sticks, the best the gang can cook; one guest complains loudly that it is no proper feast, then feels ashamed and apologises.

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which character invites herself to Charlie Brown's house for dinner?

Peppermint Patty invites herself, then Marcie and Franklin, to Charlie Brown's for dinner, leaving him to improvise a meal with Snoopy's help.

Police in which city first used the name 'Black Friday' for the crowded shopping day after Thanksgiving?

Philadelphia police used it for the traffic jams and crowds that clogged the city before the yearly Army-Navy game; shopkeepers tried to rename the day 'Big Friday', but that never caught on.

What kind of event is a Thanksgiving 'turkey trot'?

A running race, run on Thanksgiving morning ahead of the feast; many are charity fun runs where the outfit matters more than the time, with packs of runners dressed as turkeys.

The horn-shaped basket overflowing with fruit and vegetables at Thanksgiving is called what?

A cornucopia, in one Greek myth, began as a goat's broken horn that gained the power to pour out food without end; other tellings give the magic horn a different origin.

The forked bone that two people snap after a turkey dinner is formed from which two fused bones?

Collarbones, on the usual reading: the pair fuse into one springy fork that scientists call the furcula, Latin for 'little fork', and several kinds of meat-eating dinosaur had one too.

In North America, soft orange sweet potatoes are often sold under the name of which unrelated vegetable?

Yams are an unrelated tropical tuber; growers borrowed the name to set their soft orange sweet potatoes apart from firmer, paler kinds, and it stuck.

About how many passengers crowded onto the Pilgrims' ship for the voyage to America?

About 100 is right: the list names 102 passengers, and only around a third of them belonged to the Separatist church whose members had planned the voyage.

American Thanksgiving falls on which Thursday of November each year?

The fourth Thursday was fixed by Congress in 1941; before that, presidents had usually named the last Thursday, which in some years is a fifth one.

Tony Sarg, who designed the New York parade's first giant balloons, was best known as what?

A puppeteer by trade, Tony Sarg thought of the balloons as huge airborne marionettes, worked from the street below by handlers holding ropes.

About how many Native guests joined the roughly fifty Pilgrims at their 1621 feast?

About 90 men arrived with their leader, wrote colonist Edward Winslow, so the guests outnumbered their hosts almost two to one, and they were entertained for three days.

Which animal did the Pilgrims' Native guests bring five of to the 1621 feast?

Deer: colonist Edward Winslow wrote that the guests went out and killed five, which they presented to the governor and the captain, while the colonists supplied wild fowl.

In the 1950s Swanson began selling Thanksgiving-style turkey on an aluminium tray under which new name?

The TV dinner has a much-told origin tale: a salesman said he invented it to use up tons of unsold Thanksgiving turkey, but the Swanson family and former staff dispute his story.

The Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest times of the whole year for doing what?

Travelling to visit family makes it one of the busiest road-travel holidays of the year, helped by a break of four or five days for schools and colleges.

Which tyre company built the giant balloons for the New York parade's early years?

Goodyear turned its rubber know-how from tyres to the very first balloons, and went on building the parade's giants for decades afterwards.

The two turkeys pardoned at the White House in 2021 were given which pair of names?

Peanut Butter and Jelly were raised on an Indiana farm; at the ceremony President Biden admitted that their names were also what he liked to eat for lunch.

Which president was the first to proclaim a Thanksgiving holiday, in 1789?

George Washington acted after the first Congress asked him to recommend a day of public thanksgiving; later presidents picked their own dates or skipped it altogether.

Turkeys belong to the same order of birds as which farmyard favourite?

Chickens share the turkey's order, the Galliformes; turkeys were long given a bird family all of their own, but most scientists now place them in the pheasant family, alongside chickens.

How did tame turkeys first reach the colonies of eastern North America?

By ship from Europe: tame turkeys had crossed the Atlantic in the early 1500s and become a favourite on tables there, so colonists carried them back to America as farm birds.

The turkey is thought to be named after a mix-up with which African bird?

The guineafowl was known as the 'turkey-cock' because it came to market through Turkish lands; in the usual account the name slid across to the bigger American bird in the 1500s.

Which woodland food do wild turkeys scratch the forest floor for in autumn and winter?

Acorns top the menu: turkeys rake through fallen leaves for them and other nuts, then turn to seeds, berries and insects as the seasons change.

Where does a wild turkey hen build her nest?

On the ground: the hen scratches a shallow hollow among dead leaves, lays about a dozen eggs and sits on them for about four weeks, which makes nests easy pickings for foxes and skunks.

Which Founding Father's 1784 letter to his daughter praised the turkey over the bald eagle?

Benjamin Franklin called the eagle 'a Bird of bad moral Character' and the turkey 'a much more respectable Bird', but he never proposed making it a national symbol.

The ocellated turkey of the Yucatán Peninsula is named for tail spots shaped like what?

Eyes: 'ocellated' means marked with eye-like spots, like those on a peacock's tail; the male sounds different too, starting his call with low drumming thumps before the gobble.

Wild turkeys now live in every US state except which one?

Alaska is the one gap: wild birds trapped and moved by wildlife managers spread the species across the other mainland states, and turkeys were even introduced to Hawaii.

Which people were raising tame turkeys when Spanish explorers arrived in the 1500s?

The Aztecs were keeping flocks of turkeys when the conquistadors arrived, but the taming had begun in Mexico many centuries before their empire arose.

The Pilgrims built their colony on the coast of which present-day US state?

Massachusetts: the Pilgrims' colony kept its independence until 1691, when it was swallowed up by its bigger Puritan neighbour, the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In French, the bird Americans roast at Thanksgiving was originally named after which country?

India: the French called the bird 'hen of India', a phrase later squeezed into the single word 'dinde', because the Americas were still widely taken for part of Asia.

Turkeys have no teeth, so what do they swallow to help grind up their food?

Grit and tiny stones collect in the gizzard, a muscular stomach that squeezes the hard bits against seeds and nuts and so does the chewing for the bird.

Which NFL team began hosting its own Thanksgiving Day game in 1966?

The Dallas Cowboys volunteered when the league wanted a second holiday game: team boss Tex Schramm saw the chance to win fans nationwide on television, and a team-record crowd turned out.

Which parent looks after wild turkey chicks once they hatch?

Only the mother: males take no part in raising the young, while the hen guards her chicks and shelters them under her wings at night for their first few weeks.

Which fleshy flap hangs from the underside of a turkey's beak?

The wattle is the flap of bare skin that hangs under a turkey's beak and throat; a courting male swells it up as part of the show he puts on for the hens.

Where do the two turkeys chosen for the White House pardon spend the night before the ceremony?

In a luxury hotel: the birds are put up at the Willard, a grand hotel next door to the White House, and in 2021 they were welcomed there on a red carpet.

Which president spared his Thanksgiving turkey in 1963, saying 'Let's keep him going'?

John F. Kennedy let the bird live with those words; newspapers called it a 'pardon' and a 'reprieve', but no president made the pardon an official ritual until 1989.

Before the 1970s, what usually happened to the turkey presented to the US president?

It was eaten: for decades the gift bird ended up on the president's table; from the 1970s some birds went to farms and petting zoos, and by the 1980s that was the norm.

A Civil War tale says a US president spared a Christmas turkey to please which of his sons?

Tad is the son in the story, which a White House reporter set down in 1865; historians treat it as a likely legend rather than the true origin of the turkey pardon.

Which spices are usually in the seasoning blend for pumpkin pie?

Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, sometimes with allspice, are sold ready-mixed as pumpkin pie spice, a blend that contains no pumpkin at all.

Early colonists are thought to have baked their first spiced pumpkin 'pies' in what, instead of a pastry crust?

Its own hollowed shell: settlers are said to have filled a pumpkin with milk, honey and spices and baked it whole in hot ashes, long before the crust arrived.

Which US state grows most of the pumpkins that are canned for pie filling?

Illinois grows most of America's canning pumpkins near one big cannery at Morton, so when heavy rain spoiled its 2009 crop, canned pumpkin ran short across the country.

The heaviest pumpkins ever grown weigh about as much as which of these?

A small car: record pumpkins have topped 1,200 kilograms, and growers have hollowed out giant ones and paddled them as boats.

Which African country, settled by freed Black Americans, keeps a national Thanksgiving holiday?

Liberia's settlers carried the custom across the Atlantic, but it changed on the way: Liberians mark the day weeks earlier than Americans do, and there is no set meal.

The tart red fruit in Thanksgiving sauce takes its name from which long-necked bird?

The crane: the name comes from Low German 'kraanbere', crane berry, probably because the flower looks like a crane's head and neck.

To pass the packers' sorting test, a fresh cranberry must do what?

Bounce: air pockets inside a sound cranberry make it spring off a hard surface, so packers run the fruit over bounce boards and the soft ones that fail are set aside for processing.

What crunchy topping finishes a classic green bean casserole?

Fried onions go on in two stages in the classic recipe: some are stirred into the mix and the rest scattered on top near the end, so that they stay crisp.

Which sweets are melted on top of a Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole?

Marshmallows got onto the dish through an advert: a marshmallow maker printed the recipe in a booklet in the 1910s to sell more sweets.

Children in the Pilgrims' day played 'naughts and crosses', a game known today as what?

Tic-tac-toe is the same game under an older name: a nought is an O and a cross is an X, and children were lining up three in a row 400 years ago.

In the United States, stuffing is also commonly called what?

Dressing suits the dish many cooks now make: food-safety advice is to bake the mixture in its own pan, not inside the bird, and spoon it on at the table.

Sweet potatoes belong to the same plant family as which garden flower?

The sweet potato belongs to the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae, and its vines bear similar trumpet-shaped flowers; it is only distantly related to the ordinary potato.

The sweet potato first grew in the tropics of which part of the world?

The sweet potato is native to tropical South America and Central America; remains found in Peru date back thousands of years, and the crop reached Polynesia long before Columbus.

Which region of the United States is pecan pie a specialty of?

The South is where pecan trees grow wild, which tied the pie to the region, and Texas has named pecan pie its official state pie.

Karo, the brand that spread pecan pie recipes in the 1930s, makes which sweet syrup used in the filling?

Corn syrup gives pecan pie its gooey middle, and Karo's makers tell the pie's story as a 1930s find: 'a new use for corn syrup'.

Which animal contest has NBC aired straight after the New York Thanksgiving parade every year since 2002?

The National Dog Show got the slot after the dog-show comedy film Best in Show gave NBC the idea, and it has followed the parade at noon ever since.

In 1928 the New York parade's balloons switched from air to which gas, so that they would rise?

Helium did away with the sticks that had propped up the first air-filled balloon a year earlier, so the giant figures could ride high above the street on ropes.

Which 1947 Christmas film opens with scenes shot at the real New York Thanksgiving parade?

Miracle on 34th Street shot its opening at the real 1946 parade, where every scene had to be caught in one take, and Edmund Gwenn later won an Oscar for his part.

Which famous dance troupe has performed at the New York parade every year since 1957?

The Rockettes began far from New York, as the Missouri Rockets in St. Louis in 1925, and are famous for eye-high kicks in a perfectly straight line.

Snoopy's first New York parade balloon, in 1968, showed him dressed as what?

The World War I Flying Ace is Snoopy's daydream of battling the Red Baron from his doghouse, and a year later the same balloon was remade as an astronaut.

Which seafood, a pricey treat today, was plentiful everyday food for the Pilgrims at Plymouth?

Lobster filled the bay, so the colonists counted it as plain fare; the foods they really longed for were bread and meat.

When a storm cracked one of the Mayflower's main beams in mid-ocean, what was used to prop it back up?

A great iron screw, packed in Holland to help build houses, forced the beam back into place, and the crew judged the ship fit to sail on.

What saved young John Howland when a storm swept him off the Mayflower in mid-ocean?

A ship's rope: Howland caught hold of a line in the sea, was dragged under the waves and then hauled back aboard with a boat hook.

Which leaky second ship, despite a name promising a swift voyage, was left behind by the Mayflower?

The Speedwell leaked so badly on two attempts that it was left behind in port; its passengers crowded onto the Mayflower, delaying the whole voyage.

Before sailing to America, the Pilgrims had lived for years in which part of Europe?

The Pilgrims had lived in the Netherlands, mostly in Leiden, from about 1608 to worship freely; they left partly because their children were growing up Dutch.

Which agreement did 41 men sign aboard the Pilgrims' ship on 21 November 1620?

The Mayflower Compact answered passengers who said that, having landed off course, 'none had power to command them'; signing bound everyone to shared laws.

Where had the Pilgrims originally intended to land?

The Pilgrims held a patent for land in the Colony of Virginia, near the mouth of the Hudson River, but storms and shoals forced them to anchor at the hook of Cape Cod instead.

What happened to Plymouth Rock in 1774 when people tried to move it?

It broke in half as oxen dragged the rock towards the town square, and souvenir hunters chipped at it for generations, so today's rock is far smaller than the one the town knew.

What is carved into the face of Plymouth Rock?

The year of the landing, 1620, was only carved in 1880, some 260 years after the Pilgrims came ashore.

Which explorer's map showed the name New Plymouth years before the Pilgrims arrived there?

John Smith, the Jamestown captain, charted this coast in 1614 and printed 'New Plimouth' on his map, so the Pilgrims kept a name that was already waiting for them.

In a Native American 'Three Sisters' garden, which crop climbs up the stalks of its tall sister?

Beans climb the tall stalks and feed the soil, while broad squash leaves shade out weeds, so the three crops planted together help each other grow.

Wampanoag children learned to swim young because families often travelled by mishoon, which is what?

A dugout canoe: a mishoon was made by burning out the middle of a big log over several days and scraping the charred wood away.

What became of most of the European seeds the Pilgrims planted in their first spring?

They mostly failed to grow: the colonists' peas were 'not worth the gathering', so Squanto's lessons in sowing and feeding native crops kept the colony fed.

Which Native American man was the first to walk into Plymouth and greet the Pilgrims in English?

Samoset, an Abenaki leader from Maine, had picked up English from fishermen on the coast, and after his greeting he asked the startled colonists for beer.

The Pilgrims' ally Massasoit was known by a title that means what?

Great chief, or 'great sachem', was only his title: his own name was Ousamequin, but the colonists took the title for a name and it stuck.

What had weakened Massasoit's people so badly that he sought the Pilgrims as allies?

An epidemic had killed so many of Massasoit's people that the stronger Narragansetts next door had become a threat, so he wanted the English newcomers on his side.

Which Pilgrim led Plymouth Colony as governor for about 30 years and wrote its history?

William Bradford's handwritten history went missing from America around the time of the Revolution, turned up in the Bishop of London's library and was only handed back in 1897.

What did small Pilgrim boys wear before being given breeches at about six or seven?

Long skirts were for every small child, on gowns at first and under a jacket from about four; the day a boy got his first breeches, he 'was breeched'.

A traditional Wampanoag family home, a small round house, is called what?

A wetu went up at the summer planting grounds near the coast, and when the cold came its family moved back to a sheltered village inland.

In one Greek myth, the 'horn of plenty' came from the goat that nursed which god as a baby?

Zeus was hidden from his father in a cave on Crete and raised on goat's milk, and in this telling a horn from that goat went on to pour out endless food.

The Wampanoag translate their own name as 'People of the First' what?

Light: the People of the First Light are no vanished nation, for several thousand Wampanoag still live in their old homeland today.

Which city in New York State has held a turkey trot every Thanksgiving since 1896?

Buffalo, New York, has kept its trot going every single year since 1896, through wars and two pandemics, which it counts as the longest streak of its kind on the continent.

Which farm animals reached Plymouth only a few years after the Mayflower, on later ships?

Cows came later: the first ship's farm animals were probably just goats, pigs and chickens, so the settlers began with no cattle or oxen to pull a plough.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving won which award the year after it first aired?

An Emmy went to Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, who wrote the special himself, though the show missed out on the prize for best children's special that year.

Before A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Peanuts already had TV specials for Christmas and which other holiday?

Halloween: in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), Linus skips the fun to wait all night in a pumpkin patch for a visitor who never comes.

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which bird helps Snoopy cook the meal?

Snoopy and his small yellow bird friend Woodstock cook the improvised dinner in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and the two later share a turkey dinner of their own in the doghouse.

Pilgrim toddlers had long cloth strips sewn to their shoulders for what purpose?

Steadying their first steps: a parent held these 'leading strings' like reins, and a padded roll called a pudding cushioned the child's head in a fall.

In the animated film Free Birds, two turkeys travel back in time to change what?

The first Thanksgiving menu is the target: Reggie and Jake ride a time machine back to 1621 to get turkeys taken off it for good.

What were the roofs of the Pilgrims' first houses in Plymouth made from?

Bundled reeds and grass, cut from the marshes and tied on in layers, made a thatched roof, and a stray spark from the hearth could set the whole thing alight.

Which traditional Thanksgiving food arrived with Europeans instead of being native to the Americas?

Wheat for bread rolls is the newcomer: wheat was first farmed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, while turkey, squash and cranberries are all natives of the Americas.

What is a turducken?

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, each bird boned first, became famous when NFL commentator John Madden carved one on air and awarded them at Thanksgiving games.

Which soup is the key ingredient in green bean casserole?

Cream of mushroom soup holds the dish together; cook Dorcas Reilly designed it in 1955 for a newspaper feature, using only things most kitchens already had.

Which sauce on the Thanksgiving table already appears in a royal cookbook written around 1390?

Gravy is in The Forme of Cury, written by King Richard II's master cooks, about a century before any European had seen a turkey.

The word 'pumpkin' comes from an old Greek word for which other fruit?

Melon: Greek 'pepon', a large ripe melon, passed through French into English as 'pumpion', and in the 1600s a new ending turned it into pumpkin.

Which turkey brand runs a holiday 'Talk-Line' where experts answer worried cooks' questions by phone?

Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line opened as a telephone hotline in 1981, and its experts have since taken to answering panicked cooks by text message too.

Which Korean harvest festival falls on the full moon of the eighth lunar month?

Chuseok, Korea's harvest festival, falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month; families share songpyeon rice cakes and visit ancestral graves.

The only animals known for certain to have sailed on the Mayflower were two of what?

Dogs: an English mastiff and a spaniel are named in the Pilgrims' own journals, while any farm animals aboard went unrecorded.

Which sport does Lucy tempt Charlie Brown with at the start of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

The special opens with Lucy holding a football for Charlie Brown to kick and, as always, pulling it away at the last second.

Pilgrim elder William Brewster gave his children names like Love, Patience, Fear and which other?

Wrestling Brewster sailed on the Mayflower with his brother Love, while their sisters Patience and Fear stayed behind and were sent for later.

Which Thanksgiving side dish gets its name from a word in the Narragansett language?

Succotash comes from a Narragansett word for boiled whole kernels, and colonists borrowed both the name and the dish from their Native neighbours.

Which wild grass was corn bred from about 9,000 years ago?

Corn was bred from teosinte, a wild grass of southern Mexico, by indigenous farmers about 9,000 years ago; a teosinte ear holds only a handful of hard kernels.

Which part of the turkey is known as the drumstick?

The drumstick is the lower part of the turkey's leg, shaped like the stick used to beat a drum; the thigh sits above it and the wing is a separate joint.

Which of these shopping days was invented by a retail trade group in 2005?

Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by America's National Retail Federation, whose staff first weighed up 'Black Monday' and 'Blue Monday' and threw both names out.

Which Asian country marks Labor Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday each autumn?

Japan's Labor Thanksgiving Day, Kinro Kansha no Hi, honours work and production, but it grew out of an ancient rite of thanks for the year's harvest, Niinamesai.

Botanically, a pumpkin is what kind of fruit?

A berry, to a botanist, is a fleshy fruit grown from a single flower's ovary, so pumpkins, cucumbers and bananas all count, while strawberries do not.

What are roasted pumpkin seeds, a popular snack, also called?

Pepitas, from the Mexican Spanish for 'little seed of squash', are the green kernels inside the white husk, and some pumpkins are now bred to grow seeds with no husk at all.

In which mountain range did people first grow potatoes, thousands of years ago?

The Andes of Peru and Bolivia are where potatoes were first farmed, and Europe never tasted one until Spanish ships carried them home in the 1500s.

In the original 1844 words of 'Over the River and Through the Wood', the sleigh is bound for whose house?

Grandfather's house is where Lydia Maria Child's verses send the sleigh; singers later swapped in grandmother, who in the poem turns up only near the end, calling for pie.

The nickname 'spud' for a potato originally referred to what kind of object?

A short knife or dagger was a 'spudde' in the 1400s; the word later named a narrow digging spade and, by the 1840s, perhaps by way of that tool, the potato itself.