Let’s Talk Turkey

Let’s talk turkey about trivia! Before you sharpen your carving knife and dig into your fall feast, sharpen your wit and test your noodle with these November nuggets:

1. Which Native American tribe helped the Pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving?

a. Cherokee
b. Iroquois
c. Wampanoag
d. Apache

2. Where was the first Thanksgiving celebrated?

a. Plymouth, Massachusetts
b. Jamestown, Virginia
c. Salem, Massachusetts
d. Boston, Massachusetts

3. Which American President made Thanksgiving an official national holiday?

a. George Washington
b. Abraham Lincoln
c. Thomas Jefferson
d. Theodore Roosevelt

4. Which retailer is associated with the annual Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City?

a. Bloomingdale’s
b. Gimbel’s
c. Marshall Field’s
d. Macy’s

5. What U.S. state produces the most turkeys?

a. California
b. Texas
c. Minnesota
d. Tennessee

6. A Thanksgiving promotional stunt went hilariously awry when broadcast station managers dropped live turkeys from a helicopter in a classic episode from this 1970s sitcom.

a. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
b. News Radio
c. WKRP in Cincinnati
d. SCTV

7. How many turkeys are typically consumed on Thanksgiving in America?

a. 5 million
b. 10 million
c. 46 million
d. 60 million

8. The Courtship of Miles Standish is a famous poem telling the tale of a love triangle in the Plymouth Colony between military leader Standish, Priscilla Mullins and John Alden. Which poet penned the classic story?

a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
b. Walt Whitman
c. Ralph Waldo Emerson
d. Oliver Wendell Holmes

9. Excluding the years during WWII, the Detroit Lions football team has played an annual Thanksgiving Day matchup since 1934, posting 37 wins, 44 losses and two ties. However, the team has a winning record against its most frequent Thanksgiving Day opponent. Which team is it?

a. The Minnesota Vikings
b. The Miami Dolphins
c. The Green Bay Packers
d. The Chicago Bears

10. In 1973, CBS debuted this classic Thanksgiving Day television special that features a group of friends improvising a feast of buttered toast, popcorn, jellybeans and pretzels.

a. The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings
b. Big Bird’s Thanksgiving Special
c. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
d. Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy’s Thanksgiving Special

Answers

1. The Wampanoag people shared a harvest celebration with early colonial settlers in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving.
2. That famous feast between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims took place at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.
3. It was more than 240 years after the feast at Plymouth that a national Thanksgiving holiday was proclaimed during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Speaking of abundant blessings enjoyed by the nation despite the strife of civil war, Lincoln wrote, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”
4. Macy’s launched the traditional Thanksgiving Day parade in 1924 to promote its enlarged flagship store at Herald Square—just in time for the Christmas season.
5. Minnesota is the top producer of gobblers—about 49 million birds per year.
6. “As God is my witness, I thought Turkeys could fly,” said exasperated station manager Arthur Carlson (played by actor Gordon Jump) at the close of the “Turkeys Away” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, originally aired on October 30, 1978.
7. Americans stuff themselves with about 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving—nearly 1.4 billion pounds! No statistics are available about how many hours of napping follow, however.
8. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired tale of romantic love won and lost among three passengers of the Mayflower, set in the year 1621 during a fierce Indian war. Although Longfellow was a descendant of John Alden, one of the main characters, the story is likely a fictionalized version of what transpired between Alden, Standish and Priscilla Mullins.
9. The Lions have bested the Green Bay Packers in 12 of their 22 Thanksgiving Day matchups.
10. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was the 10th Peanuts primetime animated special. At a loss to serve a traditional feast to his friends who’ve invited themselves to dinner, Charlie Brown is helped by Snoopy and Woodstock, who serve snack foods on a ping pong table in the back yard.