In case you get stuck talking to your weird aunt at the dinner table this Thursday, you can amaze her and our family with these interesting and awkward facts about the holiday.
Mayflower Used to Treat Diarrhea
The Cherokee and Ottawa Native Americans had been using the mayflower plant as an herbal remedy for diarrhea for centuries before the Pilgrims showed up. So basically, the settlers arrived in the New World in a ship whose name is the modern equivalent of “The S.S. Pepto-Bismol”. Things were off to an awkward start.
First T-Day Parade Used Zoo Animals
In 1924, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was held in New York City. Except they didn’t have giant hot air balloons back then, so what did they use? Zoo animals. That’s right, people just walked through the crowds with tigers on leashes. But for some reason Macy’s decided this wasn’t safe, so now they use creepy, giant balloons like this Spongebob Squarepants one, which looks like it’s delighted to pounce on and crush its victims below:
The Turkey Was Almost the National Bird
The eagle might be majestic and everything, but Benjamin Franklin thought the national bird should be the wild turkey. In 1782, he wrote that the turkey is “a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack.” This is certainly true of the turkey in the video below who attacks moving cars.
Plus, turkeys are frickin terrifying. They look like some nightmarish combination of feathers, a velociraptor, and raw meat. You think twice before you provoke a turkey, and you think twice before you provoke America. Maybe Ben Franklin was onto something.
Awkward Presidential Turkey Pardons
According to legend, Abraham Lincoln’s son Tad had a pet turkey named Jack who he had trained to follow him around the White House (if Tad sounds a little weird, remember that pregnant women used whiskey as a painkiller in those days…). When the time came to kill and eat the turkey, Abe Lincoln saved his son’s weird pet at the last minute.
And every Thanksgiving since, presidents and governors have carried on the tradition of pardoning a turkey.
Which has led to some really awkward and hilarious moments. For example, all of the turkeys George W. Bush had to pardon completely freaked out on him and tried to attack, as you can see in this video. The turkeys also had really stupid names, like Pecan and Pumpkin:
To be fair, Barack Obama’s turkey pardon last year was even more awkward. He gave a speech and then pardoned Courage, a turkey who weighed forty-five pounds! Too obese to freak out (or even to move), poor old Courage just sits there feeling uncomfortable as Obama makes intense eye contact with it for a few seconds. Needless to say, it was a little Barack-ward:
But the most awkward turkey-related political moment of all time has to be when then-governor Sarah Palin pardoned a turkey in Alaska and then gave a press conference, not noticing that turkeys were literally being slaughtered behind her. You can even see a guy shoving a live turkey into what looks like a meat grinder. You have to feel kind of bad for her, but the captions at the bottom of the screen are hilarious:
Got any other awkward Thanksgiving moments?
