TURKEY TRIVIA
All you want to know... ever... about the bird that almost beat out the Eagle as our national symbol!
Why is turkey called "turkey?" There are several possible explanations: Columbus thought that the land he discovered was connected to India, where peacocks are found in considerable number. And he believed turkeys were a type of peacock (they're actually a type of pheasant). So he named them tuka, which is "peacock" in the Tamil language of India.
Another explanation is that firkee (sounds like turkey) was the Native American name for the bird. When the turkey is scared it makes a noise that sounds like "turk, turk, turk."
Turkeys could be named after the country of Turkey.
The heaviest turkey ever raised may have been the 75-pound turkey raised by a turkey farming company in 1967.
Turkey meat from wild or domesticated birds was a staple in the diet of many Indian tribes:
The Cheyennes feared it would make them cowardly.
The Apache considered the turkey to be timid and wouldn't eat it or use its feathers on their arrows.
In the Southwest, Indians revered the turkey Northern tribes felt the turkey was a friend of man and could battle evil spirits.
In Mexico, the turkey was a sacrificial bird.
Until 1863, Thanksgiving Day had not been celebrated annually since the first feast in 1621. This changed in 1863 when Sarah Josepha Hale encouraged Abraham Lincoln to set aside the last Thursday in November "as a day for national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer."
In the last twenty years, Americans' love of turkey has soared, with per capita consumption up from 8.3 pounds in 1975 to 18.5 pounds in 1995. In 1994, 2.74 billion pounds of turkeys were processed in the U.S. (Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture)
According to "Knock On Wood" by Carole Potter/Beaufort Books Inc, if you believe your wish will come true when you win the break in a wishbone contest, then you're following in the footsteps of civilizations dating back to the Etruscans, 322 BC. And -- it started with a hen, not a turkey. In those days, when a man wanted an egg he waited for the hen to announce the coming of her product. This made the animal mystical in that it could tell the future -- and that led to what became known as the "hen oracles."
If you lived back then, and wanted to receive an answer to an important question from these oracles, you would draw a circle on the ground and divide it into the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. Grains of corn were placed in each section, and the cock or hen was led into the circle and then set free. It was believed that the fowl would spell out words or symbols by picking up kernels of corn from the different sections. For example, the first letter of a future husband's name would be the first kernel of corn picked. After writing the message, the fowl was sacrificed to a special deity and its collarbone was hung out to dry.
Then, you'd get to make a wish on the bone. Then two other people got a chance to make a wish by snapping the dried bone in the same way we do now, with each one pulling on an end. The person with the larger end of the bone got the wish -- and it became known as a "lucky break." The Romans brought the wishbone tradition with them when they conquered England, and that's how we got it.
Why is turkey called "turkey?" There are several possible explanations: Columbus thought that the land he discovered was connected to India, where peacocks are found in considerable number. And he believed turkeys were a type of peacock (they're actually a type of pheasant). So he named them tuka, which is "peacock" in the Tamil language of India.
Another explanation is that firkee (sounds like turkey) was the Native American name for the bird. When the turkey is scared it makes a noise that sounds like "turk, turk, turk."
Turkeys could be named after the country of Turkey.
The heaviest turkey ever raised may have been the 75-pound turkey raised by a turkey farming company in 1967.
Turkey meat from wild or domesticated birds was a staple in the diet of many Indian tribes:
The Cheyennes feared it would make them cowardly.
The Apache considered the turkey to be timid and wouldn't eat it or use its feathers on their arrows.
In the Southwest, Indians revered the turkey Northern tribes felt the turkey was a friend of man and could battle evil spirits.
In Mexico, the turkey was a sacrificial bird.
Until 1863, Thanksgiving Day had not been celebrated annually since the first feast in 1621. This changed in 1863 when Sarah Josepha Hale encouraged Abraham Lincoln to set aside the last Thursday in November "as a day for national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer."
In the last twenty years, Americans' love of turkey has soared, with per capita consumption up from 8.3 pounds in 1975 to 18.5 pounds in 1995. In 1994, 2.74 billion pounds of turkeys were processed in the U.S. (Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture)
According to "Knock On Wood" by Carole Potter/Beaufort Books Inc, if you believe your wish will come true when you win the break in a wishbone contest, then you're following in the footsteps of civilizations dating back to the Etruscans, 322 BC. And -- it started with a hen, not a turkey. In those days, when a man wanted an egg he waited for the hen to announce the coming of her product. This made the animal mystical in that it could tell the future -- and that led to what became known as the "hen oracles."
If you lived back then, and wanted to receive an answer to an important question from these oracles, you would draw a circle on the ground and divide it into the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. Grains of corn were placed in each section, and the cock or hen was led into the circle and then set free. It was believed that the fowl would spell out words or symbols by picking up kernels of corn from the different sections. For example, the first letter of a future husband's name would be the first kernel of corn picked. After writing the message, the fowl was sacrificed to a special deity and its collarbone was hung out to dry.
Then, you'd get to make a wish on the bone. Then two other people got a chance to make a wish by snapping the dried bone in the same way we do now, with each one pulling on an end. The person with the larger end of the bone got the wish -- and it became known as a "lucky break." The Romans brought the wishbone tradition with them when they conquered England, and that's how we got it.
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