Bouncing cranberries and insulted Bald Eagles: More than you need to know about this day

The Macy’s parade is over; the football games haven’t started yet and it’s too early to eat. So here’s some Thanksgiving Day trivia to distract you while the pie’s cooling.    ∙Benjamin Franklin’s reason for preferring the turkey over the eagle as the national bird was that the eagle “is a bird of bad moral character.”    ∙Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October. (This year it was on the 14th.)    ∙Big Bird’s costume is made from real turkey feathers spray-painted bright yellow.    ∙Turkey eggs aren’t eaten because turkeys fiercely protect their nests, making it too dangerous to collect the eggs.    ∙Squanto is thought to have survived the malaria-like disease that killed his entire tribe because he gained an immunity during his captivity in Spain. When Squanto later died, his Pawtuxet tribe became extinct.    ∙The first names of the women at the first Thanksgiving included Remember, Humility, Resolved, Desire and Peregrine.    ∙John Alden was not a Pilgrim. He was a hired seaman on the Mayflower.    ∙If a cranberry doesn’t bounce at least 4 inches, it is considered overripe and unsuitable for consumption.    ∙There are towns named “Turkey” in North Carolina and Texas.    ∙ The first turkey TV dinner was introduced by Swanson in 1953 and cost 98 cents.    ∙William Brewster, a participant in the first Thanksgiving, had sons named “Love” and “Wrestling.”    ∙The Pilgrims didn’t eat pumpkin pie. They ate boiled pumpkin and fried bread made from corn. Yum.    ∙A sweet potato is not the same thing as a yam.    ∙When the turkey trot was popularized in England, the upper classes considered it undignified and wouldn’t dance it.    ∙Israel has the highest per capita annual consumption of turkey in the world – 27 pounds.    ∙For the Colonists, the first Thanksgiving also was their last one. Succeeding years saw progressively poorer harvests and there was little food.    ∙Minnesota raises more turkeys than any other state. Wisconsin raises the most cranberries. North Carolina produces the most sweet potatoes. Illinois raises the most pumpkins.    ∙The turkey is a type of pheasant.    ∙Swans and cranes were among the foods eaten at the first Thanksgiving. Yuck.    ∙Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday in November. The earliest it can occur is Nov. 22; the latest, Nov. 28.    ∙There are eight places in the United States that have ”Cranberry” – or some variation of it – in their names.    ∙Turkeys have extremely acute hearing but no external ears.    ∙The first Thanksgiving bash lasted three days. Kinda makes you wonder why the term ”Puritanical” means what it does.    ∙The first professional football game played on Thanksgiving was in 1934, between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. The Bears won, 19-16.    ∙Franklin Delano Roosevelt shares common Mayflower lineage with Zachary Taylor (Isaac Allerton), Ulysses Grant (Richard Warren), George H.W. Bush (Elizabeth and John Tilley) and, naturally, George W. Bush.    Dinner’s ready. Dig in.