Interesting Facts about Thanksgiving

• The earliest attested Thanksgiving celebration was on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida.
• In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom.
• In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving.
• Sarah Josepha Hale, magazine editor and author who waged a tireless campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday in the mid-19th century, was also the author of the classic nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
• Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt made Thanksgiving Day an official national holiday in 1941.
• The National Turkey Federation estimated that 46 million turkeys, one fifth of the annual total of 235 million consumed in the United States in 2007, were eaten at Thanksgiving.
• The cranberry is one of only three fruits; the others are the blueberry and the Concord grape, which are entirely native to North American soil, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association.
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest pumpkin pie ever baked weighed 2,020 pounds and measured just over 12 feet long. It was baked on October 8, 2005 by the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio, and included 900 pounds of pumpkin, 62 gallons of evaporated milk, 155 dozen eggs, 300 pounds of sugar, 3.5 pounds of salt, 7 pounds of cinnamon, 2 pounds of pumpkin spice and 250 pounds of crust.