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- The turkey is a variety of the pheasant. The origin of the name is unclear, but some interesting theories exist. Christopher Columbus thought the New World was connected to India. He called the unusual bird "tuka," which is peacock in the Tamil language of India. Another tale says the merchants who sold turkeys in Spain changed the Tamil "tuka" to the Hebrew "tukki," which then evolved into the English "turkey." Others maintain the American Indian name for the bird was "firkee." Another theory says the present name "turkey" came from the alarm call of the bird, which sounds something like "turc, turc, turc."
- Christopher Columbus and later Hernando Cortez both acquired a taste for turkey in the Western Hemisphere and both took some back to Europe. By 1530, turkeys were being raised domestically in Italy, France and England. When the Pilgrims and other early settlers arrived on American shores, they already were familiar with eating turkey.
- Recent fossil evidence has been dated to show that turkeys have roamed the Americas for about 10 million years.
- Who first domesticated the turkey? There is archeological evidence that turkeys were at least confined, if not domesticated, by the Southwest Indians as long as 2,000 years ago. Some scientists believe the Aztecs were the first to domesticate the turkey.
- History associates turkey with the first Thanksgiving feast celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621. However, some argue that the settlers of Virginia's Jamestown earlier celebrated America's first Thanksgiving as their extension of England's Harvest Home Festival, a sort of homecoming weekend.
- Ben Franklin suggested the national bird be a turkey and not the bald eagle.
- Turkey feathers are dyed and used in making Indian costumes. It is estimated that turkeys have approximately 3500 feathers at maturity. Turkey down is used in pillows. Wing feathers are used in fletching arrows.
- President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863 in response to a campaign by a woman magazine editor, Sara Josepha Hale. Ms. Hale also was the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
- Domesticated turkeys cannot fly. Wild turkeys can fly for short distances up to 55 miles per hour and can run 25 miles an hour.
- A tom turkey can produce as many as 1,500 poults during a hen's six-month production cycle.
- Only tom turkeys gobble. The hens make a clicking noise.
- Weight records show that a commercial turkey grower in the United Kingdom, Leacroft Turkeys Limited, raised a turkey weighing 86 pounds, believed to be the world's heaviest turkey.
- In the early West, turkeys were trailed like cattle in "drives" to supply food where needed. One of the earliest turkey drives was over the Sierras from California to Carson City, Nevada. Hungry miners coughed up $5 apiece for the birds.
- Abraham Lincoln's son, Tad, had a pet turkey. When it was suggested that the bird might make a fine holiday dinner, the boy set up such a howl of protest that the president finally issued a "presidential pardon" for Tad's pet.
- Out of this world meal. When US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin sat down to eat their first meal on the moon in their historic 1969 voyage, their foil food packets contained roasted turkey and all the trimmings.
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