17 Best Thanksgiving Trivia That’ll Impress Your Friends

Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving to make the Christmas shopping season longer.

2. Abraham Lincoln created the Thanksgiving Holiday in 1863 during the Civil War to keep the country together.

3. Up until 1933 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons were released into the air at the conclusion of the parade and would stay airborne above the city for as long as a week. A return address was stitched in and people who returned them received $100 reward.

4. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade originally featured live animals from the Central Park Zoo, but they occasionally roared and scared children, so they were replaced with balloons.

5. In 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the third Thursday in November — not the fourth.

The woman (Sarah Josepha Hale) behind "Mary Had a Little Lamb" is also responsible for Thanksgiving's recognition as a national holiday.

7. The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in US in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

8. The first Thanksgiving feast in US was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

9. Thanksgiving day was rescheduled to maximize shopping time.

10. At the first Thanksgiving dinner lobster was one of the main entrees. Seal and swan were also on the menu.

It is illegal to sell alcohol on Thanksgiving day in Massachusetts and North Dakota.

12. The first Thanksgiving was eaten with spoons and knives — but no forks!

13. In the 1800s, Thanksgiving was basically celebrated same as Halloween. Poor people would knock on doors to ask "anything for Thanksgiving?" and rich kids went out dressed in rags to mock them, up until the Great Depression when the question was always answered with NO.

14. A lot of cranberries are needed to accompany all that turkey on Thanksgiving. In all, 768 million lbs. (350 million kilograms) of cranberries were produced in the United States in 2012.

15. The American Automobile Association (AAA) estimated that 42.2 million Americans traveled 50 miles or more from home over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 2010.

President Thomas Jefferson called a federal Thanksgiving proclamation “the most ridiculous idea ever conceived.”

17. In 1920, Gimbels department store in Philadelphia held a parade with about 50 people and Santa Claus bringing up the rear. The parade is now known as the 6abc IKEA Thanksgiving Day Parade and is the nation’s oldest Thanksgiving Day parade.