First Thanksgiving

From the U.S. Census Bureau: What many regard as the nation’s first Thanksgiving took place in December 1621 as the religious separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest. It eventually became a national holiday in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving. Later, President Franklin Roosevelt clarified that Thanksgiving should always be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month to encourage earlier holiday shopping, never on the occasional fifth Thursday. 265 million The preliminary estimate of turkeys raised in the United States in 2006. That’s up 3 percent from 2005. The turkeys produced in 2005 together weighed 7.2 billion pounds and were valued at $3.2 billion. (Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service at <http://www.nass.usda.gov/>)