Thanksgiving is the day when families get too gather around a table and eat delicious food. Here are 15 fun facts about Thanksgiving:

1. Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until 200 years after the dinner the pilgrims had.
2. Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, campaigned letters for 17 years to have Thanksgiving be a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863.
3. Turkey was not on the menu at the first dinner.
4. There were no forks at the first Thanksgiving dinner. Forks were not even introduced to pilgrims until 10 years later.
5. Thanksgiving is the reason for TV dinners. In 1953, Swanson had 260 tons of extra turkey, so a salesman said he should package it in aluminum trays with sides, like sweet potatoes- and thus the first TV dinner was born.
6. At the first Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in New York, there were no large balloons, only live animals from the Central Park Zoo.
7. German American illustrator Tony Sarg had a passion for puppetry and made the amazing floats come to life at the first Macy Thanksgiving parade
8. Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, not the eagle.
9. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first meal in space after walking on the moon were foil packets with roasted turkey.
10. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated for three days.
11. Approximately 280 million turkeys are consumed between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States.
12. About 46 million turkeys are cooked for Thanksgiving each year.
13. Only male turkeys gobble female turkeys cackle instead.
14. While domesticated turkeys can’t fly, wild turkeys can. They can fly for short distances up to 55 miles per hour. They can also run up to 20 miles per hour.
15. 50 million people watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade on TV.