Thanksgiving Trivia to Spice up the Dinner Table

I'll take Pilgrim's Progress for $1,000, Alex

Gobble gobble.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we thought it might be best to lighten the mood with some turkey day trivia. Here are a bunch of facts, tidbits and did-you-knows that may finally give you something to talk about during those odd silences at tomorrow's dinner table.

* Though the first recorded Thanksgiving was in 1621, it was actually keeping in tradition with a long line of celebrations by Native American tribes that celebrates the harvest and gives thanks for bountiful crops.

* In 1827 a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale started a Thanksgiving campaign, eventually resulting in the day being observed as a time for national thanksgiving and prayer.

* Benjamin Franklin actually wanted to make the turkey the national bird of the United States. Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea, and it's rumored that Franklin then named his male turkey "Tom" to spite him.

* President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day forward a week in 1939 in order to extend the Christmas shopping season.

* If you're making cranberry sauce this year, be sure to throw the little berries on the ground beforehand. Ripe cranberries will always bounce!