A Brief History
On June 18, 2023, we celebrate National Turkey Lovers’ Day, and yes, we too love Turkey! Americans are accustomed to having Turkey on Thanksgiving, and often on other holidays when a feast is the order of the day, but Turkey is great any time, whether it is deep fried, roasted, baked, fricasseed, made into lunch meat, breakfast sausage, hot dogs, ground meat or whatever!
Digging Deeper
A native bird of North America, the Turkey has gone from a wily and tough wild customer dating back 20 million years, to our more familiar domesticated variety that the President pardons every year before Thanksgiving.
Turkeys have been domesticated as far back as 200 BC by Native Americans and were introduced to Europe as part of the Columbian Exchange.
So revered are Turkeys, that a major whiskey brand is called Wild Turkey and the feat of getting 3 strikes in a row while bowling is called a “Turkey!”
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Sabelko, Rebecca. WIld Turkeys. Bellwether Media, 2019.
Schrider, Don. Storey’s Guide to Raising Turkeys. Storey Publishing, 2013.
The featured image in this article, FREEDOM FROM WANT (between 1941 and 1945), is in the public domain in the United States, because it was published in the United States between 1928 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart as well as a detailed definition of “publication” for public art.
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