Turkey likely wasn't served at the first Thanksgiving

Turkey likely wasn't served at the first Thanksgiving

There is no record of turkey on that first table, though one account vaguely refers to "fowl." The meal mostly consisted of seafood and venison.

The first Thanksgiving meal likely featured a venison stew called sobaheg

Agricultural knowledge was vital to the Pilgrims’ survival in a new, unknown land. Explore how to make sobaheg, a Wampanoag venison stew that would likely have been served at the first meal between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims.

A Thanksgiving meal was celebrated in Virginia in 1619

Although the Pilgrims' meal with the Wampanoag is often cited as "the first Thanksgiving," historians note a meal intended to mark "a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god" was celebrated by early settlers three years earlier. President John F. Kennedy acknowledged the day in his 1963 Thanksgiving proclamation.

Read the only surviving eyewitness account of the first Thanksgiving

Edward Winslow’s short 1621 letter offers the only firsthand account of the first Thanksgiving, describing celebratory gunfire that drew Wampanoag leader Massasoit and 90 men—initially fearing conflict—before the gathering turned into shared feasting.

Many myths continue to circulate about the first Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving myth didn’t really start in 1621, argues historian David Silverman in this interview with Smithsonian. Rather, it took hold over 200 years later. During the Civil War, Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln as a way to promote national unity. The tidy story of friendship between Native Americans and colonists was used to quell racial tensions of the late 19th century.

Cow tongue was once a Thanksgiving delicacy

Cow feet and tongue were sometimes included in mincemeat pies—a popular 18th-century dish. Josefa Hale, who inspired Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a holiday, said they were “indispensable; but [hoped] this rich, expensive, and exceedingly unhealthy diet will be used very sparingly...”

The efforts to save the wild turkey

An essential character in American tradition, the wild turkey is more than just the meat you eat on Thanksgiving. Listen to this four-part miniseries to learn what they symbolize, the long-lasting efforts to preserve this bird, and why their conservation matters.

Squanto was a tragic character in the original Thanksgiving story

Tisquantum (also known as Squanto) played a crucial role in the survival of the Pilgrims. As an English speaker, Squanto assisted the Pilgrims in gathering food and communicating with other Native peoples. However, his story also involved being sold into slavery by an English sea captain and returning home to find his tribe decimated by disease during the Great Dying. Tisquantum met his end not long after that first Thanksgiving, with historians speculating he died either by disease or assassination.

The annual 'turkey pardon' officially began in 1989

President George HW Bush oversaw the first official pardon, but the tradition began years before that. This short video from PBS News explores the history of presidential pardons for the lucky birds. There’s no “fowl” language, but there are plenty of puns!

Turkish delight recipes were initially kept secret

The chewy confection dates back to the 1700s, and initially was served at the sultan's court. The palace's secret recipes were eventually published in one of the earliest Ottoman cookbooks by Mehmet Kamil.

A dive into some of the country's stranger Thanksgivings

How did a raccoon intended for the Thanksgiving dinner table end up a beloved presidential pet? History teacher Sharon McMahon’s podcast "Here’s Where It Gets Interesting" takes an episode to delve into some of the more unusual Thanksgivings at the White House, including the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 and the story of Calvin Coolidge and his "first raccoon," Rebecca.

Medieval taverns offered patrons a limited menu

Inns, taverns, and alehouses were more like bars than restaurants, though they did offer patrons (often travelers) food, it wasn't laid out on a diverse menu. Instead, the establishments offered a limited menu, often consisting of a single stew, and hungry customers could grab a bowl to go along with their alcohol.

What did the Vikings eat?

Examining a culture's culinary practices gives insight into its social structure, skills, and ideology. This article follows culinary archaeologist Daniel Serra as he explores the food habits and choices of Vikings. His findings have effectively ended "the myth of Vikings gnawing off the meat of the bones of wild animals," with evidence providing a clearer picture of Viking society as filled with farmers who didn't have time to hunt.

Iftar foods from around the world

The global population of Muslims eats and fasts in distinct way around the world. This photo survey spans Morocco's harira soup to Indonesia's kolak (a sweet dessert soup) and Turkey's pide (like pizza but without the tomato sauce). The one universal aspect for most iftar meals is dates and water, following Muhammad's practice. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Delmonico's was the first American fine-dining restaurant

The steakhouse opened in 1837 in Manhattan, creating what is now considered the first fine-dining restaurant in the United States, introducing gloved waiters, white tablecloths, and an à la carte menu. The establishment also claims it invented a few American staples, including eggs Benedict, which was supposedly named after two loyal customers.

What did the earliest swords look like?

That depends on where you draw the line between daggers and swords. According to current evidence, the first swords appeared 5,000 years ago in what's now Turkey. Unfortunately, evidence of the earliest swords is colored by survivorship bias; It's...

Why did the Ottoman Empire violently target Armenians during WWI?

In anticipation of threatened Allied landings at the strategically important Gallipoli peninsula, Ottoman authorities arrested 240 Armenian leaders in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, and deported them east. This roundup is commemorated today by Armenians as the beginning of the genocide, according to this article.

'Dracula' was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare

Bram Stoker, the author of the classic horror novel, said that a dinner of "dressed crab" led to unsettling dreams about "a vampire king rising from the tomb." He'd revisit that vision, eventually creating the iconic titular vampire.

Why Christians eat fish on Fridays during Lent

The rule isn't actually to eat fish—it's to abstain from eating warm-blooded animals on Fridays, the day of the crucifixion. Fish filled the gap because it was cheap, plentiful, and theologically convenient. As it happens, the medieval Catholic calendar's proliferation of meatless days became one of the drivers of the global fishing industry.

View some of the most invasive species in US waters

Introduced in the late 1600s from Eastern Asia, the goldfish is considered the first invasive fish in North America. The venomous lionfish is safe to consume, but catching it is complicated by its reluctance to respond to hook-and-line-style fishing attempts.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

The first known mention of the term 'country' to describe music was in 1736

The November 26, 1736 issue of the Virginia Gazette described a fiddling contest for "country" musicians. While the musical style would go by many names over the next two centuries, "country" was the one that eventually stuck.

Pets of ancient Greece: crickets and ferrets and hedgehogs, oh my!

Ancient Greece left behind literature and art in which geese, doves, dogs, and the like are seen keeping people company or holding vigil for their return. Were these considered pets as we understand the term today, and where did ancient Greeks fall on the timeless question of cats versus dogs? Did Odysseus let Argos onto the sofa? This magazine article explores evidence of pets and their treatment in ancient Greece.

Alexander the Great, Rudyard Kipling, and more may have died from food poisoning

Though it is hard to prove decades or centuries after their deaths, some researchers suspect that food poisoning killed a variety of historical figures, including US President Zachary Taylor in 1850: Some researchers believe he may have consumed food contaminated with *Salmonella*.

Saint Nicholas was a Turkish bishop from the third century

The Christian clergyman didn’t ride in a flying sleigh or have a workshop full of elves, but he was known for his generosity and anonymous good deeds, which became the basis for the story of Santa Claus.

Rhode Island skipped the Constitutional Convention

Delegates from 12 of the original 13 states attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Rhode Island initially refused to participate, fearing centralized power. The state eventually joined the new republic after its ratification.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.