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In 1939, FDR moved Thanksgiving up a week.

  • FDR on Thanksgiving
FDR on Thanksgiving
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
November 15, 2023

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For a brief time in American history, part of the country celebrated “Franksgiving.” In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to boost the economy by moving Thanksgiving up a week, making extra time for holiday shopping. FDR claimed the move was made at the request of big retailers, and many stores rejoiced at the change. But other institutions fought against it: Smaller retailers, colleges, football officials, the press, and even some turkey sellers protested the date change. Americans had celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November since 1863, following the tradition started by Abraham Lincoln. Thanksgiving wasn’t a fixed date, however, and it was up to each president to choose when to observe the holiday. In 1939, the last Thursday of the month was November 30, and FDR chose to hold Thanksgiving on November 23 instead. 

The decision, announced in August 1939, was met with mixed reactions, primarily following party lines. Republican governors wanted to stick with tradition and dubbed the new date “Franksgiving,” while Democrats followed the president. The result was two Thanksgivings that year: Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia celebrated the new date, while 22 states stuck with November 30. Three states — Colorado, Mississippi, and Texas — celebrated both. The earlier date stuck for another two years, even as questions lingered about whether the extended shopping season actually helped retailers. In June 1941, Roosevelt announced without fanfare that Thanksgiving would be held on  the fourth (rather than last) Thursday of November, where it has remained ever since. 

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The word “Friendsgiving” did not originate on the TV show “Friends.”

The Thanksgiving episodes of the NBC sitcom Friends are some of the most memorable of the series. Every year during the show’s 10-season run, one episode featured a Thanksgiving plotline, usually centered around the six New York City friends celebrating the holiday together. But somewhat surprisingly, the popular portmanteau “Friendsgiving” didn’t come from Friends. The term itself was never used on the sitcom, though the show may have inspired the trend of celebrating the holiday with your besties. The earliest uses of the word appeared on online forums and Twitter in 2007, three years after the show had gone off the air.

Captain Morgan was a real person.

  • Captain Henry Morgan
Captain Henry Morgan
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Author Kevin McCaffrey
November 8, 2023

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The Captain Morgan rum brand is named after a real person: the legendary Welsh privateer and buccaneer Captain Henry Morgan, who terrorized Spanish ships in the 17th century. Morgan was born in Wales around 1635, but his famous swashbuckling adventures took place in the Caribbean, where he was sent to fight the Spanish. Privateers were kind of legal pirates: They worked as representatives of a government, raiding rival nations on their sponsoring nation’s behalf, while keeping some of the fortune for themselves. Morgan was part of a group known as the “Brethren of the Coast” — real-life pirates of the Caribbean — and his exploits gained him both wealth and lasting fame. 

Captain Morgan led many raids against Spanish colonies, most famously in 1671, when he took 1,000 men and captured Panama City. While his previous raids had been during wartime, the Panama City attack came after a peace treaty was signed between England and Spain, meaning Morgan was acting illegally as a pirate. He was returned to England to stand trial, but the English people, who had heard of his exploits, treated him more like a hero than a criminal, and he was even knighted by King Charles II. When he returned to Jamaica, he left the pirate world behind and became lieutenant-governor of the colony; upon his death at age 53, he was given a state funeral in Port Royal with ships firing guns in salute. Centuries later, in 1944, when the Seagram company set up a rum distillery in Jamaica, they named it after the larger-than-life local buccaneer. 

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There’s another rum named after a British sea captain.

Most people have heard of Captain Morgan rum, but if you’d like to save a few dollars, you could try Admiral Nelson instead. The brand is named for another British sailor, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, who is considered one of the greatest naval leaders in Britain’s history. (Writer Lord Byron even called him “Britannia’s God of War.”) When Nelson died at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars, his body was preserved in a cask of spirits, and “Nelson’s blood” became a nickname for both brandy and rum. So it’s not surprising that when the Heaven Hill Distillery developed a rum brand, they named it after Admiral Nelson. Unlike the image on the bottle, however, the real Nelson had sandy gray hair, no eye patch, and only one arm after losing his right arm in battle.

Trick-or-treating dates back to medieval times.

  • Child in ghost costume
Child in ghost costume
Anastassiya Bezhekeneva/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 24, 2023

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Halloween has its roots in an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which was celebrated around October 31, when the veil between earthly humans and the supernatural world was believed to thin. Celts believed this connection with the otherworld meant the dead could return, but dangerous spirits could, too. They wore costumes to protect themselves from malevolent forces that crossed over, so they could blend in with spirits, monsters, fairies, and demons, and thus escape harm.

When Christianity spread to the British Isles, people began to reframe pagan traditions. Between the fifth and 11th centuries, November 1 was observed as a celebration of saints and martyrs, dubbed All Saints’ Day, and the following day, All Souls’ Day, commemorated the dead. Celebrations, which involved large bonfires and costumes, looked a lot like Samhain. During these festivals — collectively known as “Hallowtide” — less-fortunate people would go “souling” door to door, reciting rhymes and asking the wealthy for pastries called “soul cakes” in exchange for prayers for their loved ones. 

References to this kind of practice date back to the 14th century, and while the tradition died out in Protestant areas, it survived in Catholic communities. In Ireland and Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries, children went “guising” — they’d dress up in costumes and perform tricks, such as singing songs or telling jokes, in exchange for treats. When Irish and Scottish people immigrated to North America, they brought those traditions with them. The term “trick or treat” originated in the 1920s in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and eventually made its way to the United States by the end of the decade.

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The term “fun size” sparked a legal battle.

Mini candy bars, known as “fun size” bars, are a mainstay of Halloween, but in the 1970s, they brought candy companies to legal fisticuffs. Back in the 1930s, the Curtiss Candy Company, which made Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars at the time, started making tiny candies, and Mars — the company behind Twix, Snickers, M&M’s, and many others — followed suit in 1961 with its own junior-sized line. In 1968, Mars slightly increased the size of its smallest treats and changed the name to “fun size,” but when Curtiss tried to do the same in 1971, Mars hit the company with a lawsuit. A judge ruled that Mars couldn’t trademark “fun” because another candy company already had, so Mars tracked down that company, bought the trademark, and sued Curtiss again. In the end, Mars held the trademark to “fun size” until 1998, even though other candy companies have used the term. Mars never won the lawsuit, however: The court determined that “fun size” was a description of the product rather than a part of the Mars brand.

Theodore Roosevelt had at least 40 pets at the White House.

  • Roosevelt on horseback
Roosevelt on horseback
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Author Bennett Kleinman
October 16, 2023

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Pets have been a fixture of the First Family since the first U.S. President, George Washington, who had eight horses and more than a dozen dogs. But of all of America’s Presidents, no one had more pets than Theodore Roosevelt. Throughout his time in office from 1901 to 1909, America’s 26th President cared for approximately 40 animals, including 11 horses, five guinea pigs, a badger, a hyena, and flying squirrels, to name just a few. Many of the pets belonged to Teddy’s children, such as a bear named Jonathan Edwards, a “dancing” Pekingese dog, and a snake named Emily Spinach, christened such by Roosevelt’s daughter Alice “because it was as green as spinach and as thin as [her] Aunt Emily.”

While no other POTUS tops Roosevelt in terms of the sheer number of pets, there have been many other fascinating creatures that called the White House home before and after his time in office. One of the odder presidential “pets” was the family of white mice that Andrew Johnson befriended during his impeachment proceedings, as he remained secluded in the White House bedroom playing with the rodents. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson added a flock of sheep to the White House to graze on the lawn in order to save on the cost of labor. And in 1926, a constituent from Mississippi sent a live raccoon to the White House for the Coolidge family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Calvin Coolidge, however, adopted the creature as his pet and named it Rebecca.

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Warren G. Harding’s dog sat in on Cabinet meetings.

The first White House animal to really achieve celebrity status was President Warren G. Harding’s pup, an Airedale terrier named Laddie Boy. Laddie Boy was a fixture at the President’s side from the onset of the Harding administration (1921 to 1923). In fact, on March 5, 1921, one day after taking office, Harding interrupted his first official Cabinet meeting to introduce the dog, who had just arrived from Ohio. After that, Laddie Boy became a regular at Cabinet meetings, and even had his own chair at the table. Laddie Boy also accompanied the President on the golf course, helped welcome foreign delegates, and once participated in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. The press even published pretend interviews with fictitious quotes from Laddie Boy, much to the delight of the public.

World War I helped popularize candy bars.

  • Soldier unwraps chocolate
Soldier unwraps chocolate
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Author Adam Levine
August 30, 2023

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Today’s grocery stores are stocked with a seemingly endless variety of candy bars. This modern-day menagerie of chocolate treats can trace its origins back to World War I, when an increased demand for chocolate rations created a veritable candy bar boom. Chocolate bars were seen as an ideal source of sustenance for soldiers fighting abroad: They provided quick calories, were easy to transport across long distances, and catered to the sweet tooth many American GIs had developed overseas when they began to sample European sweets. In response to this sudden demand, the U.S. government began soliciting donations of 20-pound blocks of chocolate from American candymakers, which were then cut, individually wrapped, and distributed to GIs abroad. 

By the end of World War I, American soldiers’ love of chocolate bars had spread to become a nationwide sensation. In the 1920s, veterans and civilians alike eagerly sought out candy bars, particularly after Prohibition left them looking for pleasurable alternatives to alcohol. Candymakers across the country began developing different kinds of products. To stand out in a crowded market, these companies would experiment with a variety of ingredients, ranging from nougat to dehydrated vegetables. They also started giving their products catchy names designed to grab people’s attention: The Charleston Chew, introduced in 1925, was named after the Charleston dance craze that was sweeping the nation at the time, and in 1921, Baby Ruth bars benefited from their association with baseball superstar Babe Ruth, though they were actually named after the late daughter of former President Grover Cleveland. The Lindy Bar, meanwhile, was named after famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, and there were also tasty treats named for Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, and Betsy Ross. By the end of the 1920s, more than 40,000 different candy bars were being produced in the United States. 

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The Maya used cacao beans as currency.

Cacao beans, the main ingredient in chocolate, are native to Central and South America, and were highly coveted by Mesoamerican cultures. They were originally grown as crops for making a hot chocolate-like beverage known as “xocolatl” (from which the modern word “chocolate” is derived) around 1900 BCE or even earlier. By around the eighth century CE, the beans proved so valuable that they were frequently used as currency in Aztec and Maya marketplaces. A cacao bean functioned like a type of living coin, with the plumpest, ripest beans typically exerting the most buying power. There’s even evidence that Maya kings accepted cacao beans as a form of tax payment. Over time, the perishable nature of cacao seeds became a major obstacle to their continued use as currency. The beans were gradually replaced by more durable commodities and, by the height of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century, fiat currency such as coins.

Macy’s was founded before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

  • Macy’s store sign
Macy's store sign
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Author Bennett Kleinman
August 30, 2023

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The Ottoman Empire, which ruled over Anatolia (largely comprised of the Asian portion of modern-day Turkey) for six centuries, conjures up images of an ancient kingdom. Yet the Ottomans’ existence is far from age-old history, and there are even people alive today who were born before the empire’s dissolution. There are also many modern companies — including Macy’s, which was established in 1858 — that were founded well before the Ottoman Empire fell in 1922, shortly after World War I.

The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman I in 1299, and reached its peak during the mid-16th century. The empire began to decline shortly thereafter, as the rest of Europe expanded its power and influence during the Renaissance era and throughout the Industrial Revolution. What remained of the once-vast Ottoman Empire fought and lost alongside the Central Powers in World War I, weakening its standing even further. Macy’s, meanwhile, began when businessman Rowland Hussey Macy opened four small stores between 1843 and 1855. Though those initial stores flopped, business boomed after Macy opened a dry goods store called R.H. Macy & Co. in 1858 at the corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City. The store was later renamed Macy’s and blossomed into a local sensation, upgrading to a Herald Square location in 1902 that was the world’s largest department store at the time.

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Felix the Cat was the first character balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a holiday institution that debuted in 1924 as a Christmas-themed event with floats, live animals, and Santa. In 1927, the parade swapped out its live animal processional for a series of giant balloons designed by famed puppeteer Tony Sarg. Some of Sarg’s creations were generic, but one was highly recognizable, that being Felix the Cat. The Felix character was created in 1919 — nine years before Mickey Mouse — and is often considered the first animated film star. Felix’s debut in the parade wasn’t without issue, however, as the balloon got tangled in telephone wires and caught fire. The Felix balloon later disappeared during World War II as the rubber balloons were donated to the war effort, and once the tradition resumed, Felix didn’t return to the parade lineup until 2016. Instead, characters such as Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, and Snoopy became parade staples. In fact, Snoopy has the most appearances of any balloon; the canine character has appeared in the Macy’s parade 43 times since his debut in 1968.

Abraham Lincoln stored important documents in his top hat.

  • President Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln
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Author Kevin McCaffrey
August 30, 2023

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Abraham Lincoln was America’s tallest president at 6 feet, 4 inches, and he chose a signature accessory that made him appear even more imposing: a large, silk stovepipe hat. The hat was also a practical choice, giving Lincoln ample storage space for important documents right on top of his head.

In a scene in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, Lincoln (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) speaks at a post office dedication, where he pulls his speech from his hat and returns it there when he’s finished speaking. Though the crowd laughs when the president says, dryly, “That’s my speech,” this isn’t just a Hollywood moment. Lincoln kept not only speeches in his hat, but also official government documents and personal letters. It is even said that he would dramatically throw papers from his hat in front of generals while making a point.

Lincoln himself confirmed this practice in writing, even blaming his hat for a delay in correspondence. In an 1850 letter to politician Richard S. Thomas, he wrote, “I am ashamed of not sooner answering your letter… my only apologies are, first, that I have been very busy in the U.S. court; and second, that when I received the letter I put it in my old hat, and buying a new one the next day, the old one was set aside, and so, the letter lost sight of for a time.”

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Lincoln’s hat once caught a bullet intended for the President.

In August 1864, President Lincoln was riding on horseback to his family’s summer home outside Washington, D.C., when a would-be assassin fired at him with a rifle. The bullet passed through his hat, which fell to the ground as the president got away. Years later, in 1887, The New York Times published an interview with Private John W. Nichols, who was on sentinel duty at Lincoln’s home at the time. Nichols said he noticed Lincoln arriving at the property without his hat, and after being told what happened, he went with a corporal to investigate. “At the intersection of the driveway and main road we found the President’s hat,” Nichols said. “We discovered a bullet hole through the crown… after that the President never rode alone.” The incident led some to believe the size of the hat obscured the target, and possibly helped to save Lincoln’s life that day.

Michelangelo’s David was censored by Queen Victoria.

  • Michelangelo’s David
Michelangelo’s David
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Author Bennett Kleinman
August 30, 2023

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The statue of David is among Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces, but the sculpture isn’t without detractors. One such critic was none other than Queen Victoria, who reigned over England from 1837 until 1901, centuries after the original David was sculpted in 1504. In 1857, a plaster replica of the David was shipped to Great Britain as a gift to Victoria from Leopold II, the grand duke of Tuscany. While the queen accepted the diplomatic gesture with grace, she was, according to some anecdotal reports, left aghast by the statue’s blatant nudity. The work was sent to be displayed at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where curators crafted a plaster fig leaf to obscure the reproductive organ that some found offensive. This leaf was attached with the help of “strategically placed hooks” that allowed it to be lowered in place in anticipation of any visits from female members of the royal family, as the statue otherwise remained uncensored. The leaf — a replica of which can still be found in the museum’s collection — was last used during the first half of the 20th century, leaving the replica of David fully nude as Michelangelo initially intended.

However, even the original David statue endured years of unceremonious censorship. Upon its unveiling in Florence in 1504, the sculpture was covered with a garland made of 28 copper leaves to cover its nakedness, and the garland remained around David’s waist until at least the mid-16th century. Concurrently, around the year 1541, the Vatican implemented a “Fig Leaf Campaign” to censor nudity in art that it deemed offensive. At first, the Catholic Church sought to cover up the naked figures in Michelangelo’s painting “The Last Judgment,” as well as similar works. Thankfully, many of these once-censored works of art have since been restored to their original condition.

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Michelangelo signed only one piece of art.

Many of Michelangelo’s works are so recognizable that you don’t need a signature to know their creator. In fact, Michelangelo never signed his art, except on one occasion. In 1499, the artist finished work on the Madonna della Pietà, a funeral monument depicting the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo was just 24 years old, and the Pietà showcased his immense talent at a time when he still sought name recognition. However, according to biographer Giorgio Vasari, the piece was misattributed to a rival artist, leading Michelangelo to lock himself inside Old St. Peter’s Basilica with a chisel to inscribe his name across Mary’s sash, ensuring that nobody would make such a mistake again. And although the Pietà was the only piece of art Michelangelo ever signed, he was known to paint his likeness into other works. He drew at least one self-portrait in “The Last Judgment,” and recent theories suggest he may have even included a hidden depiction of his own face within “The Creation of Adam.”

During WWI, Americans called sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.”

  • Harvest of cabbage, WWI
Harvest of cabbage, WWI
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Author Kevin McCaffrey
August 15, 2023

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Americans have a long tradition of rebranding any foods that bear the name of a rival nation during times of conflict. When France refused to support the United States’ war in Iraq in 2003, for example, the cafeteria menus in three congressional office buildings in Washington, D.C., changed the name of French fries — which, by some accounts, were actually invented in Belgium — to “freedom fries,” and French toast became “freedom toast.”  

The U.S. pulled a similar move while at war with Germany during World War I: Sauerkraut’s German origins led Americans to rename the condiment “liberty cabbage.” Other foods that we think of as classically American yet bear the names of German cities were also affected. The word “hamburger” comes from Hamburg, Germany, so during the Great War it was rechristened “liberty steak.” The seemingly all-American hot dog, meanwhile, was called a “frankfurter” at the time, and as the connection to Frankfurt, Germany, couldn’t stand, it was rebranded “liberty sausage.” (The term “hot dog” is also sneakily of German origin, as it comes from “dachshunds,” aka “little dogs.”) And speaking of dogs, in 1917, the American Kennel Club changed the official name of German shepherds to “shepherd dog,” and in England the breed was renamed “Alsatian.”

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Anti-German sentiment in WWI also caused several towns to change their names.

The anti-German sentiment of World War I went beyond food names; it led to paranoia and xenophobia that had a serious impact on German Americans at the time. In 1918, South Dakota banned speaking German on the phone, as well as in groups of three or more people. By the early 1920s, 34 states had passed English-only requirements in schools. Meanwhile, many small towns across the U.S. permanently changed their names as a result of the war. Garland, Nebraska, was known as Germantown until World War I, when the town decided to rename itself after a local soldier. Berlin, Iowa, became Lincoln in 1918. And East Germantown, Indiana, changed to Pershing in honor of General John J. Pershing, though some residents continue to use the original name.

The U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition.

  • Bootleg liquor circa 1930s
Bootleg liquor circa 1930s
GL Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
August 17, 2023

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It’s been dubbed the “noble experiment,” a name that came from then-President Herbert Hoover calling Prohibition “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” In January 1920, the United States banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of “intoxicating liquors,” a move made in the wake of temperance movements that sought moral and social reform throughout the 1800s — in spite of some failed attempts at similar regional programs around the country. 

Despite the ban, the demand for alcohol remained high. Bootlegging — illegal production, smuggling, and selling of liquor — thrived. Illegitimate drinking spots known as speakeasies flourished, with approximately 30,000 of them existing in just New York City alone by decade’s end. As the defiance against liquor laws intensified, authorities managed to mitigate smuggling from other countries; the bootleggers, however, responded by stealing massive quantities of industrial alcohol — used in automotive fluids, paints, and medical supplies — and refining it to make it drinkable (it became the country’s top source of liquor). Then, the U.S. government tried to beat the rum-runners at their own game. In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge’s administration mandated that manufacturers add even more dangerous chemicals to their industrial products — substances such as gasoline, formaldehyde, and the easily lethal methanol — to dissuade the underground industries and their customers.

The consequences were immediate — and in many cases, fatal. Consumption of alcohol continued despite fear of the additives, and some estimates claim the chemical additions caused around 10,000 deaths in the U.S. Public health officials, including New York medical examiner Charles Norris, lambasted the move. Eventually, the official end of the program came with the repeal of the 18th Amendment in December 1933, marking the end of Prohibition. 

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Organized crime started because of Prohibition.

Before Prohibition, organized crime was mostly limited to small gangs who were involved in petty neighborhood extortion and loan-sharking. When the 1920 ban on alcohol went into effect, mobsters became the key players in the illicit alcohol trade, procuring, producing, and selling liquor illegally all over the U.S. Profits got so big, so fast, that these once small-time criminals and mafias learned to be more “organized” than ever, hiring lawyers, accountants, truckers, and more to help run their illicit businesses. They also started working with other criminal groups, effectively creating underground syndicates. Powerful crime families led by figures such as Charles “Lucky” Luciano and the notorious Al Capone emerged, making millions of dollars in the process. The enormous profits fueled the growth and expansion of organized crime, which continued even after the repeal of Prohibition.

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