Keeping Peace at Thanksgiving Dinner

Once again as a public service I am providing useless factoids for the Thanksgiving table to keep the discussions uncontroversial. So, when you start hearing words like Trump or Zohran you can jump in and say “I read this interesting tidbit, the other day”

The First Thanksgiving
The Mayflower covered the 2750 journey from Southampton England to Plymouth at the tortuously slow speed of 2 MPH. The 101 passengers lived on the ship’s cramped 2,000 square foot/ 5.5-foot-high lower deck. The Pilgrims might have been Randy Newman’s inspiration for his 1970s hit, “Short People”.
Over half of the voyage’s survivors died during the harsh 1620/1621 winter. In the Spring, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe met the surviving Pilgrims, most of whom were suffering from malnutrition. Squanto not only taught the settlers how to cultivate corn but also helped the Pilgrims forge an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe. As a sign of gratitude, the settlers invited the Native Americans to a three-day gathering that included hunting and fishing events.

Law of Compound Lineage
There are an estimated 35 million people worldwide who descended from the 101 Pilgrims. Mayflower scions include patricians like John Adams, Franklin Roosevelt and the two Presidents Bush. A less likely suspect is Clint Eastwood who is a descendant of Governor William Bradford. Alan Shephard, the first American in space, traced his roots to Richard Warren, one of the first settlers to encounter the local tribesmen. Norma Jeane Mortenson AKA Marilyn Monroe was a descendant of John Alden- yes that guy from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish”.

Random Food Facts
The 736 million pounds of turkey that Americans eat on Thanksgiving approximates the weight of the Empire State Building.
If you are feeling sluggish after finally pushing away from the table don’t blame the turkey. The tryptophan doesn’t really have an effect because it is countered by all the other amino acids contained in the meal. If you’re tired, it’s likely from all the preparation, socializing, and adult beverages
Mageirocophobia is the fear of cooking
Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
The teabag was accidently invented by Thomas Sullivan in New York City in 1908. Efficiency-minded Americans quickly adopted the teabag, but they were not sold in Britain until the 1950s.
A can of tuna fish usually has a sell- by- date of 3 to 5 years but experts claim it will last much longer. They also claim a nine-year-old can shouldn’t go bad or even taste worse than one that is four years old. On the other hand, I suggest you occasionally check the sell-by-date on your mayonnaise jar.
If you put a can of Diet Coke in water, it will float but regular Coke will sink. Since the drinks’ formulas are a trade secret, we can only speculate that sugar causes the regular Coke to sink.
Non-Food Trivia
The cigarette lighter was invented in 1823
The match was invented three years later
The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting. (I guess the males are too busy combing their manes)
Amazing but ApparentlyTrue
If you shuffle a pack of cards, it’s likely that the exact order has never existed before in the history of the universe. Cassandra Lee at McGill University explains “There are somewhere in the range of 8 x 1,067 ways to sort a deck of cards. To put that in perspective, even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to finding a repeat.” If that’s too much math to absorb, Ms. Lee has a more succinct explanation: “There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than there are atoms on the earth.”

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving. If you want an easy Christmas or Chanukah gift that will be greatly appreciated, order “Get Smarter-Be Amazed”. Go to www.tedcurtinstories.com for direct links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.