Facts You Probably don’t Need

• Thanksgiving is actually the reason TV dinners exist. In 1953, Swanson found itself with 260 tons of leftover turkey. A salesman suggested packaging the meat in aluminum trays alongside sides like sweet potatoes — and just like that, the first TV dinner was born.

•  The annual presidential turkey pardon is actually a fairly new tradition. Although some trace its origins to Lincoln or Truman, the first president to officially pardon a turkey was George H. W. Bush. Before then, even though many presidents were photographed accepting a turkey, most of those birds ended up on the Thanksgiving table.

• Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, not the eagle.

• Americans eat about 46 million turkeys each Thanksgiving.

• The heaviest turkey on record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, was a bird from the U.K. names Tyson who weighed 86 pounds.

• Female turkeys (called hens) do not gobble. Only male turkeys gobble.

• The average turkey for Thanksgiving weighs between 15 and 20 pounds.

• In 1955, Campbell’s Soup developed its green bean casserole for an annual cookbook, aiming for a simple recipe that used ingredients already found in most homes. Today, the company estimates that more than 20 million households serve that dish each Thanksgiving.

          Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.