Many people cite Thanksgiving as their favorite holiday — and no wonder. There’s no need to frantically scour the mall looking for creative gifts for everyone on your list. The food is delicious. And there’s no reason to rush around returning all those “creative” gifts to the mall afterward.

Oh, and did we mention that the food is delicious?

Today, we honor Turkey Day by serving up some fun facts about the holiday. Did you know that:

• Thanksgiving came about due to the tireless, 40-year campaign of a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale. She was also the woman who penned the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb.
• According to fossil evidence, turkeys have existed in the Americas for 10 million years.
• 91% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
• TV dinners were invented after Swanson misjudged the number of frozen turkeys it would sell and came up with an idea: Why not slice the 26 tons of turkey it had left over and repackage it with some side dishes? Voila, TV dinners!
• The largest pumpkin pie ever made weighed 2,020 pounds and measured over 12 feet long. Guinness Book of World Records credits the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio with the feat that required 900 pounds of pumpkin, 155 dozen eggs and 300 pounds of sugar, among copious other ingredients.
• Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for plumbers, who typically spread out over the city to root out drains clogged by Thanksgiving dinner scraps.

And here’s our favorite of all the fun facts: The first Thanksgiving reportedly lasted three days. Just imagine the Tums sales that followed on day four!