Happy Black Friday

    



Black Friday, how did it start and why? It's said that it began way back in the 1960s, I remember then...

and it became really popular in the 1980s when retailers stated it was the day that they went from being in the "red" to being in the "black" because of all the shoppers. :)

Fact: In 2010 212 million shoppers were out spending $39-billion on Black Friday! WOW!!! 

In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.


The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition.

Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful f-words: "food" and "football." Nearly as old as the sport itself, the tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving, with match-ups between Princeton and Yale drawing more than 40,000 fans out from their dining rooms. 1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since — except, of course, when the team was called away to serve during World War II.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1862503_1862505_1862510,00.html #ixzz2D6i6SJc8


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1862503_1862505_1862508,00.html #ixzz2D6hWMBMQ


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