Turkey Facts

In 15th-century Ottoman Turkey, a woman could legally divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with enough coffee.

91% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

In a letter to his daughter in 1784, Benjamin Franklin criticized the Bald Eagle as a bird of 'bad moral character' and wrote that the Wild Turkey was 'a much more respectable Bird.' While he never actually proposed the turkey as the national symbol, his colorful comparison has fueled a popular myth ever since.

Turkeys can reproduce without having sex.

Most domestic turkeys are so heavy they are unable to fly.

Three consective strikes in bowling is called a turkey.

In 1963, a man found a mysterious room behind a wall in his home that lead to a huge underground city that once housed up to 20,000 people, complete with schools, livestock pens, and food stores, dating back over a millennium.

In Turkish, the bird we call a Turkey is called "Hindi" ("from India"). In India, it's called "Peru." In Arabic, the bird is called "Greek chicken"; in Greek it's called "French chicken"; and in French it's called "Indian chicken." The bird is indigenous to none of these places.

There is a city called "Batman" in Turkey.

Scientists are excavating the ruins of a major civilization which pre-dates both the pyramids and Stonehenge by over 7,000 years. In 15 years, they have uncovered only about 5% of the site.

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest known temple on Earth. Its massive stone pillars date back roughly 11,600 years, about 6,000 years before Stonehenge was built. Hunter-gatherers built it before writing, metal tools, or farming even existed. Then they deliberately buried the enclosures, and nobody knows exactly why.

Mehmed Çakir spotted odd metal shapes on the seabed off Turkey in 1982. The sponge diver called them metal biscuits with ears. They turned out to be 3,300-year-old copper ingots from one of the richest Bronze Age shipwrecks ever found. Its cargo came from at least seven ancient civilizations, including Egyptian ivory and Baltic amber. There was enough copper and tin aboard to arm 5,000 soldiers with bronze swords.

Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey means Cotton Castle, and it looks like snow that never melts. Hot spring water loaded with calcium carbonate has crept down this hillside for hundreds of thousands of years, hardening into blinding white terraced pools. People have bathed in them since Roman times. The ancient spa city of Hierapolis was built right on top, and the whole site is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.