How Much Do You Know about Columbus and a Canadian Thanksgiving?

Patricia Bradley Life, Readers, Romance 7 Comments

And the winner of Laura Hilton’s book, The Birdhouse is…Jackie!
And my apologies to Laura and anyone else who had trouble leaving comments. I do hope that issue is resolved! Now on the today’s blog post…

Christopher_ColumbusAs I write this post, it’s Columbus Day and Canadian Thanksgiving which is yesterday by the time you read it. So I thought I’d do a little quiz on both. Don’t worry, it’s true or false, so you have a 50-50 chance of being right. 🙂

  1. Christopher Columbus introduced horses into the New World. True or False
  2. He died believing he’d found a new passage to India? True or False
  3. The voyage took three months?  True or False
  4. Columbus and his brother operated a bookstore. True or False
  5. When Columbus first landed near the coast of what is today known as Watling Island in the Bahamas, he thought he was in England. True or False

Now for our Canadian neighbors–HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! a day late.Maple_Leaf.svg

Here is another quiz to test your knowledge of our Northern Neighbor.

  1. Canadian Thanksgiving is always the 1st Monday after the first full moon of October. True or False
  2. Pilgrims were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving. True or False
  3. Thanksgiving derives from ancient festivities in Europe that celebrated the bounty of the harvest – and enough food to survive the winter. True or False
  4. Canadians prefer ham as their meat for Thanksgiving. True or False

 

Answers for Columbus

  1. True
  2. True
  3. False. It took 2 months
  4. True. It was also a mapmaking business. 
  5. False. He thought he was near China, Japan, and India.

All answers were taken from 74 Interesting Facts about Columbus 

Answers for Canadian Thanksgiving:

  1. False. It’s always the 2nd Monday of October, but it hasn’t always been. From 1921 to 1930, Thanksgiving was combined with Armistice Day (now Remembrance Day), which was observed on Monday oturkeyf the week of November 11.
  2. The event often cited as the first Canadian (and North American) Thanksgiving was a feast of thanks given by Martin Frobisher and the Frobisher Expedition in what is now Newfoundland during their attempts to find the Northwest Passage in 1578.
  3. True
  4. False. Canadians will eat enough turkeys to stretch beak to tail feathers from Regina to Fredericton. That’s 3,654 km or a little over a day and a half. Or for Americans, 2,270 miles. 

 

Okay, leave a comment and tell me how you did and I’ll enter you in a drawing for an e-copy of A Heartwarming Christmas that releases TODAY! I’ll also be sending a copy to everyone who has won in the past!Heartwarming 12

Join us today and tomorrow for the launch party on Facebook starting a 1 p.m. Central time. The  set goes live, and we’re having a blow-out 2-day party!

My half hour is from 1-1:30 Wednesday afternoon and I’m giving away ornaments and a $5 Amazon gift card. There are other gift cards being given away, as well!

Tell your friends, because there are enough freebies and prizes for all! And click over to our Rafflecopter to enter for more goodies!

This holiday season, warm your heart with 12 connected sweet holiday romances from 12 Harlequin Heartwarming authors who are USA Today, national bestselling, and award-winning authors. This collection of PG-rated holiday romances are all set in Christmas Town, a location introduced in the 2014 Harlequin Heartwarming release Christmas, Actually. A Heartwarming Christmas will bring you laughter, tears, and happily-ever-afters (no cliffhangers), for more than 1200 pages. Foreword by small town lover and New York Times bestseller Kristan Higgins.

Photos by Printmaster

Comments 7

  1. Jan Ballard

    Pat,
    No, I don’t want to tell you how I did on the quiz because a. I love history and b. I love to get an A+ on everything! Let’s just say I got more right than wrong. 🙂 It was great fun though and I always enjoy things like this.

    Am really looking forward to the Christmas books and wondering who I might give them to as a gift.

    Have a blessed day!
    Jan

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  4. Edward Arrington

    Here’s some interesting trivia about Columbus Day. I worked in banking for a number of years. When I first started in the early 70s, Easter Monday was a bank holiday in many states. In the mid to late 70s, I noticed that Easter Monday was missing from our holiday calendar one year and inquired about it. I was told that Easter was dropped as a holiday by the Federal Reserve System because it was a religious holiday and Columbus Day took its place. I asked “What about Christmas? Isn’t it a religious holiday?” The response was that Christmas was so commercialized that practically everyone accepted it as a holiday. I think this was long before political correctness became prevalent.

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    Patricia Bradley

    Why does that not surprise me! One year they tried to change our Christmas break to Winter break. That went away pretty quickly! Thanks for stopping by Edward. I alway enjoy your comments.

  6. Sandra Orchard

    This was fun! I especially like the Canadian angle. 😉 I’m happy to report that I got 100% on the Canadian quiz and I loved your kilometer to mile comparison. Even when my books are set in Canada, my publisher wants me to talk in miles. I got the bookstore question wrong for Columbus. 🙁 Who’d of thunk an explorer would run a bookstore?!

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