Turkey Day Classic

The Turkey Day Classic is a college football game, traditionally held annually on Thanksgiving Day. It is played between Alabama State University and Tuskegee University, two historically black universities. The game is usually played in Montgomery, Alabama's Cramton Bowl, but it is scheduled to relocate to Alabama State's new Hornet Stadium in 2012.ESPNU holds broadcast rights to the game. The game is one of two black college football classics to be associated with Thanksgiving weekend; the other is the younger, but more widely known, Bayou Classic, held two days later.

The game falls in a category of classics that feature two rival teams playing each year. The activities surrounding the game take place over several weeks in the downtown of Montgomery, and include parades, parties, and such like. Many classics feature activities and events like golfing, pageants, and tailgaiting. Alabama State hosts a parade and combines its homecoming with the Turkey Day Classic.

History

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada and the United States. It was originally celebrated as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.

History

Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among almost all religions after harvests and at other times. The Thanksgiving holiday's history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation. It also has aspects of a harvest festival, even though the harvest in New England occurs well before the late-November date on which the modern Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated.

1963 Turkey Day 200

The 1963 Turkey Day 200 was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Sprint Cup Series) event that was held on November 22, 1962 at Tar Heel Speedway in Randleman, North Carolina.

The race car drivers still had to commute to the races using the same stock cars that competed in a typical weekend's race through a policy of homologation (and under their own power). This policy was in effect until roughly 1975. By 1980, NASCAR had completely stopped tracking the year model of all the vehicles and most teams did not take stock cars to the track under their own power anymore.

Summary

This race, while being in the 1963 season happened after November 1, 1962. This put the racing event in the 1963 points season. Since 2001, NASCAR has never organized a race this late in the year for its NASCAR Cup Series because NASCAR now mandates a 12-week silly season.

Being a ¼-mile track, the entire race only spanned 50 miles (80 km). Three thousand and five hundred people attended this live racing event which ended in one hour and three minutes. Twenty-three American drivers and one Canadian driver (Jim Bray) participated in this race. Notable speeds were: 47.544 miles per hour (76.515 km/h) for the average speed and 51.933 miles per hour (83.578 km/h) for the pole position speeds. These slow speeds would not look out of place on a modern-day American Interstate highway.

1964 Jacksonville 200

The 1964 Jacksonville 200, the third race of the 1964 NASCAR Cup Series calendar (despite taking place on December 1, 1963) is best known for being won by the first (and so far, only) African-American driver to win a race, Wendell Scott.

Summary

Jack Smith started from the pole position.Ned Jarrett drove to a substantial lead early in the event, but a damaged wheel hub caused him to fall 20 laps behind while it was repaired. Richard Petty led the most laps, 103, before having his steering break due to the rough track conditions. Scott, driving a car formerly owned by Jarrett, took the lead with 275 laps to and led to the scheduled finish of the event; however, after 200 laps, the checkered flag was not waved.

Two laps later, second-place finisher Buck Baker took the checkered flag and the win. Scott protested the results; two hours later, following a review of the scoring, Scott was declared the winner by two laps. Some, including Scott's family, stated that the victory was awarded to Baker, with the results being altered after the crowd had left the speedway, due to racism; others, including two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett, believe it was simply a scoring error, which was very common in the pre-electronic scoring system. Four weeks later at Savannah Speedway, Scott was given his first-place prize check and a replica trophy; the genuine trophy has never resurfaced, however in October 2010 the Jacksonville Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame gave a more accurate replica trophy to Scott's family. It was not until 2013 that another African American driver won a NASCAR national touring series race, when Darrell Wallace, Jr. won the 2013 Kroger 200 at Martinsville Speedway.

Turkey

Coordinates: 39°N 35°E / 39°N 35°E / 39; 35

Turkey (ⁱ/ˈtɜːrki/; Turkish: Türkiye [ˈtyɾcije]), officially the Republic of Turkey (Turkish:  Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ), is a parliamentary republic in Eurasia, largely located in Western Asia, with the smaller portion of Eastern Thrace in Southeast Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Syria and Iraq to the south; Iran, Armenia, and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the east; Georgia to the northeast; Bulgaria to the northwest; and Greece to the west. The Black Sea is to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia. Turkey's location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia makes it a country of significant geostrategic importance.

Turkey has been inhabited since the paleolithic age, including various ancient Anatolian civilizations, Aeolian, Dorian and Ionian Greeks, Thracians, Armenians, and Assyrians. After Alexander the Great's conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process which continued under the Roman Empire and its transition into the Byzantine Empire. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into the area in the 11th century, starting the process of Turkification, which was greatly accelerated by the Seljuk victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, upon which it disintegrated into several small Turkish beyliks.

Turkey (bird)

The turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, which is native to the Americas. One species, Meleagris gallopavo (commonly known as the domestic turkey or wild turkey), is native to the forests of North America, mainly Mexico and the United States. The other living species is Meleagris ocellata or the ocellated turkey, native to the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula. Males of both turkey species have a distinctive fleshy wattle or protuberance that hangs from the top of the beak (called a snood). They are among the largest birds in their ranges. As in many galliformes, the male is larger and much more colorful than the female.

Taxonomy

Turkeys are classed in the family of Phasianidae (pheasants, partridges, francolins, junglefowl, grouse and relatives) in the taxonomic order of Galliformes. The genus Meleagris is the only genus in the subfamily Meleagridinae, formerly known as the family Meleagrididae, but now subsumed within the family Phasianidae.

History and naming

When Europeans first encountered turkeys in America, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guineafowl – i.e., as members of a group of birds which were thought to typically come from the country of Turkey. The name of the North American bird thus became "turkey fowl", which was then shortened to just "turkey". In 1550, the English navigator William Strickland, who had introduced the turkey into England, was granted a coat of arms including a "turkey-cock in his pride proper".

Turkish wine

Turkish wine is wine made in the transcontinental Eurasian country Turkey. The Caucasus region, where Georgia and Iran are located, played a pivotal role in the early history of wine and is likely to have been one of the earliest wine-producing regions of the world.

Ampelographers estimate that Turkey is home to between 600–1200 indigenous varieties of Vitis vinifera (the European grapevine), though less than 60 of these are grown commercially. With over 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km²) planted under vine, Turkey is the world's fourth-leading producer of grapes.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey's first president, established the country's first commercial winery in 1925. According to the OIV, the total wine production in 2005 was 287,000 hl. In the first half of 2009, wine consumption in Turkey reached 20,906,762 litres.

Climate and wine regions