The turkey is a large North American bird. The range of one species, Meleagris gallopavo (paradoxically known as both the domestic and wild turkey) is from northern Mexico throughout the midwestern and eastern United States and into southeastern Canada. (The other species, Meleagris ocellata, is found only in the forests of the Yucatán peninsula. Other "turkeys" such as brushturkeys [actually megapodes], Australian turkeys [bustards], and water turkeys [anhingas] are unrelated. Because Christopher Columbus thought he had found a shortcut to India rather than a new continent, turkeys are called diiq Hindi ("Indian rooster") in Arabic, dinde ("from India") in French, Indjushka ("bird of India") in Russian, indyk in Polish, and Hindi ("India") in Turkish; in Portuguese they are called a peru.) They may have been named "turkeys" because the Europeans who first encountered them thought they were guineafowls, which were called "Turkey coqs" because they were imported from Istanbul; at the same time, Muslims were able to domesticate and so-called "Turkey merchants" (named after the nation not the bird) exported them; the English navigator William Strickland introduced turkeys into England in 1550 and was granted a coat of arms that contined a "turkey-cock in his pride proper." Male turkeys have a distinctive snood, a fleshy wattle that hangs from the top of the beak, which takes its name from a distinctive loosely knitted yarn headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England, designed to hold their long hair in a cloth or yarn bag. It resembled a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head, with a tighter-mesh band covering the forehead or crown and then running behind the ears and under the nape of the neck; from the band dangled a sort of sack to cover and contain the hair. Married Orthodox Jewish women still wear snoods to cover their hair. A distillery was opened in Streamville, Kentucky, ca. 1868 and acquired and expanded by T. B. Ripy, who in 1883 named it after his family's place of origin, County Tyrone in Ireland, and the village renamed itself Tyrone in 1893 as well. In 1905 his sons renamed it the Ripy Brothers Distillery. One of its executives, Thomas McCarthy, took some warehouse samples with him on a wild turkey hunting trip in 1940, giving rise to the Wild Turkey brand of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, which gained a reputation as an inexpensive, highly-alcoholic product. The Ripys were bought out in 1952 by the Gould Brothers, who sold it to Pernod Ricard who sold it to the Campari Group in 2009. Two years later the company promoted the product with "Give 'em the Bird" ads that that prominently included a middle finger gesture; the review board of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States ruled that the ad violated the council's code of ethical practices, but Campari continues to use the slogan and gesture in promotional activities.
The turkey is a large North American bird. The range of one species, Meleagris gallopavo (paradoxically known as both the domestic and wild turkey) is from northern Mexico throughout the midwestern and eastern United States and into southeastern Canada. (The other species, Meleagris ocellata, is found only in the forests of the Yucatán peninsula. Other "turkeys" such as brushturkeys [actually megapodes], Australian turkeys [bustards], and water turkeys [anhingas] are unrelated. Because Christopher Columbus thought he had found a shortcut to India rather than a new continent, turkeys are called diiq Hindi ("Indian rooster") in Arabic, dinde ("from India") in French, Indjushka ("bird of India") in Russian, indyk in Polish, and Hindi ("India") in Turkish; in Portuguese they are called a peru.) They may have been named "turkeys" because the Europeans who first encountered them thought they were guineafowls, which were called "Turkey coqs" because they were imported from Istanbul; at the same time, Muslims were able to domesticate and so-called "Turkey merchants" (named after the nation not the bird) exported them; the English navigator William Strickland introduced turkeys into England in 1550 and was granted a coat of arms that contined a "turkey-cock in his pride proper." Male turkeys have a distinctive snood, a fleshy wattle that hangs from the top of the beak, which takes its name from a distinctive loosely knitted yarn headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England, designed to hold their long hair in a cloth or yarn bag. It resembled a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head, with a tighter-mesh band covering the forehead or crown and then running behind the ears and under the nape of the neck; from the band dangled a sort of sack to cover and contain the hair. Married Orthodox Jewish women still wear snoods to cover their hair. A distillery was opened in Streamville, Kentucky, ca. 1868 and acquired and expanded by T. B. Ripy, who in 1883 named it after his family's place of origin, County Tyrone in Ireland, and the village renamed itself Tyrone in 1893 as well. In 1905 his sons renamed it the Ripy Brothers Distillery. One of its executives, Thomas McCarthy, took some warehouse samples with him on a wild turkey hunting trip in 1940, giving rise to the Wild Turkey brand of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, which gained a reputation as an inexpensive, highly-alcoholic product. The Ripys were bought out in 1952 by the Gould Brothers, who sold it to Pernod Ricard who sold it to the Campari Group in 2009. Two years later the company promoted the product with "Give 'em the Bird" ads that that prominently included a middle finger gesture; the review board of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States ruled that the ad violated the council's code of ethical practices, but Campari continues to use the slogan and gesture in promotional activities.
ReplyDelete