Top 5 Worst Thanksgivings
Published on November 22, 2007 - 21 Comments
Thanksgiving is a time of feasting, partying, and family - a wonderful holiday. But occasionally in history it has been a day better forgotten. This is a list of the five worst thanksgivings, courtesy of 10 Zen Monkeys.
Thanksgiving Day Massacre Reno, 1980
Priscilla Ford had a long history of psychiatric problems and bizarre behavior, marked by such quixotic acts as suing the Mormon Church and attempting to speak at the 1972 Republican Convention. The capper came on the Thanksgiving afternoon when she got even with the City of Reno. In front of the downtown casinos, she steered her black 1974 Lincoln onto a crowded sidewalk and mowed down the crowds of holiday gamblers and gambolers. She left six dead and 23 injured in her wake. Pulled over a few blocks later, she told police, “Sometimes I am called Jesus Christ.” She later expressed a fervent hope that she’d nailed 75 people, and explained the voice of Joan (Mrs. Edward) Kennedy had told her to do it. Nonetheless, she was found legally sane and duly convicted of murder.
Founding of the Ku Klux Klan Atlanta, 1915
At 35, failed preacher William Simmons had found his true calling as a fraternal lodge leader. In addition to commanding five regiments of the Woodsmen, he was a heavy in several Masonic orders and a Knight Templar. But his dream was to have his own personal fraternal organization. And he wanted more than funny hats and secret handshakes — he wanted to revive the Ku Klux Klan. His dream came to fruition Thanksgiving Eve when 40 handpicked men gathered to re-launch the Klan. A group of 15 stalwarts recessed to the top of nearby Stone Mountain for an early morning cross burning. Simmons tied his first recruitment drive in with D.W. Griffith’s famous film The Birth of a Nation, which opened in Atlanta the following week. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Great Football Fry San Francisco, 1900
Back in the good old days of Thanksgiving Day football, the hearts and minds of Bay Area football fans were not on dinner, but the day’s “Big Game” between the University of California and Stanford. The 1900 edition of this classic was, of course, sold out. The roofs of the buildings surrounding the stadium were crowded with budget-minded fans craning for a glimpse of the action. Twenty minutes into the game, the roof of one building collapsed. Unfortunately, the building housed a glass factory; complete with a red-hot furnace filled with molten glass. Turkeys weren’t the only things getting roasted in San Francisco that day. Twenty-two people were killed and over 80 injured in what remains the worst — and most bizarre — disaster ever to befall American sports fans.
Missionary Massacre Zimbabwe 1987
Early on Thanksgiving morning, Marxist Zimbabwean rebels descended on two farms run by white Pentecostal missionaries. What they lacked in Thanksgiving spirit they made up for in their revolutionary zeal. First they tied up the 16 white missionaries — men, women, and children, including two Americans. Then, as they gleefully sang revolutionary songs, they hacked their captives to death. Officials could only describe the resulting carnage as “barbaric.”
Executive Assassination Cordoba, Argentina, 1973
At the height of the Argentinean urban terrorist fad, a band of 15 young men waylaid John Swint, the general manager of a local Ford subsidiary, on Thanksgiving Day. The Peronist gunmen, upset with the way President Juan Peron had turned on them, later claimed they’d only wanted to kidnap the American executive. But according to witnesses, it was a turkey-shoot from the get-go. The gunmen immediately started blasting away with shotguns and assault rifles, killing Swint’s bodyguard and chauffeur and critically injuring another bodyguard. One blond gunner unloaded a quick machine gun blast into Swint’s body at close range — just to be sure.
Sources: 10 Zen Monkeys
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1. srichards - November 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Unfortunate!!!!
2. tlmabp - November 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
woah! so this means not all people celebrate this day at all.
3. Kelsi - November 22nd, 2007 at 10:20 am
The slight touches of witty humor in this list are borderline disturbing, haha.
4. jfrater - November 22nd, 2007 at 10:50 am
tlmapb: I don’t celebrate it - I am not American - fish pie for me tonight!
5. DarkJesus - November 22nd, 2007 at 10:54 am
No, not all people celebrate thanksgiving.
Believe it or not, not all people are Americans.
6. Gravy - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:08 am
Happy Thanksgiving e’rr-bodyy!!!!!!
7. jfrater - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:09 am
Gravy: thanks - I don’t celebrate it - but thanks anyway - and Happy Thanksgiving to you and all the list universe readers
8. Gravy - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:11 am
J-Fra, did you get my email?
9. jfrater - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:23 am
Gravy: I don’t seem to have - can you resend to frater@gmail.com please?
10. Gravy - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 am
J-Fra, check your inbox
Its on its way!
11. heavybison - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
should i subscribe ur id for some good junk mails as a thanksgiving present?
12. jfrater - November 22nd, 2007 at 11:53 am
heavybison: do and die
13. aplspud - November 22nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Reminds me even though I can’t be with my family today I still have plenty to be thankful for! Favorite line: gamblers and gambolers
And just reading the title “The Great Football Fry” made me start to feel a bit squeamish about what the disaster might be. Thanks for not being too graphic with that one haha
14. Jeff - November 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
in my history textbook, it says that Nathan Forrest started the KKK, it is a canadian textbook, so its probably wrong, just thought i should toss it up there
15. TerranRich - November 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Jeff, that KKK entry was for a revival of the KKK, not its creation. At least that’s what I gather. I don’t follow racist organizations all that much.
16. smac - November 23rd, 2007 at 1:22 am
This list makes cursing at your family and throwing food look like no big deal. Those are some pretty horrible tragedies.
17. jfrater - November 23rd, 2007 at 1:27 am
smac: beyond a doubt!
18. Mathilda - November 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am
My favorite fictional worst Thanksgiving was the “Turkeys Away” episode of the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, where, as explained by Wikipedia “Without informing anybody, Carlson [the general manager] decides to stage his own promotion for Thanksgiving, which involves dropping twenty live turkeys from a helicopter to unsuspecting supermarket shoppers below. He expects that the turkeys to gently flutter to the ground and be taken away by delighted shoppers. The scene is reported live on the air by news director Les Nessman, breathlessly describing the unseen birds plummeting to the ground, in a parody of Herbert Morrison’s famous coverage of the Hindenburg disaster: “It’s a helicopter, and it’s coming this way. It’s flying something behind it, I can’t quite make it out, it’s a large banner and it says, uh - Happy… Thaaaaanksss… giving! … From … W … K … R… P!! No parachutes yet. Can’t be skydivers… I can’t tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, they’re turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they’re plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!” Afterwards, the shaken Carlson explains, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Hope everyone had a good day, Thanksgiving or otherwise, and no one had a turkey fall through their windshield.
19. Andrew - November 30th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Wow. The ‘Missionary Massacre’ description could have been handled with a little more tact.
20. Monkey Nuts - January 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
You forgot the first thanksgiveing, in which the Indians helped the puritans(assholes) survive, only ultimately to be genocided for their efforts.
21. Tracy - July 14th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Nathan Bedford Forrest and five additional ex-Confederate officers formed the Ku Klux Klan most likely on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, TN as an organized effert to fight Reconstruction (the date is in contention due to the extreme secrecy of the early Klan). It did not specifically target blacks or former slaves, but anyone who supported and cooperated with Reconstruction.
In 1869, Forrest ordered the Klan to disband (most likely on the introduction of the Enforcement Acts that Congress passed in 1870-71 outlawing Jim Crow laws) and it officially ceased to exist as an organized group, but unofficially continued to exist in smaller communities all throughout the South. By the end of Reconstruction, the Klan had sufficiently lost power, but it remained a viable organization until William Simmons founded the Second Ku Klux Klan on Thanksgiving, 1915 in what would ultimately become a much more organized and violent offspring of the original.
-As a historian, I just like to make sure that the facts are represented accurately.