Every Year, The President Pardons A Turkey
White House myth-makers (those scoundrels!) have claimed that President Harry S. Truman began this holiday tradition after notably receiving a turkey, but it wasn’t until the first Thanksgiving of President George H.W. Bush in 1989 that a turkey was officially pardoned for the first time. From 2005 to 2010, the turkeys were then flown to Disneyland after the ceremony, where they serve as grand marshals of the theme park’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Once that was over, they retired over at Frontierland. Nowadays the turkeys have been hanging out in Mount Vernon, which is George Washington’s Northern Virginia home.