The forgotten campaign to replace the Teddy Bear with 'Billy Possum'

A dive into some of the country's stranger Thanksgivings

How did a raccoon intended for the Thanksgiving dinner table end up a beloved presidential pet? History teacher Sharon McMahon's podcast "Here's Where It Gets Interesting" takes an episode to delve into some of the more unusual Thanksgivings at the White House, including the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 and the story of Calvin Coolidge and his "first raccoon," Rebecca.

Calvin Coolidge had many animals—including a White House raccoon

Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge adopted a raccoon named Rebecca, initially intended for Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, she became a beloved pet, roaming the White House lawn with a handmade collar reading "White House Raccoon."

Teddy Roosevelt was once given a daily dose of an artificial sweetener, prescribed by his doctor.

The strange story behind President Jimmy Carter's brother's 'Billy Beer'

During Carter's 1976 presidential campaign, his brother, Billy Carter, became a sideshow attraction as a country bumpkin. The Louisville-based Falls City Brewing Company decided to capitalize on the attention and hired Carter has a brand ambassador to promote his own "Billy Beer." What followed was a strange, suspicious bit of guerilla marketing and hucksterism, all of it documented in this Mental Floss retrospective.

Theodore Roosevelt tried for a third presidential term in 1912

In 1912, after serving nearly two full terms—one elected, the other partial after stepping in as vice president—Theodore Roosevelt sought a third. He lost the Republican nomination to William Taft, then ran as a Progressive Party candidate but was ultimately defeated by Woodrow Wilson.

See a ranking of the most memorable presidential pets in history

This list highlights famous White House animals—from Abraham Lincoln's goats, Nanny and Nanko, to Joe Biden's German shepherds, Champ and Major—showing how pets have long been part of presidential life. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

A Georgia town holds an annual New Year's Eve possum drop

The town of 3,200 residents in the northwestern corner of the state began the quirky event—which lowers a taxidermied possum dangling in the center of a Times Square-esque ball—in the mid-1990s. In 2024, it ranked eighth USA Today’s list of the best New Year’s Eve drops.

Meet Pauline, the White House cow who made national news when she briefly went missing on her way to a dairy show.

Salvador Dalí had pet anteaters he (supposedly) took on walks

Known for his adept and weird public relations stunts, Dalí kept exotic pets, such as an ocelot named Babou, as well as anteaters. The insectivorous mammal accompanied him on walks (though it may have just been for a photo op) and on talk show appearances.

Tiptoe, an adorable blue reindeer, became Macy’s new mascot in 2021

Move over Rudolph—there’s a new reindeer in town. And just like the red-nosed reindeer, this one was also created by a department store. An article explains Tiptoe’s origin story, and the business implications of the new mascot.

The annual 'turkey pardon' officially began in 1989

President George HW Bush oversaw the first official pardon, but the tradition began years before that. This short video from PBS News explores the history of presidential pardons for the lucky birds. There’s no “fowl” language, but there are plenty of puns!

One prankster started a movement to clothe animals in the mid-20th century

G. Clifford Prout founded the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, saying that animal nudity was rude and immoral. The campaign continued for years until CBS employees realized Prout was actually a comedian named Buck Henry.

Watch a medley of Pets.com commercials with the famous sock puppet mascot

Pets.com used a sock puppet decorated like a dog (operated by comedian Michael Ian Black) as the company's mascot. The sock puppet became synonymous with the brand. An auto lender company called BarNone Inc. later purchased the sock puppet for $125K and rebranded it with the slogan "Everybody deserves a second chance."

Teddy Roosevelt's intervention helped save football, which previously had been a brutally violent game.

Grant's third-term ambitions helped create the GOP's elephant symbol

In 1874, as Republicans debated Ulysses S. Grant possibly seeking a third term, Harper's Weekly ran a Thomas Nast cartoon showing a panicked elephant labeled "The Republican Vote." The image caught on, cementing the elephant as the GOP's enduring symbol.

Wojtek the bear fought for Poland in World War II

Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear who eventually became a mascot, symbol, and eventually a soldier attached to the Polish II Corps during World War II. Learn about the amazing Wojtek, the Polish II Corps, and the incredible history of the Polish soldiers, many of whom had been imprisoned by the Germans or Soviets, who served during World War II.

Get the inside story of the duck hunt that birthed the Federal Reserve

Pseudo-duck hunters, private train cars in Hoboken, and a thrilling work week over Thanksgiving 1910—all and more are featured in the wild story of how a group of fed-up bankers and lawmakers tried to create an enduring central bank for the US. Records of the meeting managed to remain hidden for decades.

UC Santa Cruz's nontraditional mascot was selected by its students

After becoming an NCAA Division III school, UC Santa Cruz ditched its informal mascot, the banana slug, for a sea lion. Students protested and eventually held a straw vote to reinstate the old name, which they saw as an antidote to the hypercompetitive nature of college athletics.

Cookie Monster evolved from the Wheel Stealer, a monster obsessed with a wheel-shaped cheese snack.

Before 'The Muppet Show,' Jim Henson produced slapstick coffee commercials featuring the puppets.

The Adams family brought the first pets to the White House

When John Adams became the first president to live in the White House, Abigail brought along the family's dogs—making them the first presidential pets to reside there. Abigail was known for her love of dogs.

The Victor Talking Machine Company's logo, an iconic image used on early record players, was based on a painting portraying a dog mourning its dead owner.

Illustrator Ian Falconer's 'Olivia' piglet character was based on his niece

The New Yorker illustrator first began drawing fun pictures of a young pig named Olivia in the 1990s for his niece of the same name. Now, the books have sold millions and have been turned into a TV show. Meet the real Olivia behind the character in this brief interview.

FDR changed the date of Thanksgiving, then changed it back

In the waning years of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted to move Thanksgiving up by a week, giving merchants a longer holiday shopping season. After pushback from lawmakers, he reversed course in 1941, permanently fixing the date of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

T.S. Eliot rejected George Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' suggesting that the despotic pigs might be the best leaders for the farm.

Cow tongue was once a Thanksgiving delicacy

Cow feet and tongue were sometimes included in mincemeat pies—a popular 18th-century dish. Josefa Hale, who inspired Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a holiday, said they were “indispensable; but [hoped] this rich, expensive, and exceedingly unhealthy diet will be used very sparingly...”

The Hodag was a mythological animal—part reptile, part mammal, with spikes running down its back—invented by a 19th-century Wisconsin lumberjack-turned-con-artist who claimed he'd slain one after it attacked a child.

A children's toy inspired the name ‘Super Bowl’

The name “Super Bowl” was coined by AFL founder Lamar Hunt, who casually suggested it in 1966—riffing on his child’s Super Ball toy—after alternatives such as “The Big One” and “AFL-NFL World Championship Game” proved clunky and forgettable. The name was officially adopted for the third championship.

Theodore Roosevelt is considered by many to be the "first modern president"

Roosevelt transformed the presidency by expanding executive power beyond conventional norms, arguing that the president could act in the national interest unless expressly forbidden to do so. His energetic leadership, media use, and policy activism expanded the office's role and prestige.

The efforts to save the wild turkey

An essential character in American tradition, the wild turkey is more than just the meat you eat on Thanksgiving. Listen to this four-part miniseries to learn what they symbolize, the long-lasting efforts to preserve this bird, and why their conservation matters.

Andrew Jackson kept a 1,400-pound block of cheese in the White House and then let members of the public eat during his final party while in office.

Sheep once grazed on the National Mall and White House grounds

In the late 1910s, sheep grazed near the Lincoln Memorial and on the White House lawn. Under Woodrow Wilson, their wool was auctioned for charity, briefly making the grazing animals the subject of a federal cost-saving experiment.

An 18th-century woman tricked doctors into believing she gave birth to rabbits.

Supertoxic rat poisons are wreaking havoc on unintended targets, including predator birds, mammals, amphibians, crustaceans, and insects.

Rockwell's 'Four Freedoms' raised millions for the US war effort

Rockwell initially pitched the "Four Freedoms" project to the US Ordnance Department, but was rejected. Rockwell's editor at the Saturday Evening Post, however, loved the idea and published the images across four consecutive issues. After they became a sensation, the Saturday Evening Post partnered with the US Department of the Treasury to send the paintings on a 16-date national tour, which raised $133M in war bonds and stamps. Meanwhile, the Office of War Information printed four million sets of the posters with "Buy War Bonds" emblazoned on them.

The 'Looney Tunes' character Wile E Coyote was inspired by Mark Twain's description of the animal in his 1872 memoir.

In 1939, an industry group asked Franklin Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving

Specifically, the Retail Dry Goods Association warned Franklin Roosevelt that if the holiday season didn’t begin until after Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the traditional final Thursday in November, retail sales would tank. In 1941 Congress passed a law that made Thanksgiving the fourth rather than the last Thursday in November.

George Orwell's original preface to 'Animal Farm' criticized the publishers who had rejected the book for political reasons.

Presidents invite guests to personalize the State of the Union

The tradition began in 1982 when Ronald Reagan honored Lenny Skutnik, who rescued a survivor from the icy Potomac after a plane crash. Since then, presidents have spotlighted a wide range of guests from Rosa Parks to Rush Limbaugh to humanize and reinforce policy themes.

See historic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade photos

Snoopy and Bullwinkle and Clifford, oh my! This slideshow has photographs of all those characters (and more) from when they debuted as balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. These photos span from the original parades in the 1920s through the early 2000s.

In the 1930s, three Australian soldiers were sent to fight emus with machine guns—and lost

As part of a post-WWI initiative to turn veterans into farmers, soldiers were given plots of land. After emus were found damaging the farmland, three men were sent to handle the flightless birds. These men ended up losing to the second-largest bird species in the world and potentially exacerbating crop losses by sending swaths of the birds running and trampling over wheat.

Some novel ideas to improve presidential debates

The first televised presidential debates of 1960 were seemingly so consequential, candidates opted not to participate in one for 16 years. In the last 60 years, debate format has changed frequently as the political parties and news outlets vie for rules to either protect candidates or increase TV ratings. In this brief video, one expert suggests five interesting innovations to the debate format to make them more informative for the average US voter.

Mark Twain invented an unsuccessful board game

“Memory Builder” was based on pinning historical events in their correct chronological order. It was test-marketed in 1891, but never took off. One critic said, “The game looked like a cross between an income tax form and a table of logarithms.”

Mark Twain had many gripes with the US Postal Service

Twain often complained about the cost of postage and the service's inefficiencies, often sharing these criticisms in newspaper opinion pieces. Still, in 1907, the USPS issued a commemorative stamp featuring his face.

Listen to how the 1902 'poison squad' experiments changed food safety in America

As part of government research, a group of young men were paid to eat standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—which revealed the dangers of unregulated food. The work was led by the first FDA commissioner, Harvey Wiley, who helped end the "century of the great stomachache."

Groundhog was once served as a dish in Punxsutawney, PA

The Pennsylvania town is known for Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who annually predicts whether spring will arrive early or winter will trudge on for another six weeks. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, the rodent was also a common dish throughout rural America, including Punxsutawney.

The Oval Office was completed in 1909

Completed during William Howard Taft's presidency, the Oval Office was designed as part of an expansion of the West Wing. President Franklin D. Roosevelt redesigned the room and moved it to the southeast corner of the West Wing in 1934.

Before becoming a famous weatherman for the Today show, Willard Scott created 'Ronald McDonald' for a Washington DC location in 1963.

'The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.'

- Former President Theodore Roosevelt's (1858–1919)

Mid-century modern graphic designers like Milton Glaser and Eric Carle found success with children's books

Glaser was famous for creating the "I Heart NY" logo, the DC Comics logo, and an iconic Bob Dylan poster for CBS Records, but he naturally transitioned to illustrating children's books like "The Smallest Elephant in the World" and "If Apples had Teeth." Carle, author of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?," began his career in advertising. Scholars say mid-century modern's preference for clean lines and bold colors was a natural fit for kids' books.