20 Brilliant Fall Facts and Autumn Curiosities

Remember that time you and your cousin’s new girlfriend discussed the weather for 15 solid minutes at Thanksgiving? You used so many synonyms for "brisk" that night. With all due respect to sweater season, there’s a better way. This awkward-pause-ending batch of trivia is your next dinner party’s secret ingredient; you’re guaranteed to bring something new to the table, and it will be delightfully odd. Keep reading to learn 20 fun facts about fall.

The waning daylight and dipping temperatures we associate with the end of summer and the onset of fall are also signals for deciduous trees to cut back on producing chlorophyll. That chlorophyll is responsible for the leaves’ green hues, and as it wanes, their brilliant carotenoids — the red, orange and yellow pigments that also color everything from flamingos to lobsters — are unmasked.

If Google searches reveal our desires, it would seem that pumpkin-scented pillars are Americans’ overall favorite. National search data shows that pumpkin led searches in nine states (vanilla was the top pick in eight states, and lavender, lemon and rose tied for third place with three apiece).

So-called decorative gourds have long, functional histories on this continent. Historians report that for centuries, indigenous people (and the colonists who joined them in North America) have hollowed out and hung the hard-shelled fruit around their dwellings to attract birds. That manmade welcome was so effective that most purple martins in the eastern U.S. now rely on humans to create their homes.

According to the State Library of Massachusetts, "leaf-peeper" evolved from "leaf-peeker," a term used in Vermont at the beginning of the 20th century. Its first appearance in print, in turn, was in “Thoughts of a Leaf Peeper,” a column in The Bennington Banner, a Vermont newspaper, in 1966. That same edition of the Banner reported on locals grumbling about out-of-towners causing traffic jams with their peeping, including one who sported a “Tourists Go Home!” sign on their car. Speaking of regional terms …

… Until the 16th century, English speakers referred to the season between summer and winter as "harvest" (in reference to picking, plucking or reaping), a term that evolved to both "autumn" ("the passing of the year") and "fall" (short for "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year") as people began to move away from farmland. "Autumn" and "fall" were both in use when the English began to colonize North America, and while Americans and English-speaking Canadians still use them both, "fall" fell out of use across the Atlantic.

Until wartime wheat shortages forced Americans to get comfortable with meal, flour and bread made with corn, it wasn’t an especially attractive foodstuff for most people. The development of sweet, tasty hybrids then brought corn to the dining table; new techniques, in turn, brought it into processed food by way of high fructose corn syrup. Just over a century later, corn is now part of — or part of the production of — almost everything we eat.

Tramping and Trailing With the Girl Scouts, a guidebook published in 1927, gave us both a recipe (eventually credited to troop leader Loretta Scott Crew) and a term for the classic marshmallow + chocolate + graham cracker campfire treat. “Though it tastes like ‘some more’ one is really enough,” the guide observed. Is it, though, Girl Scouts?

Ancient Greeks associated the cornucopia (literally, “horn of plenty”) with Zeus, who broke it from the head of a magical goat that suckled him when he was a baby. Romans, in turn, adapted the story for their own hero: Hercules separated it from the brow of a river god. Linked with abundance in countless stories across civilizations, cornucopias became horn-shaped baskets associated with the harvest. There’s no written record linking one to the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving in America, but the storied vessel has retained its ancient significance on this continent, too.

The Thompson & Taylor Spice Company, a Chicago-based institution that was once so large that its factory and warehouse featured tunnels for railroad cars, released a nine-ingredient preblended mixture called Pumpkin Pie Spice in 1933. One year later, McCormick & Company released their own take on the product — and a four-spice version including allspice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg is still on shelves today.

Developed by then-director of espresso, Peter Dukes (possessor of one of the all-time greatest job titles), Starbucks’ iconic Pumpkin Spice Latte could have entered the cultural lexicon as the Fall Harvest Latte (another original name contender), according to the company. Since the drink’s debut in 2003, more than 600 million PSLs have changed hands around the world. The PSL nickname, incidentally, comes from the company itself; it’s the code baristas write on cups.

Cool Patch Pumpkins of Dixon, California, snagged the Guinness World Record for the largest temporary corn or crop maze in October 2014; their 60-acre behemoth featured abstract geometric patterns. Stoney Brook Farms of Foley, Minnesota, is making a play for that leafy throne: Their 110-acre, Halloween-themed maze featuring old-school horror movie characters and more than 32 miles of pathways is awaiting official certification.

Long before Spider-Man and SpongeBob floated above the streets of New York City, the first Macy’s Christmas Parade (as it was originally known) was a six-mile affair billed in advertisements as a “marathon of mirth” and held on November 27, 1924. It featured costumed Macy’s employees on floats and participants on loan from the Central Park Zoo, including elephants, bears, camels and monkeys. The animals were none too pleased about the arrangement, as you would expect; their noises frightened children, and their droppings created a minefield for paradegoers. Character balloons replaced them in the years to follow, to everyone’s relief.

If trips to local farm stands and greenmarkets can’t fully satisfy your craving for the good stuff, might we suggest renting or buying a press and making your own fresh apple cider? You’ll get an excellent arm workout, and as seasonal sips go, it doesn’t get more delicious. You’ll also need a lot of apples, which is why many cidermaking supply lists include a wheelbarrow in addition to a cutting board, a knife and empty pitchers.

With apologies to New York City, the big apple — that is, the all-time heaviest, according to Guinness World Records — was grown and picked by Chisato Iwasaki at his farm in Hirosaki, Japan, a northern city in Aomori Prefecture known for its apple production. The brilliant red and downright massive fruit weighed in at 1.849 kilograms, or just over four pounds.

Some call it a log-cabin arrangement and others point to its resemblance to the popular block-balancing game, but campfire-building aficionados agree: One of the simplest ways to arrange kindling and get a merry blaze crackling is to crisscross layers of sticks at right angles. This creates an open-box formation with lots of gaps to promote airflow. (Your kindling itself should be no thicker than Jenga pieces — that is, about 2.5 centimeters wide — and it should also be completely dry.)

If you favor slicing and dicing your own pumpkins for pie, reserve and soak their seeds to remove the pulp, add spices of your choice, and roast them on a cookie sheet on the top rack of your oven for 15 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees. As the American Heart Association notes, those babies pack in 5.2 grams of fiber per serving (as opposed to the 1.8 grams you’ll get from shelled, store-bought pepitas). A quarter cup of pumpkin seeds provides 42% of your recommended daily magnesium intake (which keeps your heart and bones healthy, lowers blood pressure and can prevent migraines).

In 1906 more than 32,000 college football fans converged in New Haven, Connecticut; football historians note that those crowds included the very first tailgaters. The New York Times offered the first printed evidence of “small parties of automobilists eating tempting viands that had been brought in hampers spread out in picnic fashion on a table cloth laid upon the ground.” Initially called “parking lot picnics,” the gatherings became “tailgating” in the 1950s.

Archaeological remains found in pottery in what is now Belize suggest that cacao was prepared as a medicinal beverage at least as early as 600 B.C. The conquistador Hernán Cortés visited the New World and brought cacao back to Spain in 1512, where it quickly gained popularity as a restorative beverage that could induce euphoria — medically, of course.

The pillowy treats we now sprinkle on cocoa and toast over campfires don’t just take their name from the white blooms pictured here. Marshmallow, or Althea officinalis, is an herb (mallow is a plant, and it initially grew in salty soil near marshes) — and the original source of the confection. Ancient Egyptians squeezed its sap (which contains a gummy substance called mucilage), then mixed it with nuts and honey to create a rare delicacy, and it’s been used as a medicine and foodstuff for more than 2,000 years. The marshmallows we consume now are made with thickening agents like gelatin, pectin and agar, but until the late 1800s, they were made with whipped mallow sap.