On This Day – 25th November: A Curious Collection of Quirky Moments

1. The Great Turkey Drop (1978)

In a small Ohio town, a radio station decided to host a Thanksgiving publicity stunt which involved dropping live turkeys from a helicopter. The organisers, perhaps forgetting that turkeys are not exactly aviation enthusiasts, were met with a scene that can only be described as feathery chaos. The event gained infamy and inspired an episode of the American sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati – which immortalised the line, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

2. The Accidental Baronet (1743)

On 25th November 1743, a certain Sir Crispin Fotheringay (almost certainly the most British name ever coined) was mistakenly granted a baronetcy. Due to a clerical error in the College of Arms, his cousin’s title was delivered to him instead. Fotheringay apparently enjoyed three splendid weeks of nobility before the mistake was discovered, by which point he had already commissioned a portrait of himself with a very smug dog.

3. The First Recorded Organised Pillow Fight (1897)

Though humans had been swinging pillows at each other for centuries – perhaps millennia – the first officially recorded community pillow fight took place on this date in 1897 in Lille, France. The event was meant as a light‑hearted fundraiser, but it caused a minor public scandal when the local mayor was clobbered with a goose‑feather cushion and fell into a fountain.

4. Agatha Christie’s Moustache Mystery (1928)

Agatha Christie, already a rising crime writer, attended a costume ball on 25th November dressed (rather convincingly) as Hercule Poirot. Her friends reportedly failed to recognise her for several hours, assuming she was a particularly short Belgian gentleman who had wandered in. Christie later claimed the experience “gave her a new appreciation for the power of a good moustache.”

5. The Day of the Upside‑Down Postboxes (1980)

In a minor act of mischief, pranksters in a Surrey village managed to unbolt and flip three Royal Mail postboxes overnight, leaving the openings at the bottom. Local residents were deeply confused, with some attempting to post their letters upside down. The culprits were never caught, but their work was briefly celebrated as “modern art.”

From flying turkeys to aristocratic accidents, 25th November has a delightful knack for producing the sort of stories that make history more entertaining than any textbook has a right to be.