The most popular Halloween costume among adults in 2007 was a witch, and the second was a pirate. The most popular costume for kids? Princess. For pets? Devil!
Largest number of people used to create one costume:
The Village Halloween parade, 1998, when a large group of folks dressed as Imelda Marcos' shoes.
In 1939, there was the first written mention of trick or treat in the popular media.
Apple Week (1926), Conservation Day (1941), and National Popcorn Week (1951) were all alternative names given to the Halloween season.
In California in 1905, the recommended Halloween treats included sticky molasses taffy and hot green pickles.
Pumpkin Fun Facts
Halloween Pumpkin: the original junk food? Native Americans taught white European settlers how to raise pumpkins. Colonial farmers in New England used them as a junk crop-they planted pumpkins on leftover land and used the fruit to feed the animals (yes, fruit-pumpkins are genetically related to pickles and melons and are technically fruits, not vegetables).
Fastest pumpkin-carving speed? One minute, 14.8 seconds (the Guinness World Record).
Largest amount of pumpkins carved? One ton in seven hours, eleven minutes (another Guinness World Record).
Current record-holding weight of a pumpkin? 1689 pounds.
Pumpkin Boats? One cold October 22, 1997, the World's First Pumpkin Regatta captains competed in cucurboats--vessels carved the day before from 800-lb. pumpkins and driven by car battery-powered electric trolling motors--in New York City's Central Park. The course was 1/4 mile. The competitors: Stew Leonard, Connecticut dairy-store owner; Henry Stern, New York City Parks Commissioner; and Wayne Hackney, creator of the cucurboat. Stern won the first race (it was a fix); his pumpkin sank during the second.
The largest number of jack-o-lanterns in one place? 30,128 pumpkins at Boston Common during the Life is Good Pumpkin Festival, Boston, Mass., in 2006.
Farthest a pumpkin can be shot from an air cannon? The Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator team from Morton, Ill. landed in the Guinness Book of World Records for their 4,491-foot throw.
The first pumpkin pie? While Native Americans used the pumpkin for medicinal purposes, wove strips of dried pumpkin into mats, and roasted pumpkins to eat, it was the colonists who invented pumpkin pie by slicing off the top, removing the seeds and pulp, filling the inside with milk, spices, and honey and baking it in hot ashes.
Hauntings, Ghosts & Vampires
A Gallup Poll taken around Halloween, 1999, found that roughly one-third of us say we believe in ghosts, three times the number who admitted it twenty years ago.
There are currently 1,700 movies that have been made about vampires.
The next full moon on Halloween will be October 31, 2020.
According to a 2005 CNN poll, 48% of Americans believe in ghosts.
Most active haunted spots in America?
According to the American Ghost Society, it's the Bell Witch Cave (Adams, Tenn.), the battlefield at Gettysburg, Bachelor's Grove Cemetery (Chicago, Ill.) Dudleytown (Litchfield County, Conn.), the Old Slave House (Equality, Ill.), Alcatraz (San Francisco, Calif.), Winchester Mansion (San Jose, Calif.), Myrtles Plantation (St. Francisville, La.), and Whaley House (San Diego, Calif.).
Parades & Celebrations
The Neeowollah — Halloween backwards — Festival in Independence, Kan. claims to have had the first citywide Halloween celebration in 1918.
The oldest, continuous (since 1920) Halloween parade takes place in Anoka, Minn.
The first Halloween adult costume parade took place in the late 60s in the Castro District of San Francisco, Calif. The current largest parade marches in Greenwich Village, New York.
The National Halloween Committee, formed to encourage Halloween parties for service men and women, boasted 50,000 private Halloween parties in New York City in 1943. By 1948, the Committee estimated there would be 11 million Halloween parties coast to coast.
Halloween at the White House
White House Halloweens: Eisenhower's 1958 White House was lit with an orange glow for a staff lunch given by the First Lady. Out in Seattle, the Vice President's daughters were trick-or-treating accompanied by the Secret Service; Julie Nixon was a red devil and Trisha was a ghost.
Eleanor Roosevelt made the first contribution to the 1960 UNICEF's Trick-or-Treat for all the World's Children campaign. Danny Kaye kicked it off in 1965.
