Regale your Thanksgiving hosts or guests with these Cornucopia Fun Facts.
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1. There are two Greek legends that discuss how the horn of plenty came about. One involves a mortal king’s daughters as nursemaids and a she-goat named Amalthea, who broke one of her horns which then became a never-empty horn of plenty. Amalthea used the horn to feed Zeus. Zeus gave the horn to the king’s daughters as a form of thanks, and from then on, the horn – or cornucopia – became a symbol of plenty and whoever had it in his or her possession would never starve.
In the other, Heracles broke the horn off of an advisory during a fight over a beautiful maiden. (Hercules won, and got the girl, if you were wondering.) The Naiads (water-nymphs) treated the horn as a sacred object, filling it with fragrant flowers. Copia, the goddess of Plenty later adopted the horn, and dubbed it the Horn of Plenty, or Cornucopia.
2. The term ‘cornucopia’ actually dates back to the 5th century BC in the form of two words “cornu Copiae”, which means horn of plenty. The first known English use of the word “cornucopia” was in 1508.
3. There is a fungi variety called the “Horn of Plenty” mushroom, or the Craterellus Cornucopiodes, also known as known as the Black Trumpet.
4. The “waffle cone” was named the St. Louis World’s Fair’s Cornucopia back in 1904 for its conical/horn-like shape.
5. The cornucopia on the set of The Hunger Games took 10 weeks to build. Supplies from the Cornucopia can be spread out around the Cornucopia or close together at the Gamemakers discretion. As in the 74th Hunger Games, when supplies were spread wide around the Cornucopia while in the 75th Hunger Games, the Cornucopia was situated on an island and the supplies were placed inside or just at the entrance.
