Have you been as fascinated as the rest of the internet with Knickers, the giant steer in Australia? Then do we have a blog post for you! We’ve gathered photos of some of the biggest bovines we could find in the newspapers from the last 100 years. How do these cows, steers, and bulls measure up to Knickers, who stands nearly 6 feet 4 inches and weighs more than 3,000 pounds? Read on to find out! We won’t “steer” you wrong!

If we start from the shortest of the bunch (which is still amazingly tall), first is Big Jim, who was once owned by Will Rogers. In this photo from 1936, the steer was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 3,100 pounds.

(The Waco News-Tribune, 05.18.1936)

Next is this giant Holstein bull from Kentucky in 1960. The newspaper didn’t report how tall he was, but he weighed in at a whopping 3,126 pounds and was the largest at the Kentucky State Fair!

(The Courier-Journal, 09.18.1960)

From 1925, we have a Shorthorn-Hereford from Nebraska. The newspaper was unclear about whether it was a steer or a bull, but either way it stood 5 feet 7 inches high and weighed 3,200 pounds.

(The Cherokee Times, 11.01.1925)

From 1930 comes this photo of a cow named Texas Pride. Though nearly 6 feet high at the shoulders, its horns added another foot and a half. The offspring of a Jersey cow and a Brahma bull, Texas Pride weighed in at 1 ton. [Read more about Texas Pride here.]

(The San Francisco Examiner, 06.15.1930)

In 1933, you could’ve earned $500 if you managed to find a cow bigger than Lone Star, from Texas. Another Jersey-Brahma mix, this cow was 6 feet and 1 inch high and weighed 2,800 pounds. The distance from its nose to the tip of its tail was 15 feet! [Read more about Lone Star here.]

(The Muncie Morning Star, 06.29.1933)

Then we have this giant steer from Kentucky, apparently also named Big Jim like the first steer on our list. This Big Jim stood 6 feet 2 inches and weighed 4,026 pounds.

(Harrisburg Sunday Courier, 09.13.1936)

Last up, we have two bovines that tie in height with Knickers. First is this Brahma-Shorthorn steer from 1973 named Satan. Though tying with Knickers in height, this steer outweighed him, weighing in at 2 tons.

(Sunday News and Leader, 05.27.1973)

The other 6 foot 4 inch bovine we found is Blosom, a cow from Illinois. In 2014, Blosom made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for her height. [Read more about Blosom here.]

(The Salinas Californian, 10.16.2014)

Find more photos and articles about giant cows by searching Newspapers.com. And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more interesting historical content like this!

Black Friday shopping is a Thanksgiving tradition for most Americans. In 2017, more than two-thirds of American adults went shopping on Thanksgiving weekend, either in stores or online. But do you know how the tradition of Black Friday began?

Black Friday crowds in Philadelphia in 1968 (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11.0.1968)

The Early Years

In the decades after President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as an annual holiday in 1863, it developed into the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. Then, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, various department stores began sponsoring parades on Thanksgiving, such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Known as “Santa parades” because they ended with the arrival of Santa Claus, these parades were used by the department stores to launch their Christmas campaigns and increase excitement for holiday shopping. It eventually became an unwritten rule that retailers wouldn’t begin their holiday sales until after Thanksgiving.

First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1924 (Daily News, 11.28.1924)

Thanksgiving became so intertwined with the holiday shopping season that in 1939, a year when Thanksgiving fell late in the month, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week, lengthening the holiday shopping season but also causing a major public uproar.

• Go here to learn the full story of what happened when FDR moved Thanksgiving

Black Friday Is Born

Before “Black Friday” came to refer to the busy shopping day after Thanksgiving, it had long been used in other ways—such as to refer to the Panic of 1869 and as a name for Friday the 13^th. How it shifted to its current meaning is a bit unclear.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, 11.30.1985)

It seems to have begun in the 1950s and ‘60s in Philadelphia, where the police used “Black Friday” to refer to the terrible traffic conditions after Thanksgiving caused by people coming to the city to shop and attend the Army-Navy football game.

• Go here to see a 1967 Philadelphia newspaper using “Black Friday” to refer to bad traffic

Complicating this explanation, however, is the fact that the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who helped popularize the term remembers first hearing it in Boston. And to make its origins even muddier, the term was also used in Rochester, New York, around the same time as in Philadelphia.

But despite the ambiguity of the term’s origins, one thing is clear: retailers hated the term “Black Friday.” They felt it had negative connotations, and, in Philadelphia at least, retailers tried to promote the term “Big Friday”—but it never took off.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, 11.25.1960)

“Black Friday” Spreads

For a while, “Black Friday” remained a regional term. In 1985, the Philadelphia Inquirer even ran a column discussing how “Black Friday” wasn’t used in other parts of the nation. But by the late 1980s, the term began seeing wider acceptance and was in use around the country in the 1990s.

• Go here to read an excerpt from the 1985 Philadelphia Inquirer Black Friday column

By the time the term became popular, however, the story around its origins had shifted from the negative connotations of heavy traffic to the more positive explanation—pushed by retailers—that it referred to the day businesses turned a profit and went from being “in the red” to “in the black.”

Learn more about the history of Black Friday by searching Newspapers.com. And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more interesting historical content like this!