The date of what is typically recognized as the first Thanksgiving is not precisely known, though it occurred between September 21 and November 9, 1621. The Plymouth Mass. Pilgrims dined with the Wampanoag Indians.

A Calvinist Thanksgiving actually did occur in 1623 and did not involve sharing food with the Native Americans. But in the fall of 1621 the feast lasted three days. Approximately 50 Native Americans attended this feast which included Massasoit and Squanto - the Pilgrim's translator. 52 Pilgrims attended the first Thanksgiving, including John Alden, William Bradford, Priscilla Mullins, and Miles Standish. According to Edward Winslow, a participant in the first Thanksgiving, the feast consisted of corn, barley, fowl including wild turkeys and waterfowl, and venison. Mashed potatoes, popcorn, milk, corn on the cob, and cranberries were not foods present on the first feast table. Rather Lobster, rabbit, chicken, fish, squashes, beans, chestnuts, hickory nuts, onions, leeks, dried fruits, maple syrup and honey, radishes, cabbage, carrots, eggs, and goat cheese are thought to have made up the first Thanksgiving feast. And the pilgrims didn't use forks; they ate with spoons, knives, and their fingers.

• In 1863, two national days of Thanksgiving were declared: One celebrated the Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg. The other began the Thanksgiving holiday we still celebrate today. Sarah Josepha Hale, an American magazine editor, persuaded Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. She is also the author of the popular nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Abraham Lincoln issued a 'Thanksgiving Proclamation' on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving.

• In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November, to stimulate the economy by lengthening the holiday shopping season.
• In 1941, Congress stated that from then on, Thanksgiving would take place on the fourth Thursday in November, ensuring that all Americans would celebrate a unified Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

Plus, did you know turkey was the first meal enjoyed by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they were on the moon.

Now you can be the talk of your dinner table this holiday — a perfect turkey tidbit to impress holiday dinner guests.

This article is from NASA, Nov. 21, 2013.

The animation below shows the most common type of gamma-ray burst, thought to occur when a massive star collapses, forms a black hole, and blasts particle jets outward at nearly the speed of light. Viewing into a jet greatly boosts its apparent brightness. A Fermi image of GRB 130427A ends the sequence.

On April 27, a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.

A trio of NASA satellites, working in concert with ground-based robotic telescopes, captured never-before-seen details that challenge current theoretical understandings of how gamma-ray bursts work.

"We expect to see an event like this only once or twice a century, so we're fortunate it happened when we had the appropriate collection of sensitive space telescopes with complementary capabilities available to see it," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos, thought to be triggered when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star and erupt into space at nearly the speed of light.

Gamma-rays are the most energetic form of light. Hot matter surrounding a new black hole and internal shock waves produced by collisions within the jet are thought to emit gamma-rays with energies in the million-electron-volt (MeV) range, or roughly 500,000 times the energy of visible light. The most energetic emission, with billion-electron-volt (GeV) gamma rays, is thought to arise when the jet slams into its surroundings, forming an external shock wave.

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope captured the initial wave of gamma rays from GRB 130427A shortly after 3:47 a.m. EDT April 27. In its first three seconds alone, the "monster burst" proved brighter than almost any burst previously observed.

"The spectacular results from Fermi GBM show that our widely accepted picture of MeV gamma rays from internal shock waves is woefully inadequate," said Rob Preece, a Fermi team member at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who led the GBM study.

NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission detected the burst almost simultaneously with the GBM and quickly relayed its position to ground-based observatories.

Telescopes operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of the Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) Project quickly turned to the spot. They detected an optical flash that peaked at magnitude 7 on the astronomical brightness scale, easily visible through binoculars. It is the second-brightest flash ever seen from a gamma-ray burst.

Just as the optical flash peaked, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected a spike in GeV gamma-rays reaching 95 GeV, the most energetic light ever seen from a burst. This relationship between a burst's optical light and its high-energy gamma-rays defied expectations.

"We thought the visible light for these flashes came from internal shocks, but this burst shows that it must come from the external shock, which produces the most energetic gamma-rays," said Sylvia Zhu, a Fermi team member at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The LAT detected GRB 130427A for about 20 hours, far longer than any previous burst. For a gamma-ray burst, it was relatively nearby. Its light traveled 3.8 billion years before arriving at Earth, about one-third the travel time for light from typical bursts.

"Detailed observations by Swift and ground-based telescopes clearly show that GRB 130427A has properties more similar to typical distant bursts than to nearby ones," said Gianpiero Tagliaferri, a Swift team member at Brera Observatory in Merate, Italy.

This extraordinary event enabled NASA's newest X-ray observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), to make a first-time detection of a burst afterglow in high-energy, or "hard," X-rays after more than a day. Taken together with Fermi LAT data, these observations challenge long-standing predictions.

No big surprise, but I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yah, I'm good if given a pointy object.

Wow! I just went through another "Mandela Effect". This time it was with Ariel Castro. But according to this article he's about to serve life in prison. 

 I remember a month or two ago that he hung himself in jail and died. No Joke! CNN still has a story on it. And the three girls that were held captive by him said "it was in God's hands now."

Does anyone remember this? It was all over the media.

What the hell? Did a dimension that merged with another screw-up and forget to check the internet. Wouldn't that be funny.

I heard it is supposed to be a balmy 33 degrees in upstate NY, sooo...

I know I have a sick sense of humor but holy crap, I can't stop laughing about the next one. Imagine if you saw this guy on the side of the road.

What a whack-a-doodle! Still, I'd be laughing for miles after I saw this fella.

This is one of my favorite holidays. A day where a person can be as creative as they want.
Here is a website that has a directory of Haunted Places. You can check your area for a fun place to go on the 31st.
Also, here is an interesting article about the case that inspired "The Exorcist".

Have you seen this?
If only the rest of the world could have such grace and insight.

And she is soooo right. Education is the key.