As you and yours are in the midst of preparations for your Thanksgiving meal, I’ve assembled a few little-known Thanksgiving facts to entertain and delight you with.

Beginning from the beginning, you might be surprised to learn that the first celebrators of this holiday were not Pilgrims, and not persecuted Englishmen and women at all.

1492 – Columbus discovers America ( unless you count the Native peoples already living there) Columbus and crew celebrate by having dinner. No turkey, but a pasta primavera with some oregano and a nice chianti.

1620 – Plymouth, England - Persecuted english people jump on a ship called the Mayflower. Their destination is Palm Springs and a cut-rate hotel room, but the Mayflower is thrown off course by a storm and they end up in a place called Plymouth Rock. Odds of such an occurrence are astronomical, but still better than getting a cheap room in Palm Springs.

1621 – Pilgrim’s celebrate in thanks for surviving their first winter and they invite the locals. Over ninety Wampanoag Indians show up. The Pilgrim menu has things on it like stewed pumpkin, a scrawny, dried up turkey and an awful concoction made of whortleberries. The head Wampanoag,name of Massasoit, sends his buddy Squanto back to camp with some helpers. They return with fresh deer meat, oysters, clams and lobster. The Pilgrims eat so quickly that ‘gobble, gobble’ is forever after associated with turkeys. After dinner, games of sportsmanship are held. Squanto cleaves an apple in two from forty paces with a tomahawk. The Pilgrim men falter terribly at the athletics and use them as an excuse to get out of doing the dishes. Embarrassed, they never invite the Wampanoag again. Fortunately, they learn that there are better things to eat than what English cookery can provide.

1776 – Boston silversmith, Paul Revere, excited that his British in-laws finally agreed to come to his house for Thanksgiving dinner, rides madly through town yelling, ‘The British are Coming.’ Confused colonists misinterpret the cry as a warning and so begins the Revolutionary War.

1814 – Frustrated that there was never enough food to go around on Thanksgiving, Morman farmer, Josiah Whimple breeds a turkey with six legs. The experiment was only partially successful as the bird could never be caught.

1930 – Representive from Butterball Turkey goes to Rome to convince the Pope to change the daily prayer from ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ to ‘Give us this day our daily turkey’. The pope objects. Representive offers the Pope fifty million dollars.The following day the Pope notifies the Cardinals and clergy that he has good news and bad news. ‘The good news,’ he announces, ‘ is that the Church is to come into 50 million dollars…the bad news is that we’re losing the Wonderbread account.’

1956 – While observing a common pumpkin, mathmetician Cornelius Biggin discovers that by dividing it’s circumference by it’s diameter, he has fallen upon a new formula for Pumpkin Pi.

1969 – For their first meal on the moon, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin ate roast turkey in foil packets. Armstrong becomes upset that Aldrin forgot cranberry sauce packets, makes Aldrin eat alone, outside.

2004 - Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented a live turkey to the President prior to Thanksgiving. The President usually "pardons" it and allows it to live out its days on a historical farm. This year, because the turkey is suspected of terrorist ties, it is sent to Dick Cheney’s house for interrogation, basting.

That about does it for historical stuffing, so I’ll close with a little Thanksgiving Prayer. You may use it if you wish:

May your stuffing be tasty,

May your turkey be plump,

May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump,

May your yams be delicious,

May your pies take the prize,

And may your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!