I know a number of you may not celebrate Thanksgiving, but wanted to post the greeting nonetheless.
Among the things I am thankful for are the people who wrote Oolite simply for their own and other's enjoyment and the active group of players, programmers and contributors to the board.
I try not to think of the origins of Thanksgiving. I mean... after we got our butts royally saved, we go and keep pushing them to the west until it ends in confrontation and the march of tears.
Er... what?
Oh, Happy Thanksgiving! (If it still applies, I'm halfway across the world.)
Admittedly, it was only the Pilgrim Fathers who needed saving ...
Bill Bryson wrote:
It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey ... Yet between them they failed to bring a single cow or horse or plough or fishing line.
All the other colonists who were there already were doing OK for food. Admittedly they were also doing OK for eliminating the native inhabitants, too ... happy Thanksgiving!
It's not true that the pilgrims were saved by natives who offered them turkeys. The pilgrims brought turkeys with them from Norfolk on the Mayflower!
Turkeys had been introduced to Europe in the 1520s, and became very popular by the end of the century.