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hanksgiving Day is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. It is a holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday. The date and location of the first Thanksgiving celebration is a topic of modest contention. Though the earliest attested Thanksgiving celebration was on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida[1][2], the traditional "first Thanksgiving" is venerated as having occurred at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in 1621. Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Thanksgiving dinner is held on this day, usually as a gathering of family members and friends.

Most people celebrate by gathering at home with family or friends for a holiday feast. Though the holiday's origins can be traced to harvest festivals which have been celebrated in many cultures since ancient times, the American holiday has religious undertones related to the deliverance of the English settlers by Native Americans after the brutal winter at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The period from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day is often called the holiday season.

most important plant in a giant panda's life

12 hours each day eating bamboo

so low in nutrients, pandas eat as much as 84 pounds (38 kilograms) of it each day

As a celebration steeped in American history, you might expect it to be a day of remembering our forebears and displaying patriotism. However, in modern times, consideration of the first Thanksgiving is generally relegated to schoolchildren. Although that first celebration was a landmark moment in the history of America, beyond giving thanks for freedom and safety, you won't typically find the flag waving of the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. Instead, the holiday remains centered on family, friends, and food. Some see the holiday as a last bastion of non-commercialization. Beyond a few centerpieces and themed party supplies, Thanksgiving doesn't receive the same marketing push as Valentine's Day, Halloween, or especially Christmas. It feels more pure in this regard. However, the time and money required to create a traditional Thanksgiving spread doesn't make the day completely free of pressure. As a national holiday, Thanksgiving means a day free from school and work for most. Even television seems to conspire to bring families closer together, with spectacles such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, big football games, and themed marathons on numerous cable channels inviting everyone to gather 'round. Although giving thanks for the many blessings of life is easily interpreted as a religious sentiment, there is no particular creed or belief system associated with the holiday. A community might host an ecumenical service in honor of the holiday. Families often say a prayer over the food before beginning dinner. Churches sponsor holiday dinners as outreach to the poor and lonely. However, all of these actions are founded on the basic, secular premise of giving thanks. From preschoolers making handprint turkeys to adults remembering the most important people and moments in their lives, it is easy to answer, "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?" Like the Pilgrims did on that long-ago day, we all gather to give thanks for the many bounties life offers.

The truth is both of them have their advantages and

The big city is the place where all industrial, cultural and educational centers are situated. In big cities you can find museums, theaters, clubs, cinemas, big shops and hospitals, comfortable modern

The most basic breakdance moves are the 6-step and toprock. The rest of the dance is founded around these two elements. Dancers usually begin by toprocking, and then continue by going down to the floor and performing a 6-step or 4-step that may be heavily 'teched' (variated). The 6-step provides a base for other more complex moves to be formed, as well as power moves.

After performing a 6-step to begin the dance, and then performing a power move, the breakdancer will usually end the dance with a 'freeze' which is when he contorts his body to a strange position and literally freezes, stopping all dance motion. The breakdancer will usually hold the freeze for a second or two. There are nearly infinite variations on freezes, and coming up with new freezes greatly enhances the breakdancers style.

One popular move in 'break dancing' was known as the 'Floor Lock'. In this move dancers would support themselves on one hand while spinning their bodies around while kicking out their legs

COUNTRY POPULATION (smallest) (February, 2006 numbers) Vatican City 920

COUNTRY POPULATION (largest) (February, 2006 numbers) China 1,306,313,800

OCEANS OF THE WORLD (by size) Pacific (155,557,000 sq km)

Apple Inc. has surpassed Wal-Mart to become America’s No. 1 music store, the first time that a seller of digital downloads has ever beaten the big CD retailers.

Video game companies and other software makers are selling more of their products as downloads rather than CDs.

Songs could be downloaded faster than movies or TV shows, both legally and illegally.

AFTER the abortion art, Anorak learns of Costa Rican artiste Guillermo Habacuc Vargas, who starved a dog to death and tied in an art gallery as an exhibit. The title of the works – Eres Lo Que Lees” - was spelt out on the gallery wall in dry dog food, beyond the dog’s reach. A pot of water was placed on the floor, beyond the dog’s reach. The dog died. The artist said it was ill and would have died anyway. Not every one is happy. A letter writing campaign is being organised

11% decline in album sales during the first half of 2008

Consumers purchased 204.6 million albums between January and June

single track downloads growing 30% to 532.7 million units in the first half of the year over first half sales in 2007 of 417.3 million units

Here is a part of his original [most recent] statement:"Hello everyone. My name is Guillermo Habacuc Vargas. I am 50 years old and an artist. Recently, I have been critisized for my work titled "Eres lo que lees", which features a dog named Nativity. The purpose of the work was not to cause any type of infliction on the poor, innocent creature, but rather to illustrate a point. In my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought. Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway. "So there is just this to say: We see, that not only the gallery was lying from the beginning, but also, what we have to think about all statements of this "artist".

The history of Thanksgiving goes much further back than Plymouth and 1621. In fact, people across the world from every culture have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years. In this country, long before English colonists arrived, Native People celebrated many different days of thanksgiving. “Strawberry Thanksgiving” and “Green Corn Thanksgiving” are just two of kinds of celebrations for the Wampanoag and other Native People. In 1621, the English colonists at Plymouth (some people call them “Pilgrims” today) had a three-day feast to celebrate their first harvest. More than 90 native Wampanoag People joined the 50 English colonists in the festivities. Historians don­t know for sure why the Wampanoag joined the gathering or what activities went on for those three days. Form the one short paragraph that was written about the celebration at the time, we know that they ate, drank, and played games. Back in England, English people celebrated the harvest by feasting and playing games in much the same way. The English did not call the 1621 event a “thanksgiving.” A day of “thanksgiving” was very different for the colonists. It was a day of prayer to thank God when something really good happened. The English actually had their first thanksgiving in the summer of 1623. On this day they gave thanks for the rain that ended a long drought.

Beijing Olympics

China's environmental

Choked Waters

More than a mere biological oddity, the discovery adds weight to Oremland's theory that the bacteria's ability evolved billions of years ago, when the first life was just getting started on Earth. At the time, the planet's oceans were devoid of oxygen, but hydrothermal vents spewed elements such as sulfur, iron and arsenic into the water column.

In this ancient stew, arsenic may have been an important nutrient to life. The life forms would have used whatever they could to survive these noxious waters, and sunlight and arsenic were probably plentiful.

Poison or Fuel?

Owning a cat could reduce your risk of a heart attack by nearly one third, researchers told delegates of the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in New Orleans last week. The finding provoked a mixed reaction from heart experts and veterinarians.

Pollution at the nation’s 3,500 ocean, lake and bay beaches resulted in more than 25,000 closing or swimming advisory days last year, 28 percent more than in 2005, and the highest number in the 17 years that records have been kept, according to a new federal report released Tuesday.

he prime culprit was storm water runoff

Another 1,300 days were attributed to sewage spills and overflows.