On behalf of everyone here at Neatorama, I extend our sincerest wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving! May your holiday be filled with family, friends, food, football, and fun. We owe a great big thanks to all of YOU for making this past year a success for this site! Posting may be pretty light the rest of the day. For those in other countries, once you've had your fill of what's here, may I suggest you check out the extensive links at the NeatoHub.

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A few days ago, Allie Brosch described in detail the confusion her dogs went through when wearing their first shoes. So you can witness that sort of thing yourself, here is Booba, a presumably normal Shi Tzu wearing his new yellow shoes. He doesn't appear to be accustomed to wearing shoes. -via Buzzfeed

President Obama upheld a presidential tradition and pardoned the official White House turkey yesterday in Washington. Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board have given a turkey to the US president as a gift. But the pardons are a relatively recent innovation.

Since then, presidents have been more likely to call the turkey dinner than give it a reprieve. But a notable exception occurred in 1963, when President Kennedy, referring to the turkey given to him, said, "Let's just keep him." It wasn't until 1989, during the first Thanksgiving of President George H.W. Bush, that a turkey was officially pardoned.

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all upheld the turkey pardoning tradition. However, some confusion still abounds regarding the true origin of this practice. Some claim that Harry Truman pardoned the turkey he received in 1947, but the Truman Library has been unable to prove this as fact. Others say that the tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln's pardoning of his son Tad's pet turkey.

SFGate details the fates of the pardoned turkeys, including the 2010 bird. Link

A new species of "squid worm" has been found 3,000 meters below sea level in the Celebes Sea east of Borneo. Not only is it is previously unknown species, it has its own newly coined genus as well.

Researchers, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California named it Teuthidodrilus samae – a new genus and species. They said: "This illustrates how much we have to learn about even the large, common inhabitants of deep pelagic communities."

In a series of exploration dives, researchers spotted the worm, slowly rising and falling in the water around 100m above the seafloor, where it feeds on passing plankton. The worm swims or treads water by waving hundreds of bristles that run along the length of its body on either side.

The 10 slender arm-like appendages that give the worm its unusual appearance are a combination of elongated gills and sensory organs. They are probably used to pick scraps of food from the "marine snow" of organic detritus that constantly falls to the seabed from above. Each is as long or longer than the whole of the worm's body.

Watch the creature swim in a video at the Guardian. Link -via Metafilter

A genetic study of Icelandic natives found a genetic variation in 80 people similar to a variation found mostly in Native Americans. The genetic code was traced back to four women who lived around 1700. But the history of Iceland leads experts to believe the gene must've entered the population hundreds of years earlier. The simplest answer so far that fits the facts is that some Viking brought back a Native American wife from North America, who then bore the first Viking-American child in Iceland.

"We know that Vikings sailed to the Americas," said Agnar Helgason of deCODE Genetics and the University of Iceland, who co-wrote the study with his student Sigrídur Ebenesersdóttir and colleagues. "So all you have to do is assume … that they met some people and ended up taking at least one female back with them.

"Although it's maybe interesting and surprising, it's not all that incredible," Helgason added. "The alternative explanations to me are less likely"—for example the idea that the genetic trait might exist independently, undiscovered, in a few Europeans.

Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image credit: Robert Harding Picture Library, Alamy)

In this version of the Thanksgiving story, Mario fled a famine to try raising power-ups in the New World. He had a hard time until he and his people made friends with the natives, which, of course, eventually leads to a feast. Link -Thanks, Scott!

An anonymous benefactor in Canton, Ohio placed a newspaper ad near Christmas in 1933 and asked for people in need to contact him. At the height of the Great Depression, many were in dire straits and responded by mail. The mysterious "B. Virdot" sent $5 (a generous sum at the time) to 150 families. Virdot never revealed his identity. Then in 2008, Ted Gup unearthed those letters and found out that his grandfather was the man who handed out the money.

His real name was Sam Stone. "B. Virdot" was a combination of his daughters' names—Barbara, Virginia (my mother) and Dorothy. My grandmother had mentioned something about his largesse to my mother when she was a young adult, but it had remained a family secret. Now, 30 years after her father's death, she was comfortable letting the secret out.

Collectively, the letters offer a wrenching vision of the Great Depression and of the struggle within the souls of individuals, many too proud to speak of their anguish even to their loved ones. Some sought B. Virdot's generosity not for themselves, but for their neighbors, friends or relatives. Stirred by their words, I set out to find what became of them, tracking down their descendants, wondering if the $5 gifts had made any difference. From each family, I received permission to use the letter.

Read some of the stories of those families at Smithsonian magazine. Link

The man your man could smell like meets the most interesting man in the world. Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice Guy) posted a picture of his meeting with Jonathan Goldsmith, the Dos Equis beer guy. And somehow the space/time continuum remained intact. Link -via reddit

Haikyo is a Japanese word for abandoned ruins. Michael Gakuran explored an abandoned home in Japan some call the Royal House, possibly because among the contents are pre-war portraits of the Japanese Emperor and the Royal family.

In pre-WWII Japan, the Emperor was still revered as a living deity and to look upon him was thought of as an immense privilege. Distribution of the Imperial Family Portraits was not compulsory and schools had to petition to the Ministry in order to receive one, which was usually granted on grounds of academic excellence. Because the official portraits were on loan from the Imperial Household Ministry, protecting the picture from harm was deemed of utmost importance. Having the picture lost or damaged, even from natural disasters like fires or earthquakes, was seen as such a serious failure of duty that there were incidents of school officials committing suicide in an act of repentance.

There are plenty of pictures of the house and contents, but Gakuran has many more photographs he did not publish because of the fine line between documenting history and invading the former occupant's privacy. Link -via Metafilter

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Cookie Monster wants to branch out beyond his "cookie-eating career" and host Saturday Night Live. Here he recreates some familiar elements of the show and still manages to eat some cookies along the way. Do you think he has what it takes? You can show your support at his Facebook page. Link -via Breakfast Links

The Pocket Fisherman Makes it Big

The history of pitching unusual gadgets on television begins with S.J. Popeil. Born into a family of roadside salesmen, S.J. had the vision to break into a much larger audience via TV. The first gizmo he hawked on the small screen was the Pocket Fisherman -a fishing rod small enough to fit in your glove compartment or briefcase. While veteran anglers debated the utility of the flimsy rod, Popeil maintained, "It's not for using. It's for giving." He had a point. Forty years after the first commercial aired, The Pocket Fisherman continues to sell millions of units worldwide every year.

But Wait! There's More!

The Genius that Bred the Chia Pet

In the early 1970s, entrepreneur Joseph Pedott heard about a failing Chicago company that was selling seeds from the chia plant, a member of the mint family. He bought the company and sold the seeds along with a terra cotta figurine that could sprout vegetation. The result was the Chia Pet -one of the most successful infomercial products in history. But Pedott is hardly a one-trick pony, He's also the genius behind another TV favorite, The Clapper. He took an existing sound-activated device called The Great American Turn-On, tweaked it, and renamed it. The rest is "clap on, clap off" history.

The Lesson Behind "I've Fallen, and I Can't Get Up"

LifeCall, a medical alert system, launched one of the most popular catchphrases of the 1980s, when it aired the "I've fallen, and I can't get up" commercial. Radio DJs and stand-up comics endlessly made fun of Mrs. Fletcher, the elderly woman sprawled on the floor. The character was played by Edith Fore, a 70-something widow who'd actually been saved by LifeCall after a tumble down her stairs in 1989. Fore was paid a one-time fee for her performance and never received any royalties. Although her phrase was printed on T-shirts and parodied in songs for years, LifeCall never saw an increase in sales and eventually filed for bankruptcy. The problem was that the public remembered the slogan but couldn't recall the name of the product.

The Knives That Served Up Catchphrases

Despite the Japanese name, Ginsu knives were originally manufactured in Fremont, Ohio. The company, formerly known as Quikut, hired an advertising copywriter named Arthur Schiff to spice up its sales pitch. Schiff not only came up with the name Ginsu, he also coined several phrases that are still infomercial staples today, such as, "Now, how much would you pay?" and "Act now, and you'll receive..." But his pièce de résistance was "But wait! There's more!"

All These Hits on One Giant LP

Long before there was Now That's What I Call Music, there was K-Tel, the affordable pipeline to the hits of the 1970s and 1980s. Salesman Philip Kives had the idea to cram 20 to 25 songs onto one LP and pitch them on rapid-fire TV commercials. The ads were ahead of their time, because serious musical artists of that era didn't advertise on television, and young music buyers were mesmerized when they heard a succession of 5-second snippets of their favorite tunes on TV. Kives was able to sell his LPs for less than half the normal cost by using cheap, ultra-thin vinyl. He also mastered the records at a lower volume, which produced thin grooves, allowing for more songs on each side.

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Great Moments in Infomercial History was written by Kara Kovalchik. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

It sounds like something the dog says when he's trying to recall where he buried it! No, it's today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. How much do you remember about the bones of the human body? In this quiz, you'll be given the names of nine bones, and you match them to the part of the body they are from. I scored 100%! Link

German designer Christoph Thetard designed a versatile kitchen appliance that uses no electricity, because it's powered by the chef's foot! The R2B2 has three attachments: a chopper, blender, and grinder that all connect to a rotary gear powered by a flywheel contained in the cabinet. Bonus -running the machine with your foot also burns calories! Link -via Mother Nature Network

The editors of Slate asked their readers how Thanksgiving cooking traditions get passed from one generation to the next. They collected stories and posted them. It seems that in many families, the one who cooks every year has a hard time giving that position up to anyone else. Some even refuse help from those who should be learning how to do it.

My mom doesn't accept much help in the kitchen, holidays or Mondays—not because she doesn't trust others to get it right, but because she just doesn't know how to slow down. Never did. And accept help? She's as likely to do that as she is to ask for it; i.e., not at all. She reminds me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who systematically gets his appendages hacked off in battle but still won't call it a day. Make no mistake, having grown up as one of five girls in an inner-city, working-class home, I'm no stranger to hard work. But there was never a time when we did more work than she did. Ever. Even at 83, I'm not sure it's even possible to outwork my mom. As she's aged, all we can manage is guerrilla warfare.

My mother and grandmother helped me learn the family recipes as soon as I was old enough to be interested, and I've been hosting the family feast for quite a few years now. Now if I could only get my children interested... How about your family? Link

You can enter a picture in National Geographic's annual photo contest until November 30th, but the competition is stiff. See 47 of the most awesome entries so far presented in large size on one page at The Big Picture blog. Link -via Fark

(Image credit: Jay Fine)